A research-based, practice-relevant urban resilience framework for local government

Urban resilience has rapidly developed as a concept to assist urban actors to prepare for, and respond to, shocks and stresses experienced in cities. Urban resilience has been variously defined, and abstract and nebulous resilience concepts can be difficult to apply in practice. Through a research-practice partnership we sought to clarify the concept of urban resilience and make it applicable to the multi-sectoral work of local government in Australia. By conducting a literature review and researcher-practitioner workshops, we developed an urban resilience framework to assist local government planning. We defined urban resilience from an evolutionary perspective: The capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and systems within a city to adapt, survive, and thrive no matter what kind of chronic stresses and acute shocks we experience, and to positively transform as a result. Evolutionary urban resilience has four characteristics: recovery, persistence, adaptive capacity and transformative capacity. We mapped these characteristics to 10 core qualities of resilient urban systems: prepared, robust, spare capacity, diverse, reflective, integrated, inclusive, flexible, future-focused, and innovative. Resilience-building focuses on designing, delivering and evaluating urban systems and programmes, to ensure that cities can respond and transform in the face of growing ecological, economic and social uncertainty. We discuss the various ways in which the framework has been applied by the City of Melbourne. The framework may be relevant to other jurisdictions in Australia and internationally, as it provides the basis for implementing resilience across government policy, projects and operations, and in partnership with communities and other stakeholders.