Transitioning to resilience and sustainability in urban communities

Abstract

Publication informationCities, 32 : S21-S28, Supplement 1Publisher Elsevier Link to online versionhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275113 00036X Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/4326 Publisher's statementThis is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Cities. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Transitioning to resilience and sustainability in urban communities AbstractThe challenges of rapid urban growth and societal change will require mechanisms for efficient transitioning to an embedded resilience. This has become central to the exploration of methods for achieving truly sustainable urban growth. However, while transitioning and resilience are useful descriptors, they can be abstract or conflicting ideals and their meanings obscured by a lack of concrete examples, both being barriers to many planning objectives. In this paper, we hold a lens over key issues in transitioning to resilience in urban areas by outlining emerging challenges that may offer directions towards operationalising how cities might transition to a more resilient future, while ensuring that communities are at the center of the process.The emerging and challenging areas -geospatial ICT, green infrastructure planning, novel design using collaborative responses, climate planning, limiting urban sprawl and short-circuit economic approaches -are explored as viable facets for devising and sustaining urban transition strategies. We conclude with a discussion on the need for developing a synergistic approach in practice to facilitate transition.

Are People Responsive to a More Sustainable, Decentralized, and User-Driven Management of Urban Metabolism?

“…The top down, technocratic focus on energy systems, mobility, and resource efficiency led by the ongoing smart city discourse runs the risk of neglecting the human element when addressing urban sustainability [10][11][12]. Such tensions and contradictions, generated by the principles and practices contributing to urban sustainability, reveal the need for aligning similar, although diverging, concepts (and related practices) and stakeholder involvement in long-term processes commonly conceived as "sustainability transitions" [13][14][15][16][17]. This paper is built around the need for a better understanding of how to enable more people-centered approaches to deal with, and even "anchor", urban sustainability transitions.…”

The city politics of an urban age: urban resilience conceptualisations and policies

“…Moving from centralised decision-making approaches to decentralised, multi-level or even polycentric approaches allows to make use of the tacit knowledge of actors and organisations closest to the problem that may result in or has resulted in a disaster (Collier, et al, 2013;Homsey and Warner, 2015). These approaches can allow local agents to act swiftly based on their in-depth understanding of the issues at smaller scales in coordination with other agents to simultaneously work towards resolving issues at larger scales.…”

Evaluation of a new method for assessing resilience in urban aquatic social-ecological systems

“…Second, methods are required to allow assessment of the social components of socio-technical capacity in addition to the physically based technical criteria adopted here. Institutional characteristics, social capital, community engagement, and adaptive capacity have been found to be of key significance for the resilience of SESs and transformations in urban water management (Walker and Salt 2006, Brown 2008, Shandas and Messer 2008, Collier et al 2013, Rijke et al 2013. Because these characteristics are not readily assessed from outputs of the DSS, further development of the methods for assessing the STC indicator should investigate their deployment in settings other than the application of the DSS.…”