Resilient cities in times of crisis: The UN's Ten Essentials through a change management lens
Cities do not become resilient simply by adopting stronger building codes, improving emergency plans or investing in infrastructure. These measures are important, but resilience also depends on how governments, institutions, communities and service providers make decisions, coordinate resources, prepare for disruption and sustain improvements over time.
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient provide a framework for strengthening urban resilience. They cover governance, risk understanding, financing, urban development, ecosystems, institutional and societal capacity, infrastructure, disaster response and recovery. Developed to support implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Ten Essentials also underpin UNDRR's Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities.
The Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) Standard for Change Management® offers a complementary perspective. It does not replace the Ten Essentials or provide technical guidance on disaster risk management. Instead, it provides a structured approach for evaluating, planning, implementing and sustaining change.
Together, these frameworks address two related questions: what cities need to strengthen and how they can manage the changes needed to achieve lasting resilience.
Cities are systems
A city is a system of interconnected systems. Government, infrastructure, health services, housing, transport, communications, the environment, businesses and communities continually influence one another.
For this reason, the Ten Essentials should not be viewed as separate projects or sequential stages of implementation. Each Essential can draw on the five process groups defined in the ACMP Standard (evaluating change impact and readiness, formulating the change management strategy, developing the change management plan, executing the plan, and closing the change effort) through processes such as developing a stakeholder engagement plan, developing a communication strategy, conducting a change risk assessment, and many more, while each process can support several Essentials simultaneously.
Viewing resilience in this way encourages cities to take an integrated approach rather than addressing individual priorities in isolation.
Understanding readiness for change
Building resilience often requires cities to adopt new ways of working.
Assessing change impacts and cities’ readiness involves understanding how new policies, investments, technologies, responsibilities and public expectations affect institutions and whether they have the capacity, culture and leadership needed to adapt successfully.
For example, strengthening infrastructure resilience may require changes to procurement processes and engineering standards. Improving societal resilience may require new approaches to engaging communities and building trust.
From strategy to implementation
A change management strategy establishes how resilience efforts will be governed, coordinated, financed and monitored.
It also helps ensure that the Ten Essentials reinforce one another rather than compete for limited resources.
For example, resilient infrastructure depends on adequate financing. Effective emergency response relies on strong institutions and community capacity. Recovery planning is closely linked to governance and land-use planning.
Developing a change management plan translates this strategy into coordinated action by identifying responsibilities, timelines, dependencies and measures of success.
Different aspects of resilience may require separate implementation plans—for infrastructure, emergency response or recovery—but they should share consistent leadership, communication and coordination.
Turning plans into practice
Implementation is where resilience moves from planning to action.
This includes deploying resources, engaging communities, managing resistance to change and monitoring progress.
Maintaining momentum can be particularly challenging because resilience initiatives often extend across political cycles, government departments and different levels of administration. They may also need to continue while responding to an actual emergency.
The ACMP Standard recognizes that change is iterative rather than linear. Plans should therefore be reviewed and adapted as circumstances evolve.
Building resilience as a continuous process
UNDRR describes the Ten Essentials as an interconnected framework for building and maintaining urban resilience. Similarly, the Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) Resilience Roadmap presents resilience as a continuous journey rather than a one-time achievement.
Change management complements this approach by helping cities move from recognizing the need for change to building readiness, developing an integrated strategy, implementing coordinated action and sustaining institutional capacity over time.
Infrastructure requires ongoing maintenance. Capabilities need to be exercised regularly. Institutional knowledge must be retained despite changes in personnel.
Without continued attention, resilience gains can gradually be lost.
Consider Brightshore, a fictional coastal city facing worsening flooding. The city’s leadership applies the ACMP Standard's five process groups across the relevant Essentials. Evaluating change impact and readiness (Essential 3, financing; Essential 8, infrastructure) means understanding which residents and utilities are affected, and whether exposed communities trust the city enough to support relocating critical assets.
Formulating the strategy (Essential 1, governance) means agreeing, before storm season, who speaks for the city when flooding hits, and aligning that message in advance. The change management plan then turns this into a stakeholder engagement plan and joint training so public works and emergency responders share one playbook (Essential 9). Execution means adjusting outreach where resistance appears; closing the effort (the step most often skipped) means transferring ownership of the new protocols to public works and documenting what worked, so lessons outlast the staff who learned them.
Lasting resilience requires lasting change
The ACMP Standard does not introduce another model for urban resilience. Rather, it offers an approach for managing the human side of the changes needed to implement the Ten Essentials effectively.
Resilient cities are not created through a single project or investment. They are built through an ongoing process of coordinated change that enables institutions and communities to withstand crises, maintain essential services, recover effectively and continue improving over time.
The Ten Essentials define the scope of that challenge. Change management helps translate those ambitions into sustained action.
Dr. Alan Bostakian is Director of Profession at ACMP, where he leads credentialing programs, recognition of education programs, the Standard for Change Management, and the content strategy. He holds a PhD in Management and is a Master Change Management Professional (MCMP) and a CCMP. Alan is also certified in ISO 22361 Crisis Management and has completed executive education in public leadership at Harvard University (under the instruction of a former US Pentagon Chief of Staff and former US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security), along with advanced studies from institutions including MIT (Leading Change), Stanford (Project Management Mastery), Cambridge (Supply Chain), Columbia (Crisis Resource Management), and Johns Hopkins University (Data Science). Additionally, he has received master-level training in high-pressure leadership and decision-making from a U.S. Navy SEAL program.
He brings extensive experience across the public and private sectors, including senior roles with the Government of Ontario, the City of Toronto, major financial institutions, and nonprofit organizations. During the COVID-19 crisis, he served as a senior change management lead for a major government initiative for one of the most important mandates of crisis management (provincial-wide supply chain of Personal Protective Equipment such as masks, respirators, gloves, gowns, and eye protection), guiding transformation across multiple ministries during a major crisis and in a high-stakes and disruptive environment.
Alan is the author of two books: Change Excellence Officer and the Crisis–Reconstruction-Change, and has published articles on both change management and crisis management. In the last 3 years, he has also served as a change management advisor (volunteer) for two national-level crisis management plans as part of nonprofit initiatives. He is also a Certified Human Rights Consultant, trained by a human rights leader who has been awarded by two US Presidents. Alan has been a recipient of the annual Victim Services Award of Distinction from the Ministry of the Attorney General (Ontario, Canada), recognizing his contributions in critical situations. Alan is also a member of the Project, Program and Portfolio Management committee of the Standards Council of Canada (a federal organization).