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Climate change is increasing the magnitude and frequency of extreme events, contributing to the idea of environmental threats as a third dimension to the famous saying “nothing is certain but death and taxes”. These catastrophes affect cities’ fiscal capacities, burdening municipal revenues and ultimately imposing higher taxes and painful austerity. Mayors end up being in the frontline of disaster response, feeling that there is very little they can do to avoid getting to that situation in the first place.
Instead of letting denial and anxiety lead our ways, we at the IDB Cities Lab want to offer urban champions practical ideas to promote a culture of climate resilience in the region. We want to bring home the point that naming and recognizing the environmental challenges we face today can be achieved through joy and optimism (and not necessarily through fear or suffering). Therefore, we put together ten broad ideas filled with practical advice that are meant to inspire urban champions to build more resilient cities.
1. Prepping is key
There are many things that can be done at the local level. Incorporate the idea of preparedness into your vocabulary, share it with your team, citizens, and community groups. Develop and regularly update a comprehensive emergency plan. Conduct frequent drills and provide resources and training to ensure that all residents know what to do in case of a disaster. Be aware of how fake news can weaken adherence to government communication. Promote trust, especially in difficult times. Be honest about the learning process. Consider creating a Preparedness Day. It is important to keep an assertive and positive tone when communicating.
2. It’s all about people
People will be severely affected by the climate but in different ways. Children, the elderly, women, African descendants, native people, and the poor will suffer more, and in different ways. Consider the needs of each specific social group. Holistic protection creates stronger and wider-reaching networks. Actively work to listen to diverse groups, use data, and include both in decision-making processes. Create conditions to manage risks with attention to diversity and inclusion. This will enhance the city’s resilience.
3. Go community!
Foster local champions and ensure that city teams know them. They should be buddies. They should share phone numbers and messaging apps. Neighborhood leaders and city staff must recognize themselves as one team. This will be crucial under pressure. Be transparent about the places with high potential for risk. Share this information. Recognize that communities concentrate territorial knowledge, which is essential for crisis management. Respect and sponsor it because it enhances social cohesion in adversity.
4. Digital, data, & determination
Maybe you don’t have the resources to transform your city into a state-of-the-art Smart City. Still, you should generate coherent databases, develop dynamic maps, and facilitate access to public data. Strongly consider appointing a Chief Data Officer (or any other shiny job title you can think of) to attract talented individuals, even when it is hard to compete with private sector salaries. It’s all about people; remember the Second Rule. Engage in dialogue with universities and knowledge centers. There are many open-source solutions you can adopt, such as the Cities Lab’s Urban Planning Toolkit. Knowing “what & where” is crucial; for example, you can use open AI tech and publicly available satellite images to make informal settlements visible. By focusing on risk mitigation, you can achieve digital transformation, job creation, inclusion, and better conditions for local businesses to thrive and attract private investment to your city.
5. Implement Nature-Based Solutions
It is funny that after thousands of years on this planet we are stating something obvious: “let’s follow nature”. Observing and leveraging the “principles” guiding nature’s growth and development can help us mitigate and adapt to climate change. Adopt infrastructure design and solutions which embrace natural criteria. Be bold and reopen ravines, water streams and rivers; at the end of the day, water has “memory” and every now and then it flows and floods freely where it used to do. Permeable surfaces, green roofs, and rain gardens will reduce floods, improve water quality, and keep the built environment as part of the cycle of life and not as anti-nature. Create parks, promote biodiversity, bring back the water cycle, and reduce heat. Trees are the most efficient solution to promote shading, reducing heat radiation of materials in the built environment. Monitor urban heat islands using this digital tool developed by the Cities Lab.
6. Regulation can be boring – but it works!
Regulation is the soul of urban planning and governance. It has the power to shape the city, directly impacting on resilience. So, it can also influence how public and private sector coordinating themselves in committing to ecological innovation. Allowing denser areas in the city center can discourage urban sprawl and reduce carbon footprint. Deliver built permits fast and promptly. Foster renewable materials, carbon-neutral companies, open up market solutions to solid residues. All of these measures can create jobs in the ecologic economy too. Check this Cities Lab’s project out, which resulted in a regulation that approves the use of solid waste as the main material for house walls in Mendoza, Argentina. Look at city hall’s vendors and suppliers, too. There are ways to develop green procurement processes, include sustainability variables into the evaluation matrices. Your city’s purchasing power can attract start-ups. Smart cities start with smart laws.
7. Housing is health is sustainability
Covid-19 showed us how dependent we are on healthy dwellings. Precarious housing, co-habitation, and unsafe buildings are the built representation of territorial deprivation, which has an influence on life expectancy of people. Climate events reveal the fragilities of peripheral neighborhoods and informal settlements. Understand that low-quality housing represents the biggest proportion of housing deficit in the region. Upgrading the existent housing can have a great impact on health. There is a range of technical improvements; it is possible to fix ventilation deficiencies, capture water from rain, save grey water for maintenance, produce food, treat wastewater on site, produce biogas from organic waste. When producing new homes, consider the importance of location and how design and construction must guarantee low carbon emission and energy efficiency; learn the basics of green and resilient housing in this online course. A new regulation could adopt timber as a resource for social housing, for instance. Solar panels, green roofs, permeable areas, geothermal energy, water management, bio-based materials and off-grid systems may transform your social dwell in electricity suppliers! Especially remember that design is the difference between a dirty building and efficient housing.
8. Mobility for people, not for cars
If you have read the newspaper in the last four years, you already know what a 15-minute city is. A walkable and bikeable compact neighborhood with mixed uses can reduce the need for private cars trips, reducing noise, air quality and carbon emissions. Transportation represents a third total emissions. Improving public transport, discouraging the use of private vehicles, changing the auto-centric planning mentality, offering more space to people and nature, are all workable approaches to decarbonizing cities. This implies also looking very carefully at the interlinkages between land-use and mobility. Rather than waiting for the delivery of massive transformations, start offering better sidewalks, safe bike lanes, shared micro-mobility solutions. Complete street design is the low-hanging fruit of sustainable mobility. It will result in better air quality, last-mile logistics and reducing emissions.
9. Sustainable Land Use
Rapid urbanization can have a negative impact on biomes, water resources, forests, carbon emissions, and urban temperatures. Avoiding functional planning concepts by allowing the development of mixed-use zoning, mixing activities in existent areas, also allowing densification can put the city in the sustainable path of urban development. Sprawl can increase the per capita carbon footprint also resulting in higher costs in the provision of infrastructure –you can see how your city is doing in this regard using one of the Cities Lab’s open tools. Housing, businesses, public services, jobs, and opportunities can co-exist in proximity. Learn how to grow your city without expanding it. But remember that if you plan, you must regularly evaluate the results and re-assess your planning premises. Most effective planning is done collaboratively.
10. You are not alone!
If we want a more resilient and livable future, we need to adjust the way we build and govern cities to add more nature within the city and preserving ecosystems. How we shape our cities will shape our quality of life too, for years to come. This is not done in the vacuum or by abstract institutions. It is done by urban champions, and this is a call. The good thing is that you are not alone. There are people, institutions, NGOs, multilateral development agencies, and knowledge centers with the same mission. But you are not alone in the mission. From the IDB Cities LAB side, we develop digital tools, methodological guidelines, and knowledge products to help urban champions to improve cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. We are together on this mission.
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