COVID-19 is shifting the focus from smart cities to resilient cities
Source: Cities Today Published: October 26th, 2020
While COVID-19 has knocked the world sideways, 2020 has also witnessed parallel and compounding crises, including social unrest through the Black Lives Matter protests; intense climate events with heatwaves, hurricanes and wildfires, and the unfurling economic shocks following the pandemic.
This perfect storm looks set to be a pivotal moment in changing attitudes to resilience, with a clear focus on learning lessons to strengthen communities against future shocks and stresses – whether economic, social or environmental.
“Having this constant, high level of shocks and stresses together has really brought home to people that you’ve got to bring that multiple benefit approach into the present,” says Lauren Sorkin, Executive Director at the Resilient Cities Network (RCN), which is the organisation that evolved out of the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) network.
A refocus on resilience
One lesson that cities had already learned in terms of building resilience is the need to appoint leadership which can break down silos within local government. Chief Resilience Officers (CROs) are at the forefront of this. Launched and funded as part of the 100RC programme, one of the key roles for city CROs has been to communicate and collaborate across different departments. This is essential to build a coherent strategy which can help cities face up to the challenges posed by climate change, health crises or an economic downturn.
The ability to bring multiple strands together is where CROs excel because they “understand people in a different way and they understand the integration between the challenges that the city might face,” Sorkin says.
The advent of COVID-19 has seen CROs receive greater support in terms of funding, staff resources and proximity to the mayor. A survey by the Resilient Cities Network, run with Dalberg Advisors, found that 87 percent of Chief Resilience Officers are involved in their city’s COVID-19 response or recovery effort.
“When city leaders need to make decisions, they want to make sure that they are purposefully building for a resilient future and so they’re calling on their CROs for their advice and analysis,” Sorkin says.
Despite severe budget challenges globally, cities such as London and Tel Aviv, have set up dedicated resilience funds following COVID-19. Several cities have now pledged to recruit a CRO, including Austin, Texas, and a number of states in the US and regions elsewhere are developing legislation to create resilience officer roles or take on resilience responsibilities. The issue is going up the agenda in fast-growing cities in emerging markets too, as well as at the national policy level. India’s Ministry for Housing and Urban Affairs, for example, recently launched the Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework, which aims to provide a clear roadmap for cities towards combating climate change.
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Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash