Page 18 - Asia Speaks

5) URBAN RESILIENCE by Samantha Sonia Rayer
U rban resilience is the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and system within a city to survive, adapt and grow despite chronic stresses or acute shocks it experienced. Cities are the world’s engine for economic growth, contributing more than 80 per cent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Therefore, a resilient city is one that assesses, plan and acts to prepare for and respond to hazards that comes it's the way. Resilience is also about learning to live with the spectrum of risks that exist at the interface between people, the economy, and the environment
(Zolli 2012).
Resilience is a concept that has been used in the field of physics and psychology for ages. In physics resilience indicates the ability for an object to return to its original position after receiving a hit. In psychology, resilience is depict when a person successfully survives a shock or trauma. Resilience was only introduced to the world of ecology in the year 1973 by Holling who described it a measure of the ability of systems to absorb change and disturbance without losing the pre-disturbance relationships
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between their constituent elements. This indicates that urban resilience is still a concept considerably. The rise of resilience took place in May 2014. A conference, Resilience 2014 hosted by Resilience Alliance in Montpellier, France. With over 900 attendees, the diversity of topics presented by researchers were overwhelming.
There are four themes interrelated in the urban resilience research, which are social dynamics, built environment, metabolic flows and governance networks. Social dynamics integrates demographics, human capital and inequity of a city. The built environment is based on ecosystems services in urban landscapes. Thirdly, metabolic flows involve production, supply, and consumption chains of cities. Governance network is based on institutional structures and organization a city has that can help it adapt and grow when faced with disruption.
Any concept that is implied has its own obstacles. Likewise, the most significant obstacle in implementing urban resilience is the financing needed to invest. As an example, the global need for
urban infrastructure amounts to USD 4.5 - 5.4 trillion per year. The lack of government capacity is also an obstacle that comes to play in establishing urban resilience. For example, the inability to generate sufficient revenue to meet existing obligations or to maintain on-going programmes gives an impact on maintaining urban resilience.
The question we must ask ourselves, “Whyisurbanresilienceimportant?” Urban resilience not only prepares for disaster but can also prevent them from happening. Disasters like the recent Rio landslide are only partially the result of natural forces. They are also the result of failed urban planning and development. Secondly, urban resilience can build a diverse economy that can weather economic downturns.
In a nutshell, urban resilience promotes a plurality and diversity of solutions to social-ecological problems implies that urban planning needs to take on-board yet new metaphors and paradigms to further transform cities (Wilkinson 2012). Resilience can reinforce both sustainable and unsustainable developmental pathways.