Urban design for crisis
Introduction
Urban resilience is the capacity that cities have to recover and overcome impacts and extreme situations. Ultimately, it is about preventing and anticipating the impact of the negative effects of certain situations, making recovery easier to guarantee quality of life in cities.[1].
Concept
Urban resilience is the ability of cities to prevent, reduce or minimize the consequences of a negative impact of exceptional characteristics and to recover as soon as possible.
The resilient city is one that analyzes, plans, reduces risks and acts to respond to all types of obstacles, whether sudden, expected or unexpected.
Cities, being one of the largest human settlements, receive impacts that affect their functioning to a greater or lesser extent. How they emerge from these impacts depends on their ability to adapt and overcome.
The situations that cities go through can be considered of small impact (a power outage, water supply outage, a transport strike, etc.) or high impact (floods, storms, earthquakes, etc.) when the disaster entails the loss of human life. The consequences of each crisis depend on the city's degree of preparation.[2].
According to United Nations data, 50% of the population lives in cities, and this is expected to reach 70% by 2050. It is therefore necessary to establish new tools and approaches that allow local governments and citizens to increase their capacity to face new impacts, to improve the lives of all people, their goods and their natural resources. Due to the increase in population and risks, the concept of resilience is present in international development agendas.[3].
Urban resilience is a living process, in continuous evolution that requires constant review and updating of the situation of cities.
Resilient cities
UN-HABITAT
Globally, cities are preparing to become resilient and be able to protect their inhabitants, their assets and maintain functionality in the face of crises.
The UN considers it vitally important for sustainable urban development that facilitates life with minimum quality standards to promote its own program worldwide.