Resilience-Oriented Urban Planning

The concept of resilience is increasingly used in scientific and political discourses on sustainable urban development and urban disaster risk reduction. It has its roots in disciplines such as physics, psychology and ecology and is a relatively new concept in the field of urban planning. This chapter aims to explore the implications of integrating resilience thinking into urban planning. It introduces the concept of resilience-oriented urban planning and discusses how it is distinct from conventional urban planning. Extending the theory of adaptive cycle, it is argued that urban planning should not be considered as a static process. Urban systems are dynamic entities characterized by non-equilibrium dynamics and constantly go through the four phases of ‘exploitation’, ‘conservation’, ‘release’, and ‘reorganization’. Resilience-oriented planning is needed to address dynamics and complexities of urban systems. This chapter provides discussions on paradigm shifts that are needed to integrate resilience thinking into urban planning. These paradigm shifts are discussed in the context of different planning themes, namely, strategy making and visioning, public participation, equity and empowerment, learning from traditional local knowledge, institutional reforms, social networks, sectoral and spatio-temporal dynamics, land use planning, and urban infrastructure. The chapter concludes with some discussions on how these paradigm shifts contribute to integrating principles that underpin the concept of resilience into urban planning and design.