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Reflections from East Kolkata Wetlands
Published in Uday Chatterjee, Arindam Biswas, Jenia Mukherjee, Dinabandhu Mahata, Sustainable Urbanism in Developing Countries, 2022
Sudeshna Kumar, Haimanti Banerji, Sudeshna Ghosh
Uncontrolled urbanization and its associated uncertainties have compounded the effects of climate change, escalating the intensity and frequency of such risks, making it vital for cities to develop urban resilience (Newell et al. 2016; Leichenko 2018) and compelling the scientific community at large to require the integration of urban resilience into urban management practices (Heinzlef et al. 2020). The apparent increase in the negative impacts of climate change has motivated policy makers and city leaders to prioritize urban development to be climate resilient; this is regarded as a paradigm shift from sustainable urbanism to climate urbanism (Long and Rice 2019), sustainable urban development to climate-resilient urban development. The concept of urban resilience has been progressively receiving the attention of researchers and policy makers alike in the past two decades (Sharifi and Yamagata 2018a; Sharifi 2020). This has involved formulating sets of indicators developing methods and tools for urban resilience assessment (Sharifi 2016; Sharifi and Yamagata 2017). Until 2009, insubstantial and disintegrated research was conducted on urban resilience, principally focused on risk mitigation and vulnerability assessment (Sharifi 2020). Increased attention in the domain of urban resilience is attributed to the fact that cities are engines of economic growth and the fulcrum of the ever-increasing global population, bringing a myriad of natural and man-made hazards (Klein et al. 2007). Conventionally, urban resilience has been defined as “plan and prepare for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events” (National Research Council 2012). Hulme has identified that the concept of resilience is very plastic, similar to the plasticity of climate change. Resilience is loosely associated with enhancing adaptive capacity levels or reducing vulnerability (Leichenko 2018; Hulme 2009). Especially in the last five years, there has been a rapid growth in publications on climate change adaptation and flood resilience. However, these studies are biased towards infrastructural, institutional and environmental dimensions at the cost of social and economic dimensions (Sharifi 2020). Leichenko (2018) has stated that to achieve long-term urban sustainability, it is pertinent to integrate mitigation and adaptation strategies with broad-ranging development plans and policies (Boyd et al. 2008; Sperling et al. 2008; Duxbury and Dickinson 2007; Seto, Sánchez-Rodríguez, and Fragkias 2010), fostering positive social changes alongside long-term urban sustainability. Contemporary cities need to be resilient against a myriad of environmental, economic, and political direct as well as interlinked, overlapped shocks and stresses. The most pivotal characteristics of a resilient city are flexibility, diversity, adaptive governance, and capacity for learning and innovation concerning its population, neighborhoods and systems. These characteristics make a city or an urban ecosystem a unique front-liner of technological innovation that is endeavoring to build up sustainable urban infrastructure (Leichenko 2018).
Which architectural style makes an attractive street scape? Aesthetic preferences among city centre managers
Published in Journal of Urban Design, 2023
Studies show that participatory and inclusive approaches to urban design processes are desirable (cf. Toker and Pontikis 2011; Kallus 2016; Calderon 2020). Including different stakeholders and community members at the beginning of a design process highlights aspects that fall outside the traditional domains of property managers, municipalities and business developers. In their study of the neighbourhood of Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, Toker and Pontikis (2011) illustrate that a successful, inclusive and generative design process may entail a more sustainable urban milieu. On the basis of community workshops and interviews with residents, the project implemented principles of sustainable urbanism, e.g., places with mixed purposes, walkability, and a better traffic situation with less car dependency and pollution. Toker and Pontikis (2011) demonstrate how the design process was generated by the local community, rather than being a master plan implemented from above.