Chapter 2. Bridging Systems and People-Centred Approaches in Urban Vulnerability Research: Insights for Resilience from Dawei, Myanmar by Taylor Martin 1 , Melissa Marschke 1 , Saw Win 2 1 School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada e-mail: tmart015@uottawa.ca; melissa.marschke@uottawa.ca 2 Maubin University, Myanmar e-mail: prfswwin@gmail.com Abstract Dawei, a coastal secondary city in southeastern Myanmar, is poised to face significant social and environmental change. Dawei’s location at the head of the Dawei River estuary, just thirty kilometres from the Andaman Sea and 350 kilometres to the west of Bangkok, has attracted increasing attention from foreign investors. Namely, to develop a Special Economic Zone, build the largest deep-sea port in the region, and connect Dawei by road to the southern economic corridor of mainland Southeast Asia. Little is known about how these developments will affect Dawei, nor how climate change will interact with such changes to shape urban vulnerability. In this chapter we examine how Dawei’s urban systems are exposed to various climatic and non-climatic stresses and investigate how this plays out through people’s everyday livelihoods. Our analysis then turns to how people cope and adapt to social and environmental change, illuminating how social capital and the ways that people relate are fundamental to shaping resilience. We situate this analysis within the larger context of Myanmar’s political and economic transition, highlighting both the challenges that this transition poses to vulnerability and the possibility of shaping a resilient future. Asian cities, where more than half of the planet’s urban population lives, are rapidly urbanizing. This trend will continue. By 2050 Asian cities will have grown by 1.25 billion people, with much of this growth anticipated to take place in secondary cities with a