Resilience, Intensification and Sustainable Cities

Image via WikipediaCities in search of resilience (Phil McDermott, Cities Matter, Feb. 3, 2011)

Also discussed here: What kind of Cities do we Want, Sustainable, Liveable or Resilient? (Owen McShane, newgeography, Mar. 12, 2011)

Today’s review comes from Auckland, New Zealand, just after its major earthquake and the earthquake and tsunami which affected much of northern Japan. Both events had major destructive impacts on cities in these countries despite advanced disaster preparativeness. One thinks of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or the prospects for earthquake-prone Vancouver, at the top of most lists of sustainable cities. Or, how often high population densities in urban cores are associated with high and increasing levels of traffic congestion and pollution. Despite the many economic and environmental benefits, there are several cautions that need to be considered when urban planners try to make their cities more compact, especially as climate change raises the risk and intensity of more natural disasters in the future.

Key Quotes:

“Natural disturbances, whether geophysical (tsunami, earthquakes, mudslides) or climatic (flooding, hurricane strength winds, tidal surges), become disasters if they strike heavily populated centres”

Reasons to question urban compactness:

• “It relies on sophisticated, centralised interdependent systems of services..greater capacity for disruption when any one part fails.
• Poorly designed intensification reduces permeable surfaces, intensifying flood impacts.
• Converting brownfield and even greenfield sites to housing or mixed use reduces the safety valve of open space
• Crowding more people into smaller spaces around constrained road capacity reduces prospects for rapid evacuation
• Lifting the density of buildings increases the consequential impacts of severe events by such things as the collapse of structures, the spread of fire, and the transmission of disease.
• Mixing uses increases the risk of injury and destruction when people live close to premises where hazardous and flammable goods may be stored.
• Reducing the space available reduces the capacity of people to fend for themselves, particularly if the consequences of a disruptive event are prolonged”

“smaller centres, within, on, or beyond the edges of large cities, with a full range of services and amenities and a high level of self sufficiency are likely to offer more resilience to communities than centralised, hierarchical and interdependent services stretched over the entire city”

“Traditional suburbs, perhaps scaled down, will have their place, providing private and public spaces to nurture families and nature. High density suburbs with extensive parks, green belts, and generous transport corridors are another option”

“the risk of disasters in our cities being compounded by crowding and mean design calls for putting resilience into the urban design equation”

Related articles

• Cardiff employees say capital let down by bad transport (bbc.co.uk)
• Taking Nature to the City (dirt.asla.org)
• US earthquake resilience needs strengthening, says new report (physorg.com)
• The Race to Build the Smartest Cities (blogs.cisco.com)
• Int'l science organization to conduct needs assessment for disaster preparedness (sorsogoncity.wordpress.com)
• Cities and the Global Water Crisis | Sustainable Cities Collective Audio (thegreenskeptic.com)
• US earthquake resilience needs strengthening (scienceblog.com)
• "Disasters and Resilience: Clean Energy Can Save Us" and related posts (itsgettinghotinhere.org)