Enhancing urban and infrastructure resilience

Geoforum, 2020

Despite the burgeoning popularity of resilience as an urban policy narrative, we know little about how policymakers and planners approach the challenge of operationalising urban resilience or what problems they face. Although their ultimate goal is presumably to integrate resilience goals into sectoral policy and decision-making as well as to dissolve policy silos, the concept of mainstreaming has received relatively little attention in urban resilience literature so far. To address this void, we use the concept of mainstreaming to analyse the two cities of Christchurch and Rotterdam, both participants in the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities Programme. We identify three main challenges that are apparent in both cities despite their contextual differences. The first is to make resilience a top priority for policymaking and planning because it competes with other urban development agendas for political commitment. Secondly, institutionalising cross-sector governance constitutes a challenge because participation in 100 Resilient Cities brings few incentives for institutional reforms. The third challenge-to actively engage decision-makers from public and private sectors-arises because urban policymakers and planners are not sufficiently equipped to convince them to invest additional resources in terms of personnel, time and money and to dissolve conflicts of interest between them. In the light of these challenges, we argue that participating in 100 Resilient Cities is a relevant but not sufficient first step towards mainstreaming urban resilience in Christchurch and Rotterdam. In addition to developing a resilience strategy and appointing a Chief Resilience Officer, formal changes (for instance in procedural law and national policymaking) are required, to address the challenges identified.

Cities, 2020

The management of large-scale disasters in urban agglomerations often reveals fragmented governance structures. Accordingly, recent debates in the field of disaster risk management call for better coordination of agencies and actors across organisational and territorial boundaries, arguing that this would ultimately improve the resilience of urban areas. However, our analysis of the metropolitan area of Greater Christchurch, which experienced a series of devastating earthquakes in 2010/2011, shows that this conclusion inadequately acknowledges the uncertainties and institutional complexities in the governance of resilience. We show that debates on urban resilience can benefit from the concept of institutional connectivitydefined as institutionalised forms of vertical, horizontal or cross-territorial interactionto systematically address these complexities. Our empirical results suggest that the efficacy of different forms of institutional connectivity depends on prevailing circumstances. Therefore, particular forms of connectivity should be prioritised on a case-by-case basis. Our empirical study reveals that enhancing institutional connectivity is a resource-intensive and contested process that might induce negative trade-offs. We contend that because institutions shape how different agencies and organisations interact, scholarly debates on urban resilience should put more emphasis on processes of institutional reform and stress the political dimension of institution building for urban resilience.

Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 2018

Resilience has risen rapidly over the last decade to become one of the key terms in international policy and academic discussions associated with civil contingencies and crisis management. As governments and institutions confront threats such as environmental hazards, technological accidents, climate change, and terrorist attacks, they recognise that resilience can serve as a key policy response. Many organisations including the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, government agencies and departments, international non-governmental organisations and community groups promote resilience. However, with the rapid rise of resilience has come uncertainty as to how it should be built and how different practices and approaches should come together to operationalise it (Chandler & Coaffee, 2016). Whilst there is a variety of different interpretations given to resilience from practitioners and an open debate about resilience principles and characteristics in academia, we adopt the crisis and disaster management definition of "the capacity of a social system to proactively adapt to and recover from disturbances that are perceived within the system to fall outside the range of normal and expected disturbances" (Boin, Comfort, & Demchak, 2010; p. 9). By developing resilience, a system becomes capable of reducing the impact of shocks and resuming normal functioning more quickly following a disaster and better equipped to meet population needs and minimise economic losses caused by crises (Lagadec, 2009; Meerow, Newell, & Stults, 2016). However, it should be noted that this definition fails to capture preexisting socioeconomic inequities within society and that in many countries "negotiated resilience" may be desirable (Ziervogel et al., 2017). Moreover, in the rapidly emerging policy discourse of resilience, cities and urban areas have become a key focus of action where rapid urbanisation and greater global connectedness present unprecedented challenges. Such increased urbanisation also concentrates risk in cities making them increasingly vulnerable to an array of shocks and stresses. Under such circumstances, city managers are increasingly seeking to enhance urban resilience by addressing underlying risk factors, and by reducing the exposure and vulnerability of people and assets to a range of current and future threats. In this sense urban resilience provides different frameworks for reducing the multiple risks faced by cities and communities, ensuring there are appropriate levels of resources and capacities to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from a range of shocks and stresses (Coaffee & Lee, 2016). Many initiatives organised through global governance networks promote the importance of city-based resilience whilst a range of private sector and philanthropic organisations have advanced programmes of work and frameworks by which cities might develop the capacities to become more resilient. Most notably, major cities throughout the world have joined the 100 Resilient Cities programme (http://www. Knowledge for Urban Resilience Implementation at the Ecole nationale

