3. Principles Regarding Urbanisation, Disaster Risks and Resilience

More than half of the world population now lives in urban areas, and virtually all countries of the world are becoming increasingly urbanised. With increasing urbanisation comes increasing disaster risk. For example, urbanisation spreading into earthquake-prone areas and building on unsuitable land is still a common practice. To a certain extent, the act of concentrating a large population in a small space (e.g. through urbanisation) inevitably increases the risk to populations when faced with high winds, heavy rains, heatwaves and so on. Resilience applies to both the industrialised and less-industrialised parts of the world and is associated with many aspects of human activity, often responding to the effects of climate change. Whenever and wherever there is threat of a hazard (such as flooding, drought, heatwave and so on), then there is an associated need to be resilient to “come back” after the effects of that hazard have been endured. This chapter describes the principles and planning necessary for urban resilience and offers a blueprint so that urbanising a population has the potential to deal with poverty, gender inequality, economic growth, sustainable livelihoods, land degradation, conflict and other priorities within the Sustainable Development Goals.