Here are some of the most useful and interesting pieces of resilience news from the past two weeks. If we missed anything exciting, please call it out in the comments.
Community Is the Secret to Urban Resilience
Both 100 Resilient Cities President Michael Berkowitz and Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel gave interviews and were quoted emphasizing the importance of people and community for urban resilience.
Speaking about the experiences of cities that have faced challenging tests recently and the qualities that predispose a city to resilience, Berkowitz said, “We see a key differentiator is community cohesion…Communities that are cohesive in that way always rebound better or are more resilient." Mayor Dalziel elaborated on the same theme explaining the importance of community and people on the road to a stronger Christchurch as it continues to recover from two earthquakes that struck the New Zealand in 2010 and 2011. “[After the quakes,] local communities really found that they had this extraordinary sense of competence that perhaps they didn’t realize that they had,” she commented. “For me, resilience is about people.”
Read President Berkowitz’s and Mayor Dalziel’s comments.
Airbnb Partners with San Francisco and Portland to Get into the Resilience Game
After the significant role it played in supporting Hurricane Sandy relief efforts by helping those displaced by the storm, Airbnb is ready to take its disaster relief capacity to help other cities prepare. The online marketplace that enables people to rent out home to short-term guests is offering the lessons it learned to help the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management and the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management.
Representatives from Portland, San Francisco, and Airbnb visited the White House as part of the Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Initiative Demo Day. They established a partnership that provides the cities with a number of useful tools. San Francisco shared its hazard layer with Airbnb so the latter can provide more information to hosts. Both cities are now able to send special messaging to Airbnb hosts via the website’s messaging infrastructure. There are plans to export this model to other cities once the details have been worked out and tested.
Read the full text of the agreement and Airbnb's plans.
The Changing Landscape of Man-Made Earthquakes
Citylab examines how man-made earthquakes are changing the seismic landscape, shifting our understanding of where we should look for the next big seismic event. “The deep disposal of wastewater from fracking that incites” the newest wave of seismic events has turned things on their head. For example, "People are starting to compare Oklahoma to California in terms of the rate of magnitude-threes and larger," said Robert Williams, a geophysicist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Human activities are releasing wastewater that is lubricating faults, increasing the risk of a major seismic event in central Oklahoma and elsewhere.
Read more and view a map of manmade ‘quakes.
What to Do with Smart Tech in Mumbai: “Build a Resilient City”
“Cities are not, thankfully, controlled environments in which problems can be sorted through technological solutions,” argues this piece from the Hindustan Times. Aspiring to apply a more holistic approach to planning and implimenting tech in the smart city,' the author calls for applying the resilience lens in order to integrate smart tech projects with one another and other city improvement projects.
Read “Smart Mumbai? Let’s build a resilient city”
Learning from Christchurch's Approach to Rebuilding
The scale of the damage done by the two major quakes that hit Christchurch, New Zealand nearly in 2010 and 2011 helped prompt the creation of SCIRT (Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team), an innovative, co-operative model to rebuild a more resilient Christchurch. Instead of applying the typical project-bid-award structure to the $NZ 40-billion ($34 billion US) rebuilding project, Christchurch leaders devised SCIRT to put the public-sector owners of the infrastructure at the top, with cooperating engineering firms to manage all the projects happening simultaneously. The model has won accolades from commercial interests, international experts, and public advocates happy with widespread engagement.
Read more about Christchurch’s approach to rebuilding and resilience.
What Is the Connection between Healthy Design and Actual Building Construction?
The Urban Land Institute worked with the American Institute of Architects and McGraw Hill Construction to look at healthy design, construction, and the operation of buildings, evaluating the potential impact of key stakeholders: physicians, construction industry professionals, building owners, and homeowners. Some of the study’s key findings were that: architects and contractors expect use of healthy building strategies to increase in the next two years from what they already call “fairly wide use”; many attributes of healthy communities that are important to homeowners “are not a high priority for architects and homebuilders;” and “physicians are overlooking the connections and advantages of healthy buildings on the public’s health.”
Read the study and ULI’s summary.
A Resident-made Map Transformed a Slum Area in Nairobi
A few grassroots organizations collaborated to train 15 young inhabitants of Kibera, one of the most densely populated, poor, and marginalized settlements around Nairobi, to use special GPS devices to map their previously “invisible” neighborhood. Mapping led to an ad hoc information sharing system, a text messaging system for inhabitants, and provided residents with a forum to exert political pressure on local political systems and eventually to increase their political representation. The project was such a success that it is being exported to other areas of Nairobi.
Read the full project report from Sustainable Cities Collective.
Have a piece of urban resilience news we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments.
Head Photo: Ajay Matthew, Flickr