Urban Resilience in Climate Change Adaptation: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

This study presents a conceptual framework for analyzing urban resilience in the context of climate change. The key conceptual elements of resilience are first identified and then reorganized with a focus on cities and climate change adaptation. This study covers not only ecological and engineering resilience but also resilience as a sociopolitical process from an evolutionary perspective. The study's conceptual framework centers on resilience as it relates to cities and climate change. Its findings are expected to shed light on future urban planning and policies for adapting to climate change.

Between Participation and Collective Action—From Occasional Liaisons towards Long-Term Co-Management for Urban Resilience

“…Sustainability and resilience of urban systems heavily depend on the ability of urban actors to interact, deliberate, and collaborate [3,5,59], as well as to continuously adapt and transform their institutional structures [5,60]. While the project-related involvement of citizens into urban development can be considered as state-of-the-art, we claim that long-term and reliable-but also flexible and forward-thinking-collaboration between urban actors (citizens, politicians and municipal administration) is required, in order to build networks of adaptive capacity.…”

“…Social learning and experimentation are key strategies for building resilience [5,39,40]. Thus, decision-making has become a social issue, which embraces the mobilization of different knowledge sources in a social learning process [32].…”

“…Self-organization, collective action and social-learning processes are supposed to activate and promote identification of explicit social strengths and connections to place, and thus are seen as supportive factors of community resilience [4]. Likely, in their recent work on urban resilience and climate change adaption, Kim and Lim [5] examine resilience from an evolutionary perspective and as a socio-political process, and identify "collective decision-making", "cooperative behaviour and planning", as well as "collective learning", and "governance as a political process involving society at large" as key components of resilience building processes. The term evolutionary, they state, includes "flexibility, diversity and…”

A Note on Medium- and Long-Term Global Energy Prospects and Scenarios

“…The agreement came into force on 4 November 2016. The agreement sets out a comprehensive action plan, which aims to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming below 2 • C. Indeed, the warming of the climate system is perceived as unequivocal, as it is clear for instance from the observation of the increase in global average air and ocean temperatures and the rising average sea levels [49][50][51][52][53]. In particular, according to the COP21, governments have agreed to make sure that global emissions have to peak as soon as possible, while recognizing that developing countries will need more time, and then proceed to rapid emissions reductions in accordance with the most advanced scientific solutions available.…”

Collaboration: Long-Term Partnerships for Local Development

“…Collaboration is expected to increase the substantive quality and legitimacy of solutions and decisions to mitigate conflicts among competing interests, to value lay knowledge and expert knowledge equally well, to build trust in institutions or to educate and inform the public [9,10]. Thus, even local decision-makers are challenged to develop new forms of collaboration with their citizens, as processes of collective learning, planning, and decisionmaking are widely seen as key components towards viable, liveable communities, and cities as well as for sustainable development at large [11,12].…”