Expert of the Week   for  03 - 09 Aug 2015

Dear Dave, thanksfor your question.

You raised an interesting point that I've beenthinking lately. In my perception, authorities see the two sciences going alongwhen we talk about disaster risk reduction through resilience and urbanplanning. Disaster risk reduction or DRR, is often perceived by authorities ascorrecting and adapting systems to be prepared for disasters while urbanplanning is developing cities social and economically. But the these twooverlap, or at least they should, in how better plan cities to avoid and reducedisaster risk in the first place. This separation is identified in five differentaspects where collaboration planning strategies can play an important role ofmerging process. First, DRR initiative and urban planning often have differenttimeframes that may put them out of sync compared to the time required forchanges in the city to take place. Second, the lack of scenarios definition forplanning DRR initiative put them in a position of being steer by circumstancesinstead of creating alignment with urban planning. Third, the departments’structure silos logic of many municipalities makes it more difficult toincorporate resilience strategies or DRR initiatives into urban planning thatby definition are cross sector agendas. Fourth, DRR and urban resilience arerelatively new compared to urban planning. Their legal frameworks need to be rewrittensometimes to consider one another. Last but not least, engaging stakeholders isa challenging process that requires anenvironment of sharing and trust to reinforcetheinterdependencecharacteristic of DRR, resilience and urban planning.

Regarding your second question, it is hard tojustify large investments when you can't easily measure the outcomes whether itis financially/socially (experts measurements) or visually (society control)even though current scenario points to authorities more willing to incorporateresilience into urban planning due to the global pressure to push theresilience agenda forward. Not having my street flooding anymoreis a good result that if it is not connected to the investment doneit may be buried together with the draining system. Today I see communitiesmore aware of this connections accepting and demanding investments in areaswhere results are often invisible. We're still far from the ideal but itauthorities perceptions are making the shift from cost to long-term  investments.

Dear Ms. Hilary, thank you for your question.

You raised an interesting question becauseputtingthe vulnerable not only, as you asked, in the center of planning anddevelopment design but engaging them in these processes isquite challenging.

As a city member of the 100 resilient cities initiatives,we had the opportunity to know different examples of municipal governments whohave been successful on engaging vulnerable populations in resilience planning,where the human safety was the primary planning priority.

There are two examples that goes this way,one is the city of Porto Alegre who experiencing human-centric andterritorial perspectives on designing initiatives for improvingresilience, and the other one is the city of Christchurch in New Zealand hitby a massive earthquake. The city recovered much stronger by puttingcommunities affected at the heart of their planning efforts.

The city of Porto Alegre is well knowfor its ability of engage citizens, most of them vulnerable, forparticipating in the city budget expenditure planning but has been weak inthe ability to collaborate with them on building solutions together. The cityhoped that bringing communities to higher levels of engagement, especially withvulnerable groups, would improve decisions and solutions. Within the 100resilient cities initiative Porto Alegre is getting promising resultsengaging local leaders in the resilience strategy development, putting forwardinitiatives designed by their communities and giving support onthree pillars: capacity building, information access and networking.This strategy is allowing the city to incorporate small and importantvulnerable perspectives not usually considered in city planning. 

When the city of Christchurch was hitby a sequence of earthquakes, it produced a devastating effect. Many commercialbuildings, schools, hospitals and a large number of homes were affected. Yet,the city was able to re-established essential functions andbounce-back rapidly by developing a resilience plan through a grassrootsparticipatory planning process that bound communities together and helpedthe city social and economically recover making Christchurch liveable again.