Crisis response journal, vol 6, issue 4: urban risk - Safer cities
This issue focuses on urban resilience and looks at recent occurrences of weather-related events causing widespread devastation and misery, including floods, typhoons and wildfires in Australia, severe winter weather in Colombia, snowstorms in Estonia and Scotland, hundreds of people and thousands of buildings lost to flash floods and mudslides in Brazil, massive rainfall and floods in dozens of other countries, among others.
The issue calls for resilience and preparedness to be a state of mind - whatever the type of event – and for everyone to be involved, from individuals, through corporate and organisational sectors, to local, national and international governments. As Helena Molin Valdes says on page 43: "We have to convince construction companies, developers and contractors; we need to show education ministries and the financial budgeting offices of countries and cities the benefits of investing in safer physical and social development."
It asserts that urban resilience is about more than natural disasters, as man-made incidents also cause pain, grief and material losses, and are equally relevant when planning urban safety. The issue also looks at the industrial accident that saw a river of toxic sludge raging through villages in Hungary.