Urban Resilience: Working together towards a resilient city

Half of humanity nowadays lives in cities. Cities in developing countries are growing most rapidly and nearly one billion people live in slums; increasingly facing disasters due to climate change. The impact of climate change may negatively affect the infrastructure, worsen the access to basic urban services and unfavourably affect the quality of live in cities. Since most major cities developed along the sea or waterways (delta cities), flood risk and storms threaten more people than any other natural hazard (Mind the Risk report, 2013). Cities are also threatened by destructive forces such as youth gangs, which subsequently lead to violence and instability. Most affected will be the urban poor: people living in informal settlements. Over 283 million inhabitants could potentially be affected by earthquakes and 157 million people are at risk from strong wind (Mind the Risk report, 2013). Disasters like these push people in slums further into poverty until they cannot recover anymore. They have the capacities, but lack the network and resources to reduce their risk.