More than half the world population currently resides in metropolitan areas, a tendency that will only become more notable in coming decades.
In the face of this phenomenon, the analysis of a city’s capacity to recover from crisis situations, its resilience, has become a question of great social, political and economic significance. An increase in urban resilience can save lives, reduce economic losses and improve the care provided to victims of natural and man-made disasters.
The article “La resiliencia urbana, clave para el futuro de las ciudades”, published in the Planeta Futuro supplement of El País, defines the concept of resilience applied to urban contexts and describes the important benefits of becoming a resilient city.
The authors of the text are Maíta Fernández-Armesto and Gemma Noguera, Coordinator and Communications and Publications Specialist, respectively, of the City Resilience Profiling Programme of UN-Habitat (CRPP), a resident institution at the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site.
CRPP works to support improvements in urban resilience in 10 cities around the world, each one characterised by specific conditions with regard to size, geographic context, economic conditions, etc.
The programme also collaborates with academic institutions to disseminate criteria and contents and to promote the creation of an urban resilience knowledge base to be shared with cities around the world.