Urban resilience for building a sustainable and safe environment

Abstract

Urban areas are the foundation of modern economies worldwide and act as hubs for population and investments. The increasing importance of urban areas coincides with a rise of complex social and natural threats. Urban resilience has been an emerging concept for the last decade. The term has been widely accepted and used but that still faces a lack of consensus on its meaning and implications to policy and governance. This perspective article offers perspectives and conception of urban resilience, portrayed as a dynamic process that benefits from an interdisciplinary perspective and multi-stakeholder partnerships, and how it can help urban areas to prepare and adapt to absorb and recover from external and internal disturbances and reduce urban vulnerabilities with policies and governance.

Keywords

• Urban resilience
• Urban adaptation
• Urban governance
• Networks