Speakers
Description
Spatial planning today confronts urban and territorial contexts shaped by interconnected global shocks and risks, collectively described as a "polycrisis" (WEF, 2023). Rapid urbanization, climate change, escalating resource demands, and increasing uncertainty and complexity, affect urban and metropolitan settlements. Urban areas play a critical role in both adaptation and mitigation (IPCC, 2023), accounting for two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, making them both drivers of and vulnerable to climate-related effects such as heatwaves, floods, and biodiversity loss (UCCRN, 2018; UN-Habitat, 2022).
While international agreements such as COP28 have emphasized a transition away from fossil fuels, climate adaptation also requires transformative changes in spatial planning. This involves integrating resilience into planning (Brunetta and Caldarice, 2019), along with a broader rethinking of growth-centric development models to promote multidimensional well-being frameworks.
Our research, developed within the framework of the RETURN Extended Partnership, explores the concepts of urban and transformative resilience (Meerow et al., 2016; Giovannini et al., 2020), emphasizing the ability of urban systems to maintain essential functions while continuously learning and evolving to enhance their capacity to respond to future shocks. To advance this vision while considering the absence of standardized frameworks for assessing urban resilience, this study aims to develop a comprehensive set of progress indicators to evaluate the resilience capacity of territories in an integrated and spatially explicit way.
Through a systematic literature review and empirical application, this research explores the multidimensional nature of urban resilience – encompassing built, environmental, social, economic, and institutional dimensions – and underscores the need for a holistic approach to inform urban design and planning in assessing and enhancing urban resilience. The study begins with analyzing existing literature on urban resilience measurement, utilizing a keyword-based search in the Scopus database. This process resulted in a catalogue of selected progress indicators, designed as a flexible tool to assess resilience at various scales – particularly from urban to district levels – and to support monitoring, scenario evaluation, and policy design.
Key findings highlight the challenge of measuring resilience due to the lack of universally accepted definitions and metrics. Traditional approaches often focus on specific risks or urban components, leading to incomplete assessments (Rus et al., 2018). To address these gaps, this research proposes a multidimensional framework that facilitates more comprehensive evaluations. The indicator set was significantly refined to produce a definitive version, addressing underrepresented topics and gaps. This refinement also considered criteria such as spatialisation (particularly in GIS environments), applicability at the district scale, and data availability to ensure its effectiveness across diverse territorial contexts.
The framework’s practical application, tested within the city of Turin (Italy), facilitated the evaluation of resilience capacity in response to risks such as flooding, air pollution, and urban heat island effects. This process involved interpreting the current state of resilience and identifying potential transformation scenarios to guide urban-scale policy development.
The research findings emphasize the importance of tailoring resilience assessments to local contexts while ensuring transferability across different scales. This study advocates for a shift in the foundational assumptions of spatial planning – from reactive, recovery-based responses to proactive, resilience-oriented strategies. By bridging the gap between theoretical foundations and practical application, the research contributes to a deeper understanding of urban resilience and provides valuable tools for planning processes. Ultimately, the study underscores the necessity of aligning spatial planning with emerging paradigms, such as post-growth models, to achieve multidimensional well-being and equitable development.
This study was carried out within the RETURN Extended Partnership and received funding from the European Union Next-GenerationEU (National Recovery and Resilience Plan–NRRP, Mission 4, Component 2, Investment 1.3–D.D. 1243 2/8/2022, PE0000005) – SPOKE TS 1.
References
Brunetta, G., and Caldarice, O. (2019) Putting Resilience into Practice. The spatial planning Response to Urban Risks. In Brunetta, G., Caldarice, O., Tollin, N., Rosas-Casals, M., and Morató, J. (eds.) Urban Resilience for Risk and Adaptation Governance: Theory and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 27-41.
Giovannini, E., Benczur, P., Campolongo, F., Cariboni, J., and Manca, A. (2020) Time for Transformative Resilience: The COVID-19 Emergency. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
IPCC (2023) Synthesis report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), Summary for Policymakers. [Online] available at: https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf
Meerow, S., Newell, J P., and Stults, M. (2016) Defining urban resilience: A review. Landscape and Urban Planning, 147, pp. 38-49.
Rus, K., Kilar, V., and Koren, D. (2018) Resilience assessment of complex urban systems to natural disasters: A new literature review. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, (31), pp. 311-331.
UCCRN (2018) The Future we don’t want. How Climate Change Could Impact the World’s Greatest Cities, Technical Report. [Online] available at: https://www.c40.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1789_Future_We_Dont_Want_Report_1.4_hi-res_120618.original-compressed.pdf
UN-Habitat (2022) Urban Planning Law for Climate Smart Cities: Urban Law Module Law and Climate Change Toolkit. Nairobi: United Nations Human Settlements Programme.
WEF (2023) Global Risks Report. [Online] available at: https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risks_Report_2023.pdf
| Keywords | Urban resilience; adaptive capacity; progress indicators; transformative resilience; spatial planning |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
