11. Planning Resilient Communities

Our world is changing. Extreme events are becoming less predictable with greater consequences. Infrastructure hardening alone is proving both inadequate and unaffordable. Resilience is not about preventing change – change is inevitable – rather, it is about managing change and adapting, responding, and recovering from disruptive events. How we manage change will be defined by how we manage the risk context, using urban planning to reduce the consequence of shocks and stimulate the collective ability to respond and recover. By focusing on people and the community operations that support their lives as the essential purpose of resilience, we can focus our actions more effectively. Infrastructure is built to support a purpose. That purpose does not disappear during a shock. Therefore, we should plan and design infrastructure and services to support the continued delivery of that purpose. The net result is an holistic view of community function and how it can manage both stresses and shocks to protect livelihoods, continued prosperity and quality of life. In effect we propose a framework for planning resilient communities that can support society in an increasingly unpredictable world.