Building Resilience for Sustainable Urban Futures (World Cities Report 2022, Chapter 10)
One more post before I take a summer break: What makes a city resilient?
Resilience against the challenges of the often unfriendly or even hostile environment was always a subject of urban policy. Even the internationally open trade City of Hamburg with its important harbour and global network has in its court of arms until today a castle and cathedral to demonstrate its strength and resilience. More modern is the image of the Development Bank of Latin America CAF and the Resilient Cities Network who apparently understand resilience more as a combined effort of interrelated and mutually supportive urban and even some rural functions. But no worries, there is no final answer yet on the question what defines resilience for sustainable cities. The search is still ongoing and so it is timely that the World Cities Report 2022 (published by UN-Habitat at WUF11 in Katowice in Poland) closes with a chapter on Building Resilience for Sustainable Urban Futures (pages 301-328).
Resilience doesn't happen - it needs to be build
In the World Cities Report 2022 (WCR) the chapter on resilience for sustainable development reads like a continuation of the chapter on urban governance for future cities. Right in the headline the chapter says why: Resilience doesn't happen it needs to be build:
'Building resilience for sustainable urban development requires integrated linkage of the various pillars of the global sustainable development agenda.`And 'building urban resilience is a multisectoral, multidimensional, multi-stakeholder process that requires a clear change of trajectory from previous paths.`
This is an important message to all who hope that the big problems of our time could be solved by just market forces, a strong leader at the top and/or IT/AI. Important is also that it is not about building back better but about building back differently.
'From this mindset, it follows that poverty and inequality are incompatible with sustainability and resilience since they undermine the basis of urban stability and potentially the fabric of society.' 'Accordingly, here urban resilience is framed as coping with and recovering from a shock by "bouncing back differently" to emphasize the need for substantive change in view of the urgency of meeting the various targets of the SDGs by 2030 and attaining net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest.'
In reference to the IPCC and other recent reports the WCR recalls that progress to date has been inadequate and that incremental progress is no longer sufficient and more substantive urban transformations are now required.
Policy Points for policymakers, governments and other governance stakeholders
The following list of Policy Points also highlights that building resilience is mainly a governance and cooperation challenge.
Searching optimistic scenarios for urban futures
The chapter Building Resilience of the WCR discusses in the following aspects of defining, understanding and measuring resilience, challenges and opportunities related to economic resilience, social resilience, environmental resilience and institutional resilience. These subchapter represents such a diversity of challenges but also responses that I cannot repeat them in this brief blog post.
What I especially like about this and other chapters of the report is that after an thorough analyses they end with an optimistic and forward looking attitude:
As outlined in chapter 1 of the WCR the author of chapter 10, David Simon, reiterates
'Urban futures can go in any number of directions and the duty of urban actors is to steer our cities toward
the most optimistic future, as outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda. Cities can continue on an unsustainable path of widening income inequality, worsening air quality, continuous urban sprawl, and growing slums and informal settlements that do not provide safe, adequate housing. Or they can change course and chart the path of well-planned, managed, and financed
cities that create better becomes for all of their residents, including the most vulnerable.'
(...) 'Substantive gains can be made under broadly existing arrangements, promoted by appropriate champions among officials and elected representatives, without demanding unrealistic institutional reinventions as a prerequisite. This can be achieved through a set of interventions targeting continuous transformational change, which can be grouped as follows:
- provide the basic conditions to enable small steps or wins, which are easier to conceptualize and implement with existing momentum;
- amplify small wins through sense-making, coupling and integrating—activities that explain the changes
and their significance in relation to transformational change, linking the changes to cognate ones in other departments or levels of institution, and connecting these changes and experiences to existing institutions so that they benefit and participate in the ongoing transformations; and
- unblock stagnations by confronting social and perceptual obsessions with innovative and counter-intuitive interventions that demonstrate the potential of alternatives, provided that officials and elected
representatives are willing to engage critically, learn and adapt procedures and behaviours.'
There is just one suggestion for future chapters and WCR: The report and its chapters are generally based on the assumption of a dominance of good willing citizens and leaders. That is nice and honourable. However, looking at the reality of our world I miss more ideas on what to do when the good will doesn't prevail. The unblocking of stagnation as mentioned above is certainly an important aspect. Another aspect is upscaling: A lot is done already in form of pilot projects. This makes activists happy and reduces pressure on political leaders but it should not distract from the fact that often the technical solution is not missing but the political will and public support for a real transformative change in cities. Yes, and that brings us back to the observation that building resilience is less a technical than a challenge for governments, governance and all stakeholder groups. As an example the closing paragraphs of the chapter include Five climate action pathways to urban transformation.
The full World Cities Report 2022 published by UN-Habitat can be downloaded here: https://unhabitat.org/wcr/
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According to the Acknowledgements the UN-Habitat Core Team and Authors includes:
UN-Habitat Core Team
Neil Khor (Division Director); Ben Arimah (Chief of Unit and Task Manager); Raymond Otieno Otieno; Matthijs van Oostrum; Mary Mutinda; Judith Oginga Martins
External Authors
Godwin Arku; Vanesa Castán Broto; Merlin Chatwin; Lewis Dijkstra; Simon Joss: Ayyoob Sharifi; Alice Sverdlik; David Simon; Pietro Florio; Sergio Freire; Thomas Kemper; Michele Melchiorri; Marcello Schiavina; Alfredo Alessandrini; Fabrizio Natale; Daniela Ghio; Olivier Draily; Linda Westman; Ping Huang; Enora Robin; Hita Unnikrishnan
Policies and Governance for Resilient and Sustainable Cities and Regions
