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View the Metropolitan Scale of Resilience Metropolis Observatory 100 Resilient Cities 03ISSUE PAPER The metropolitan scale of resilience metro polis world association of the major metropolises observatory page 3 Introduction page 4 Metropolitan lenses for resilience goals page 5 Climate change adaptation page 7 Sustainable mobility page 9 Contents Affordable & adequate housing page 10 Public health page 12 Security & social cohesion page 14 Recommendations Introduction Cities stand at the intersection of the major chal- Addressing social division, economic inequity, and lenges of the 21st century. Globalization, climate inadequate transportation, infrastructure, and change, mass migration and rapid urbanization service delivery systems is becoming even more have converged to pose disproportionate pres- urgent to ensure resilience amid the growing un- sures on urban centers. Over 55% of the world’s certainties of the 21st century. population now lives in cities, a number due to rise to 70% by 2050. As today’s cities adapt to Resilience is the capacity of individuals, communi- these challenges, it is estimated that more than ties, institutions, businesses, and systems within 60% of metropolitan regions that will exist in 2050 a city and region to survive, adapt, and grow no have yet to even form. matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience. Resilience requires cities These global pressures affect individuals and sys- and regions to take transformative actions that tems on the local level, in the cities where they make them better, in both the short- and long- live. While presidents and prime ministers must term, and allow them to not only endure, but slowly navigate national and international politics thrive, in both good times and bad. These trans- to reach a consensus on solutions, mayors and formative actions can only arise when cities re- city leaders are already innovating and deploying frame their challenges and opportunities to reflect new ideas, and making the investments that will the dynamics of their entire urban ecosystems. provide tangible benefits for their citizens. With cities leading the conversation and driving the As cities design and implement resilience strat- most impactful solutions, they must recognize the egies, they increasingly understand this and the urgency of planning meaningfully now. need to redefine previously established social, po- litical, functional and geographical borders, as well Often, a city’s most intransigent shocks and as engage with partners and stakeholders that stresses – including flooding, poor mobility, unaf- best align with the scope of the challenge. fordable and inadequate housing, and the conse- quences of climate change - transcend municipal Through case studies from the members that we boundaries and must be examined, explored and share with the 100 Resilient Cities network, this managed at the metropolitan level and through paper seeks to analyze the challenges and op- regional collaborations. portunities of metropolitan-scale planning, and its role in catalyzing resilience objectives. These This is especially true with increasing metropoli- examples show how the governance structures zation, as growing cities evolve into major met- and collaborations that arose across metropolitan ropolitan regions. As cities continue their rapid areas tackle the shocks and stresses experienced urbanization, they are expanding, and growing by cities. We hope, therefore, to contribute to the even more interdependent with their surround- understanding that all cities, big or small, have to ing municipalities, regions, and rural peripheries, look beyond their administrative borders when further entrenching symbiotic relationships with addressing their resilience challenges. them. Traditional boundaries are becoming less fixed and meaningful, and challenges more acute. Octavi de la Varga Metropolis Secretary General 04 metropolis observatory Metropolitan lenses for resilience goals As cities define metropolitan-scale developed ones, their experiences prove objectives to achieve their resilience goals, a constructive guide to cities currently Operating with it is crucial they consider their specific designing their resilience strategies, as well metropolitan conditions, and build on existing strengths as those already beginning implementation. lenses and assets. Many different metropolitan favors the governance models exist. While cities Some challenges most clearly require achievement of can and should take inspiration from one action at the metropolitan scale: the resilience goals another, they must tailor lessons and best impacts of climate change, inadequate and fosters practices to their own concrete needs and transportation, and lack of affordable housing, not only transcend traditional sustainability, capacities. Each city’s particular context municipal boundaries, but efforts to social cohesion gives rise to conditions that shape what kind of metropolitan structure and stakeholder address them reverberate across municipal and quality of coordination can and should be sought. territories and affect shocks and stresses life in the major among neighboring municipalities. In metropolises As observed in the recent ARUP report on other instances, shocks and stresses may “Case Studies in Metropolitan Governance,” not seem to trigger metropolitan scale what most new and more effective solutions, but should. This is the case of models do share is a more collaborative public health management, and security approach, concentrated in networks and and social cohesion concerns, which entities, in contrast to an institutionalized rely both on interventions that address hierarchy. Furthermore, according to the underlying stresses and the operation of OECD, over the past thirty years there has interrelated systems. been a shift from a hierarchy model to a more collaborative one. This allows for Building resilience requires an assessment greater creativity and innovation, and the of a city’s systems and how shocks and formation of strategies that may be more stresses operate on and within them. To organically derived, with a greater chance best address them, cities are creating for success. new partnerships and collaborations. This includes a renewed appraisal of at what scale Across the 100 Resilient Cities network, they should be addressed and with which a core group of members is approaching partners. Some sectors and challenges resilience-building efforts through more naturally require a metropolitan metropolitan institutions, and new scale. Others may not seem to, but do as collaborations with a variety of partners well. Below we describe some examples and stakeholders. From sectoral public of how operating with metropolitan lenses authorities, to informal metropolitan can favor achieving resilience goals, while cabinets, to voluntary associations, to fostering sustainability, social cohesion newly-formed metropolitan planning and quality of life in the major urban bodies, to more integrated and fully- agglomerations of the world. 05 Climate change adaptation > Pollution exposes 70% of Parisians to poor air quality, causes 6,500 premature deaths in the great Paris metropolitan area, and costs up to 1.7 billion € each year to the capital city. Source: 100 Resilient Cities Natural ecosystems rarely adhere to such as the urban heat island effect, and jurisdictional borders, and unless action is poor air quality, designing environmental coordinated through a metropolitan vision, interventions on the appropriate scale and they can rarely be planned for. While this may with the appropriate actors becomes even seem clear now, for many years, climate change more urgent for resilience building. And adaptation was seen as ideally addressed like other resilience-building interventions, at the local level - a consensus on the need which cut across sectors and systems, for a wider, metropolitan, scale is relatively Shi writes that, “in order to make efficient new. In recent years this was most clearly investments that mitigate risk effectively seen in the New York metropolitan area after and increase the resilience of a region, Hurricane Sandy, when three different states, capital planning decisions must address Ecosystems dozens of cities, and several interrelated shared local and regional goals, take into cross systems (electrical, transportation, waste account interdependencies between human jurisdictional management, housing and many others) were and natural systems, and result from a boundaries, not prepared with a coordinated response collaborative process.” and the and had not been developing their resilience individual objectives in collaboration to address joint Ecosystems most often cross jurisdictional regional concerns. boundaries, and the individual actions actions of cities of cities, whether to combat the effects to combat As Lina Shi writes in her dissertation, “A of climate change, or to manage other the effects New Climate for Regionalism: Metropolitan challenges, can also adversely affect the of climate Experiments in Climate Change Adaptation,” natural environment of their neighbors. change may “the local scale is increasingly seen as Unless actions are complementary and also adversely insufficient (to address climate change coordinated, individual actions by parts of adaptation) because it lacks economics of a regional whole may, at best, inefficiently affect the scale, authority over regional infrastructure catalyze change, and at worst, undermine it. environment of and ecological systems, and
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