Environmental Science & Policy, 2019

The concept of resilience has attracted considerable attention in policy and research communities in the fields of both urban and infrastructure development and governance. Resilience has been framed as a boundary concept bridging different communities of knowledge production and practice. However, a closer look at the joint enterprise, the shared repertoire, and the mutual engagement of respective knowledge communities in urban and infrastructure research and planning practice reveals that resilience is understood and dealt with in rather diverging ways. This paper explores some of these divides, then argues that differences in knowledge production can induce somewhat disconnected policy outcomes and governance approaches which consequently weaken cities' ability to address current and future challenges. Therefore, we call for more interaction and crossboundary learning between respective knowledge communities.

Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 2020

What transformations do municipal administrations implement to enact a resilience policy? This article responds to this question from a comparative perspective by analyzing enabling and impeding mechanisms developed in the cities of Montreal (Canada) and London (UK) as they establish their strategies. Collaborative network governance and institutional work mechanisms used in Montreal and London are analyzed in connection with the influence of macro-and micro-contextual elements under which a network can resiliently manage risk and crises. In both cases, the development of resilience emerges from their emergency management structures, as units in charge try to animate their new area of responsibility through collaborative governance. As a siloed approach this is embedded in daily routines, organizations with limited resources focused on shared motivation and values, collaboration across organizational boundaries and creation of joint capacity to implement resilience. This transformative process concerns the organization in charge of resilience in the municipal administration and the wider network that they build and animate.

Alessandro Balducci • Daniele Chiffi • Francesco Curci (Editors) Risk and Resilience Socio-Spatial and Environmental Challenges, 2020

In the last decades, the discourse on resilience has become extremely influential across the globe. In urban studies, debates have emphasised how cities can be interpreted both as spaces critically exposed to different kinds of risks, as well as actors who must mobilize political initiatives in order to cope with them. This chapter focuses on the mainstreaming and institutionalisation of discourses on urban resilience within local and supralocal networks. The paper analyses the implementation of the international initiative '100

Resilient Cities, 2019

The RESILIENT CITIES book series aims to analyse the challenges faced by cities and provide an up-to-date body of knowledge, including a systematic collection of global cutting-edge best practices, fundamental to managing the urban transition toward resilience. The best practices will be collected and analysed following a common format, enabling the reader to understand the solutions adopted and clearly highlighting the parameters and possibilities for replication and up-scaling. The best practices are taken from a global city base including, Barcelona, Medellin, Adelaide, Copenhagen, Seoul, and Accra. The distinctiveness of the RESILIENT CITIES book series is its international dimension, coupled with a multidisciplinary and a cross sectorial approach. The RESILIENT CITIES book series will be a unique and fundamental resource for practitioners, policy makers and scientists involved in planning and governing the transition of cities. It presents the latest and up-to-date systematized information on research, practices and policies development, defining clear means and pathways for replication and up-scaling.

IDS Evidence Report, 2014

Environment and Urbanization, 2020

There is growing recognition of the cumulative impact that converging environmental, political, social and economic risks have on the ability of cities to function in times of shocks and stresses. While many frameworks and assessment tools have been developed to assess the technical resilience of the infrastructure of cities, there have been fewer attempts to holistically understand and map all the factors that interact to potentially produce functioning urban systems, including the role of institutions (both formal and informal). Applied integrated research is needed to understand the daily functioning, vulnerability and resilience of these rapidly growing cities amid chronic and acute stresses and shocks; to also understand why and how multiple risks and protective factors converge and interact to constrain or enable cities to fulfil their core functions in times of stability and crisis; and finally to produce operationally relevant recommendations that could inform interventions.

Cities, 2017

version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Link to formal publication Cities (Elsevier): http://dx.