Abstract

This paper analyzes some natural and man-made disasters that happened in recent years, which demonstrate how the resilience of a city does not depend only on the actions carried out by public authorities, but it requires the joint work of all actors that live or work in a city. Resilience represents the ability of an urban system to adapt to an external event and quickly return to normality. In recent years, urban resilience has mainly addressed natural risks, neglecting man-made disaster. Therefore, this study considers the risk issue in relation to the resilience concept within urban planning and policies to achieve sustainability and urban security. Urban resilience has become an important objective for cities, particularly to face climate change. The paper proposes a review of the existing Civil Protection Urban Emergency Plan, as a sector plan to support urban planning at the local level, aimed at building resilience in cities. In particular, the proposed Emergency Plan reduces risk and increases resilience by identifying specific scenarios and actions that every city actor—public authorities, research, enterprises, and citizens—can implement. This proposal contributes to the implementation of the quadruple helix principle, according to which the involvement of these four actors is necessary to achieve a common goal, such as increasing urban resilience. The proposed methodology is then applied to the man-made disasters that have involved the city (such as the flood of 2011 and the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in 2018). Genoa represents a good example to be studied according to the “learning-by-doing” approach to understand how the city has responded, adapting resiliently, to natural and man-made events thanks to the collaboration of all the actors above mentioned. The new scenarios, included in the Urban Emergency Plan, can play a fundamental role, both in the emergency and prevention phase, and can help other cities around the world in planning more resilient cities to face higher risks.

Highlights

  • Climate change is affecting urban centers in several critical ways—droughts, heavy rains, water availability, and increased severe heat events; 70% of cities in the world are already facing the effects of climate change

  • In order to adapt to future challenges, cities must follow the principles of sustainable development and become increasingly resilient

  • Urban resilience has become an important objective for cities [29,30,31,32]

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Summary

Introduction

Cities have a key role to play in the fight against climate change [1,2,3]. They have always been the center of innovation and culture, giving birth to countless ideas and new systems and solutions. According to the United Nations, by 2050 68% of the world population will be living in cities [12]. This means that in the years to come there will be more and more people exposed to risks related to climate change. Many authors have analyzed the links between the concepts of sustainability and resilience to get the best for society and the environment [13,14,15,16]

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