The allure of an urban vision

But what is urban resilience? The term “urban” refers to the city; a place where a critical mass of people have come together to live and work in close quarters, sharing resources, and finding, if at times ephemerally, a sense of community with one another. “Resilience” means the act of rebounding; the ability to succumb to stress, to break and to fracture, only to emerge in a stronger, better form, like a phoenix rising from the ashes or a reed that bends in the storm.

Put the words together and what appears is an idea of a place that is both a human settlement and a force of nature. The City Resilient is an alluring vision for 21^st century urbanism. It speaks of strength and survival. It speaks of longevity and legacy. It speaks of vitality and victory in the face of adversity. But here’s the catch: Though it’s true that an individual person can be resilient, urban resilience is a concept that can only succeed at the scale of the collective. And from the individual point of view, the vision might not be quite as idyllic as we first imagined.
 

The circle of life

The phoenix is a mythological bird that goes up in flames when its time has come, only to be reborn again from the ashes. In the real world, there are no such birds. Instead, there are plants and trees that have come to rely on periodic fires in order to release nutrients, hatch their seeds, or access sunlight. From the point of view of the individual tree, wildfires may seem incredibly destructive. But the collective ecosystem still needs them in order to survive.

It’s a grim example, I know, and perhaps a bit extreme. Still, it goes to illustrate an important point, which is that in any living system, old components must sometimes perish for new ones to flourish. In nature, this process occurs entirely organically. But what happens when the components are controlled not by the environment, but by conscious human beings? By people who have a sense of free will, and the choice to either start the fires, or put them out (figuratively speaking, of course).
 

Personal experiences of urban resilience

Imagine that, instead of a tree it was your business, and instead of a fire it was a closure, and instead of the seeds hatching, it was your children prospering. Would you close your business if your children’s wellbeing depended on it? What of your neighbour’s children? This is not an abstract moral dilemma. Across the world, there are thousands of businesses that do little to contribute to the collective resilience of our cities, let alone our planet. But maybe you don’t own a business. Maybe you just drive a car. Or fell trees that overshadow your garden. Or build towers where the city needs a park. Or object to residential construction amidst a housing crisis. When the wellbeing of the collective is at stake, what then, are you personally prepared to sacrifice for the City Resilient?

Ultimately, this is not a choice we get to make. In recent decades it has become very clear that there are stark planetary boundaries around our options, an ozone ceiling above our ambitions. In order to create truly resilient cities, we must ourselves become resilient, allowing old systems and mindsets to crumble so we can build new, better ones. In this transition, there are three important aspects to remember.