What Can We Learn from Urban Crisis?

Kristian Hoelscher,Hanne Cecilie Geirbo,Sobah Abbas Petersen,Lisbet Harboe

doi:10.3390/su14020898

Abstract

The irreversible transition towards urban living entails complex challenges and vulnerabilities for citizens, civic authorities, and the management of global commons. Many cities remain beset by political, infrastructural, social, or economic fragility, with crisis arguably becoming an increasingly present condition of urban life. While acknowledging the intense vulnerabilities that cities can face, this article contends that innovative, flexible, and often ground-breaking policies, practices, and activities designed to manage and overcome fragility can emerge in cities beset by crisis. We argue that a deeper understanding of such practices and the knowledge emerging from contexts of urban crisis may offer important insights to support urban resilience and sustainable development. We outline a simple conceptual representation of the interrelationships between urban crisis and knowledge production, situate this in the context of literature on resilience, sustainability, and crisis, and present illustrative examples of real-world practices. In discussing these perspectives, we reflect on how we may better value, use, and exchange knowledge and practice in order to address current and future urban challenges.

Highlights

The irreversible transition towards urban living entails complex challenges and vulnerabilities for citizens, civic authorities, and the management of global commons
We argue that greater attention should be paid to how the dynamics of urban crisis shape such forms of new knowledge and practices to address vulnerabilities and how these could be integrated and shared to inform broader resilience and sustainability practices
While defined in a range of ways, urban sustainability and urban resilience can be viewed as emphasizing adaptability, flexibility, and the ability to respond to external shocks [49,50,51], and see cities as complex, interlinked and adaptive social, ecological, political, cultural, and economic systems that are prone to vulnerability in the face of new challenges [52,53,54,55]

Summary

Introduction

The irreversible transition towards urban living entails complex challenges and vulnerabilities for citizens, civic authorities, and the management of global commons. This article offers a conceptual reflection with illustrative empirical examples on how urban crisis may shape how knowledge is produced, used, and shared to support urban resilience This perspective is anchored in the idea that crises have the potential to represent periods of reflection and possibility that may necessitate or encourage new or novel practices to contend with social, political, economic, and environmental challenges. As crisis impacts institutions, markets, and urban systems, these contexts are variously characterized by (i) constraints on resources and capacity; (ii) the necessity or urgency of action to address crisis; and (iii) a greater possibility for alternative actions [41] Due to these conditions, established forms of knowledge that may support resilience may be resisted, ineffective, or inadequate to address the challenges at hand [42]. The remainder of this section considers how crisis, sustainability, and resilience shape how we think about urban practice and the extent to which crisis may serve functions of “perpetuating the status quo, or, triggering systemic transformation” [45] (p. 361)

Averting Crisis

Embracing’ Crisis

Urban Crisis and the Production of Knowledge

Discussion

Conclusions