PILLAR 1
Major City Risk Environment
PILLAR 2
Crisis Modeling and Future Urban Vision
As we navigate through the complexities of the 21st century, the task of modeling crisis events becomes akin to charting a path through an ever-evolving risk landscape. Cities, with their dense networks and bustling life, are at the forefront of facing these upheavals. From the slow-moving crisis of climate change to the immediate shock of a terrorist attack, urban areas find themselves in need to predict and prepare for a range of scenarios. This journey of anticipation should be about warding off disaster and transforming these challenges into opportunities for strengthening the fabric of our urban spaces.
Peering into the future, we envision the city of 2030 as a beacon of innovation and resilience. This is a place where the lessons of the past and the innovations of today converge to create urban environments that are sustainable, inclusive and prepared for the unknowns of the future. Smart city modeling and advanced transport infrastructures are concepts and realities that shape daily life. In this envisioned future, cities are thriving, adapting and leading the way in resilience and sustainability.
Effective urban management must transcend traditional methodologies to address the rapid and often chaotic expansion seen in cities experiencing hyper-urbanisation. Through targeted training programmes, city leaders and stakeholders are equipped with the skills to navigate the complexities of modern urban growth, while fostering adaptive strategies that anticipate and mitigate the challenges of expanding urban landscapes. However, training and exercise programmes must equip the community members with essential skills and knowledge as well, and thereby, enhance collective preparedness and response capabilities. This dual focus on capability development, that includes both communities and city leadership, cultivates a shared responsibility for urban resilience and builds a foundation for sustainable and adaptable cities.
PILLAR 3
Empowering Communities and Building Resilience
In considering the challenges of global urban resilience, it is easy to get caught in the trap of envisioning that as relating to the issues facing global cities such as London, New York, Geneva and Tokyo, as well as the second-level cities in the developed world. The truth of course is that the challenges that those cities are planning for are exactly the problems that the urban centres of the global south have been facing for decades. The ability to maintain the multitude of checks and balances that are central to the functioning of a major city are seen clearly in examples such as Lagos, Calcutta, Bangkok or Cairo. As the urban conceptualist Rem Koolhaas put it in his study of Lagos: ‘Lagos may not be catching up with us. Rather, we may be catching up with Lagos’.
The lessons of the global south have real value for urban planners in the developed north, and there is no doubt that an ability to recognise, model and integrate those lessons into other areas of urban planning would have significant impact and long-term utility.
There is probably no major organisation that has not developed in one form or other a Vison 2030 document. Within the confines of urban city management, the ability to move from vision to strategic policy, and then from strategic policy to actual implementation, is perhaps the critical step that is missing in many urban management studies.
Strategic planning within a major city management context is a fine balance between the bold and visionary and the practical and mundane. It is often the case that the demands of the daily challenges today and next week overwhelm the desire to create visionary new urban designs fit for the next decade.
The ability to manage both of those challenges, and to ensure that major city planning, policy development and long-term project management can all be integrated into a single seamless holistic operation, is the true challenge facing any major city planner.
