Resilience
Urban resilience is a city's capacity to absorb a shock —flood, earthquake, pandemic, economic crisis— and keep functioning, recover and reorganise without losing what is essential. The term arrived from ecology in the 2000s and now organises risk planning.
Its critics point out that it can be used to ask the vulnerable to endure rather than to reduce their vulnerability. Resilience properly understood is redundancy —several water sources, several routes—, diversity and the capacity to learn; poorly understood, it is a slogan for changing nothing.
Videos on this term (19)
- Climate change
Resilience Is Just a Mask for Resignation
How resilience went from physics and ecology to an urban agenda that asks communities to absorb risks they did not…
3 min read - Urban history
Patrick Geddes: regionalism and cities in evolution
Who Patrick Geddes was and what he gave urban planning: regionalism, environmental planning, the city as an…
Patrick Geddes 2 min read - Climate change
David Simon and Resilient Cities in the Global South
David Simon studies how Global South cities adapt to climate change with informality and few resources.
David Simon 3 min read - Climate change
Urban Resilience: How Cities Recover After Disaster
The Resilient City (2005) by Vale and Campanella explains how Chicago, Warsaw, Hiroshima or New York rebuilt after…
3 min read - Climate change
Vale and Campanella: Who Returns to the City After Disaster
The Resilient City by Lawrence Vale and Thomas Campanella shows that cities almost always rebuild, but resilience…
Lawrence Vale 3 min read - Urban ecology
Ian McHarg: Design with Nature
A summary of Ian McHarg's Design with Nature (1969): planning from the territory up, layered maps, and the origin…
2 min read - Climate change
Thomas Campanella: Urban Resilience in Times of Crisis
Thomas Campanella argues that a city's resilience is that of its citizens: New Orleans after Katrina, the green dot…
Thomas Campanella 3 min read - Climate change
Urban Resilience and Climate Change: Governing Climate with Justice
Urban resilience to climate change is a way of governing, not a technical attribute. What Pauline McGuirk's…
2 min read - Urban geopolitics
Urban Geography in the 21st Century: Challenges and New Frontiers
How urban geography has changed: theory beyond the Global North, cities and climate change, technologies of…
2 min read - Urban psychology
Diane Davis: Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence
Diane Davis explains how communities resist and adapt to chronic violence and which governance reduces it:…
Diane Davis 3 min read - Urban ecology
City of Flows by Maria Kaika: The City and Its Invisible Flows
City of Flows (2005) by Maria Kaika shows how the modern city domesticated nature and hid its flows of water and…
Maria Kaika 3 min read - Urban ecology
Regenerative urbanism: polluting less is not enough
Sustainability asks cities to reduce harm. Regenerative urbanism asks them to repair it: to give back more to their…
2 min read - Climate change
Urban resilience: adaptation and social justice
What urban resilience means for Timothy Beatley and Judith Rodin: adapting to climate, pandemics and disasters…
2 min read - Urban geopolitics
The Production of Space in the Global South: Robinson and Pieterse
The production of space in the Global South needs its own categories. What Jennifer Robinson (Ordinary Cities). The…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Urban Agriculture: What It Can and Cannot Do for the City
Urban agriculture improves resilience and food justice, not self-sufficiency. What Karen Seto shows about farmland…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Urban waste management and the circular economy
How cities should manage waste according to Paul Connett (zero waste), Ken Webster (circular economy) and Daniel…
2 min read - Climate change
Extreme Cities by Ashley Dawson: Cities, Climate and Inequality
Extreme Cities (2017) by Ashley Dawson explains why coastal cities are climate change's first victim and how…
Ashley Dawson 2 min read - Urban ecology
Circular Economy in Cities: What It Is, Cases and Limits
The circular economy keeps materials and products in use instead of discarding them. What Walter Stahel, Ken…
3 min read - Infrastructure
Sustainable Urban Energy: Key Ideas from Peter Newman and William Rees
Urban energy decides a city's footprint and resilience. What Peter Newman and William Rees propose, the three…
3 min read
