Briefing: Visions of a resilient city Karol Yanez BEng (Hons), MSc (Hons) PhD Candidate, Development and Urban Planning, University College London (UCL), London, UK Sam Kernaghan BEc (Hons), MEnvMgmt, CPP, MPIA Associate, Arup International Development, Sydney, Australia Cities, particularly in the global south, face numerous challenges in responding to a rapidly growing population. Ensuring the wellbeing of urban dwellers, particularly in the face of known natural hazards and an increasingly unpredictable climate, is leading cities to take resilience-based approaches to meet these challenges. Arup and Engineers Without Borders UK hosted a competition to unearth perspectives from the next generation of urban professionals on what resilient cities might look like. From the top ten shortlisted posters, the key messages emerging were: (a) building urban resilience requires action and systemic change across all four key components of an urban system – infrastructure, institutions, knowledge, and ecosystems; (b) resilient cities are the result of multiple interventions including transport and energy, food security, urban planning and waste management; (c) resilience is not location specific and is distinct from disaster risk reduction; and (d) building resilience is a progressive and evolving process of urban development – more practical examples are needed to help visualise it. 1. Introduction Cities face numerous challenges in responding to a growing urban population including meeting rising demands for housing, food, water, transportation and other infrastructure or services that ensure people’s wellbeing. In the global south the ability of poorer communities to cope is limited by their lack of access to basic infrastructure such as potable water, food, drainage, sanitation and health services, education and employment opportunities (Satterthwaite et al., 2007). For example, the food system in Oaxaca, Mexico suffered from massive disruptions after an El Nin ˜o hurricane in 1990, as soil erosion and changing rainfall patterns challenged the poorest communities to produce or buy food at accessible prices. In cities such as Oaxaca, significant investment will be needed to cope with a wide range of shocks and stresses such as flooding, storms, heat waves, sea level increases, droughts, land erosion, food insecurity and water scarcity. At present investments are usually retrospective, seeking to improve current technological and infrastructural urban systems by learning from past experience, however climate change is not a single external event to which cities can make isolated interventions to adapt. It is an evolving process of change, overlaid on patterns of rapid urbanisation, evolving infra- structure systems and established institutions. Resilience-based action is needed to ensure that cities can perform effectively in the future. This paper provides a vision of what a resilient city might look like by linking theory with practical examples from ten cities around the world. These cities correspond to the ten best submissions from the 2012 Arup and Engineers Without Borders UK competition on resilient cities, which targeted the next generation of built environment professionals emerging from universities across the UK. The posters identified ten different cities, with populations ranging from fewer than 1 million up to 20 million people, including nine cities experiencing rapid population growth from the global south. These include: Oaxaca, Mexico; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Curitiba, Brazil; Edinburgh, UK; Istanbul, Turkey; Lagos, Nigeria; Lusaka, Zambia; Delhi, India; Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Shanghai, China (see Figure 1). The judging panel selected one winning entry, Oaxaca, with one more, Dehli, highly commended. Posters were evaluated based on the quality and completeness of the answers to: What features makes this city resilient and why? How have these features evolved or developed overtime? Who are the main actors involved in the design, implementation and management? 2. What contributes to urban resilience? All shortlisted cities identified climate change-related shocks such as hurricanes and cyclones (Oaxaca, Shanghai, Dhaka) and stresses such as rising sea levels and changing rainfall patterns (Sao Paulo, Curitiba, Delhi and Lusaka); however, it is clear that what contributes to resilience is not only responses directly linked to these events. Instead, resilient actions are manifested in multiple strategies to achieve people’s wellbeing, enable access to services and retain their livelihoods in adverse circumstances; circumstances such as those in Delhi, which showed actions around food security, waste management and urban planning (Figure 2). Resilience-based actions targeted the poorest sectors of cities, such as informal settlements in Urban Design and Planning Volume 167 Issue DP3 Briefing: Visions of a resilient city Yanez and Kernaghan Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers Urban Design and Planning 167 June 2014 Issue DP3 Pages 95–101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1680/udap.13.00013 Paper 1300013 Received 12/06/2013 Accepted 02/08/2013 Published online 20/12/2013 Keywords: developing countries/disaster engineering/ infrastructure planning ice | proceedings ICE Publishing: All rights reserved 95