Resilience Matters 2016: Sustainable, Equitable Solutions (original) (raw)

Urban Resilience for whom, what, when, where, and why?

In academic and policy discourse, the concept of urban resilience is proliferating. Social theorists, especially human geographers, have rightfully criticized that the underlying politics of resilience have been ignored and stress the importance of asking “resilience of what, to what, and for whom?” This paper calls for careful consideration of not just resilience for whom and what, but also where, when, and why. A three-phase process is introduced to enable these “five Ws” to be negotiated collectively and to engender critical reflection on the politics of urban resilience as plans, initiatives, and projects are conceived, discussed, and implemented. Deployed through the hypothetical case of green infrastructure in Los Angeles, the paper concludes by illustrating how resilience planning trade-offs and decisions affect outcomes over space and time, often with significant implications for equity.

Resilience Matters: Forging a Greener, Fairer Future for All

In an era rocked by climate change and other disruptions, our cities must be resilient to survive and thrive. But what does that mean, exactly? How can we address the problems facing cities today—poverty, job loss, crumbling infrastructure, pollution—while preparing for an uncertain tomorrow? To help answer those questions, Island Press launched the Urban Resilience Project, with support from The Kresge Foundation and The JPB Foundation. We began by reaching out to a diverse group of thinkers— activists, academics, architects and many others. And we asked them to help envision the sustainable, equitable, resilient cities of the future. In 2015, those thinkers produced a wide-ranging series of articles, blogs and op-eds, which are collected in this volume.

Resilience Matters: Strengthening Communities in an Era of Upheaval

Resilience Matters, 2018

In the years since Island Press launched the Urban Resilience Project, the need for information on how to build resilient, equitable cities has only become more urgent. The latest UN climate reports show that we have precious little time to avert the worst impacts of climate change, even as our communities must adapt to rising seas, monster storms, devastating wildfires, and more. Island Press and its diverse community of authors have much to contribute to this effort. Our work takes on the defining challenges of our time: climate resilience and social equity. Through articles, op-eds, and other writing, we spotlight solutions and tell the stories of people on the front lines of the climate crisis. A selection of those stories and solutions from the year 2018 have now been collected in this e-book, Resilience Matters: Strengthening Communities in an Era of Upheaval.

Contesting Resilience: Negotiating Shared Urban Futures

Urban Resilience in a Global Context, 2020

In the early 21 st century, resilience has become the preferred policy constellation to address futures that are extremely uncertain but that are likely to be extreme. The Bloomberg and Rockefeller Foundations have resilient cities programming, as do the World Bank, Asia Development Bank, and dozens of other mega-organizations. Resilience plays an important role in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which have set global development targets for more than one hundred nations through 2030, and have on-the-ground impacts that will shape lives in all corners of the planet for a generation (Sharma 2015: 592). 1 As Aditya Bahadur and others have argued, "The vision set out in the SDGs-for people, planet, prosperity and peace-will inevitably fail if shocks and stresses are not addressed […] A focus on strengthening resilience can protect development gains and ensure people have the resources and capacities to better reduce, prevent, anticipate, absorb and adapt to a range of shocks, stresses, risks and uncertainties" (Bahadur et al. 2015: 2). 2 Some argue that resilience is simply a trendy term, one that has gained currency in a variety of sectors because it is easy to use and extremely flexible. This may be true. But resilience as a development discourse and an urban practice directly impacts the lives of hundreds of millions of the world's most vulnerable people: It is at the core of funding, development, and aid initiatives worth tens of billions of dollars. This alone-the fact that resilience does and will continue to shape lived realities across the planet-is a reason to think seriously about the concept, discourse, and practice.

Urban Resilience in a Global Context

Urban Studies, 2020

Urban Resilience is seen by many as a tool to mitigate harm in times of extreme social, political, financial, and environmental stress. Despite its widespread usage, however, resilience is used in different ways by policy makers, activists, academics, and practitioners. Some see it as a key to unlocking a more stable and secure urban future in times of extreme global insecurity; for others, it is a neoliberal technology that marginalizes the voices of already marginal peoples. This volume moves beyond praise and critique by focusing on the actors, narratives and temporalities that define urban resilience in a global context. By exploring the past, present, and future of urban resilience, this volume unlocks the potential of this concept to build more sustainable, inclusive, and secure cities in the 21st century.