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Are you interested in whether a resilient community is a sustainable one?

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Our summary today works with the article titled A discussion of resilience and sustainability: Land use planning recover from the Canterbury earthquake sequence, New Zealand from 2015 by W.S.A. Saunders and J.S. Becker, published in the International Journal of Disaster Rick Reduction. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how sustainability and resilience are used within land use planning and natural hazard context. This article presents that a resilient community also needs to be sustainable partly for legislation, but also to ensure that the economic, social, cultural and environmental needs of future generations are met.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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The term resilience is increasingly being used in a multitude of contexts, from physical, psychological, ecological, social, and urban, and at all levels between community and the individual. Resilience planning is also used in land use planning, often interchangeably with sustainability. However, it is still not clear what resilience actually means for land use planning, and what the relationship is between sustainability and resilience. This article wants to stimulate discussion on these issues and provide examples of their use in land use recovery context after the earthquakes in Canterbury, New Zealand.

Unfortunately, sustainable development has many definitions and the critiques usually say that those definitions are too vague, thus the reconciliation among the different sustainability dimensions are elusive. Often, economic considerations override the social, economic and cultural aspects. Since 2014, sustainability has been supplemented with the need to manage natural hazards and recover from those risks. Sustainable recovery from a natural hazard event ensures that existing risks are reduced and any new are managed. The term holistic disaster recovery is used within the context of sustainable redevelopment – where sustainability principles are incorporated into the redevelopment of an area.

Meanwhile, resilience has become popular as individuals and communities are seeking to become resilient to adversities such as natural disasters. Resilience can also mean many different things, and it is questionable whether resilience should include sustainability. In the past resilience was often described as the ability to bounce back after a disaster. Recent literature suggests that resilience is not just this bouncing back, but also the adaptive capacity held by individuals or communities. This adaptive capacity means that individuals, communities and institutions are able to readily adapt to adverse circumstances when dealing with the impact of a disaster. After the shock, they not just bounce back to their original state, but evolve to deal with the changing circumstances.

Land use planning can be one of the measures contributing to resilience. It is important to involve citizens in the land use planning process and to create plans with risk reduction policies that can be implemented and evaluated. Risk-based approaches are increasingly common in land use planning. When the community is involved, risk-based planning provides a decision-making framework that is robust, transparent, and acceptable.

Resilience can appear in two timeframes after a disaster happens. The first is a short term when people need to survive the shock and face the challenges with resilience. The second is the recovery period stretching probably over years when resilience and sustainability becomes intertwined as people seek to recover their communities to become more resilient – meaning more adaptable to future adverse events – and also more sustainable – meaning ensuring future generations can survive and thrive – over the longer term. However, if disasters follow each other, the short term resilience aspects may not address the hazards effectively and longer term efforts are needed. For example, if earthquakes frequently happen on one particular land, the best short term answer – building back the houses – might not be the best solution, instead, rezoning that land for the long term can solve the issue better.

So must a resilient community be sustainable, and vice versa? Based on the definitions, resilience and sustainability are interlinked. Sustainable communities need to be resilient at least to natural hazards, but the opposite, that resilient communities need to be sustainable is not clear. Sustainability and resilience both have the ultimate aim of developing strong communities and creating places that are enjoyable and safe to live in over time. The differences between resilience and sustainability become most evident where recovery from a disaster is elongated, where communities get hit by multiple events or recovery is long and hard. In such contexts, short term resilience can lead to unsustainable practices in the long term, and more strategic overview on resilience and sustainability is required.

The authors, however, conclude, the a resilient community also need to be sustainable based on two reasons. The NZ legislative environment requires it, but more importantly, resilience and sustainability is crucial to ensure the needs of future generations are met. The ability to recover from an event, and in the process improve sustainable practises and adaptive capacity is a positive outcome for communities. In Christchurch, the first earthquake in 2011 was followed by quick recovery efforts. Only after the second earthquake in 2012 people realised that this short term view of resilience was in fact not sustainable. Far more visionary land use planning solutions were required to achieve long term sustainability and greater resilience. Christchurch provides examples of resilient and sustainable redevelopment during recovery process.

In order to be fully resilient and sustainable, a community also needs to incorporate other measures to accompany land use initiatives such as providing engineering solutions for foundations. Another important contributor to resilience is ensuring that communities are engaged and empowered to take part in the land use planning process so that they can effectively contribute to reducing their own risks before and after a disaster. Given that resilience and sustainability are so interlinked, a wider recognition of the variety of factors that contribute to resilience would be useful. A number of personal, community and institutions processes affect resilience, with planning being a key, but often overlooked element. Recognising and accounting for a wider array of resilient factors may bring resilience closer to the concept of sustainability, and as a consequence, the goals of sustainability and resilience may become more closely aligned.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. A sustainable community needs resilience by definition to be able to bounce back from natural hazards and disasters.
2. Another important contributor to resilience is ensuring that communities are engaged and empowered to take part in the land use planning process so that they can effectively contribute to reducing their own risks before and after a disaster.
3. Recognising and accounting for a wider array of resilient factors may bring resilience closer to the concept of sustainability, and as a consequence, the goals of sustainability and resilience may become more closely aligned.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. How resilient is your community to natural disasters?
2. How much is this resilience contributing to the sustainability of your community?
3. How resilient and sustainable would be your community in disasters which closely follow each other?
4. How could you help increase your community’s resilience and sustainability?

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