In cities of the global south, resilience is the only way forward

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Urban resilience is an emerging framework that can rally different sectors, among them disaster preparedness and response, humanitarian action, urban planning, and climate change mitigation, to work toward building safer and more sustainable cities.

It views cities as complex systems composed of interconnected components — housing, water, health care or power — that each play a role in maintaining a well-functioning whole. By using a systems approach, stakeholders can better understand and anticipate the consequences that one type shock or stressor could have on different parts of the system.

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UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Tool, which the agency uses when working in partnership with cities, is one of the most comprehensive of these frameworks. It uses a phased approach to collect data on risks and hazards, identify relevant stakeholders, and map various urban systems, before providing a set of recommendations for cities to implement.

“We basically do an MRI of an urban system, and provide the city with a diagnosis,” said Esteban Leon, head of the Urban Resilience Profiling Programme at UN-Habitat.