1.
City Resilience,
Resource Efficiency and the Urban
Nexus
Kimberly Junmookda
The Rockefeller Foundation
June 18, 2015

2.
RESILIENCE
• We define urban resilience as the capacity of cities to function, so that people living and
working in cities – particularly the poor and vulnerable – survive and thrive no matter what
shocks and stresses they encounter.
• Supporting the planning and development dialogue in second-tier and emerging cities,
especially as they experience rapid growth and as more than half of the world’s population
lives in cities, many of the most poor and vulnerable.
• As a lens, we find resilience to be useful in considering a wide possibility of disruptive future
events, and not only one hazard or type of event.

3.
THE CITY RESILIENCE FRAMEWORK
• The City Resilience Framework (CRF) was
developed by Arup in 2013.
• Based on extensive research and fieldwork
in six cities that had experienced a recent
shock or were suffering from a chronic
stress.
• A lens to understand the complexity of
cities and the drivers that contribute to
their resilience.

4.
• The framework allows us to view
how various complex and
interconnected systems contribute
to the city’s resilience. These are
critical functions the city needs.
• Water-food-energy constraints cut
across several aspects of a city’s
resilience, such as “fostering long
term and integrated planning”,
“ensuring the continuity of critical
services” and “provides natural and
manmade assets” and others.
• Like an immune/health system, the
city needs to have capacities across
all areas.
THE CITY RESILIENCE FRAMEWORK

5.
URBAN RESILIENCE
Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network
(ACCCRN)
100 Resilient Cities
• Pre-selection of cities
• 6 countries; 40 second-tier cities
• Competition
• 100 global cities

6.
The Resilience Planning
Process

7.
THE RESILIENCE PLANNING PROCESS
• Starting a
discussion
through the
City Resilience
Framework
• Engaging city
stakeholders
• Formulating working
groups
• Appointing Chief
Resilience Officers
• Conducting assessments
• Prioritizing actions
• Developing a
city resilience
strategy
• Testing
solutions that
support the
city’s broader
resilience

8.
Examples:
Integrative Solutions

9.
SOLUTION: PERI-URBAN AGRICULTURE IN
GORAKHPUR, INDIA
Gorakhpur, India
• The city was expanding into existing agricultural land on the city’s periphery. The
area was prone to recurrent floods and there is now water logging, now exacerbated
by urban development.
• Through resilience planning, the city developed a solution that integrated various
needs, including restoring peri-urban land for agricultural use and developing a
climate-resilience livestock system. Food supplies were able to be made available
locally; and the land was able to serve as a flood buffer.
• By seeing the issue across sectors and scales, and looking at the whole, the city was
able to devise an integrated solution with benefits across multiple areas.

10.
SOLUTION: WATER REHABILITATION IN INDORE,
INDIA
Indore, India
• Indore faced urban flooding, poor drainage and waterlogging from roads and bridges
from more frequent and severe rainfall. The effects were especially felt on the most
poor.
• The city had to rely on costly and energy-intensive water transported from a river 35
kilometers away. Poor communities often had little access to water.
• Integrated solutions involved:
• Rainwater was harvested using traditional methods and recharging
groundwater, to mitigate flood risk and provide a water supply; the nearby
Indore Lake was restored to provide a local source of freshwater; the city
developed a multi-sectoral partnership with the Indore Zoo to manage a water
treatment plant.
• Requiring the use of reused water for gardening and construction purposes.

11.
SOLUTION: URBAN PLANNING QUY NHON,
VIETNAM
Quy Nhon, Vietnam
• The city faced a catastrophic flood in 2009, with 16 deaths, exacerbated by new
pressures such as urbanization and urban construction.
• While individual households were individually safer, this did not mean the city and
system as a whole were becoming more resilient. Climate projections showed the
city would be increasingly susceptible to major flooding in the future, and would
need to continue building more elevated infrastructure.
• Through the city resilience strategy process, the city was able to begin a conversation
to consider an integrative approach which included a combination of urban planning
to protect natural floodways, and developing an early warning system.

12.
HOW INTEGRATED RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
IS CENTRAL TO RESILIENCE
• Resource efficiency and integrated resources management are key components of a city’s
overall resilience. It is important to integrate across sectors, and water-food-energy
constraints inevitably factor into the vulnerability of cities.
• Urban nexus issues matter to other parts of the city’s system as well: the way water
resources are managed may not only be more energy efficient, but can produce health
benefits in lowering incidences of vector-borne disease.
• In addition to the relevance of the resilience framework, the resilience planning and
resilience-building process which promotes coordination across sectors and departments
in the cities, can also be a helpful and relevant tool to putting into practice integrated
resources planning.

13.
www.rockefellerfoundation.org
https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/report/city-resilience-framework/
www.acccrn.net
www.100resilientcities.org