“When we think about making cities resilient, it’s important to look at not only cities that have succeeded, but those that have failed,” says James. “A safe city is a city that people want to live in.”
What is meant when talking about resilience? The London Resilience Partnership defines resilience as the ability to detect, prevent and if necessary to withstand, handle and recover from disruptive challenges.
Community, however, is a little more difficult to define. Politicians are inclined to define the community as the resident, voting population but if you dig deeper you will find all sorts of communities such as day trippers, tourists, business visitors, etc. and each group provides a number of unique challenges which have to be considered and addressed.
The London Olympics is an excellent example of community resilience. While communication was key and the onus was on James and his various teams to provide information that was timely, relevant and accurate, the Games worked because people took proactive actions to support the broader resilience aims. Citizens of London changed their travel patterns, businesses adjusted work rotas, etc to ensure the success of the Games.
For James, the holy grail of community resilience is the ability for people to take autonomous decisions, pull together, collective activity and most importantly, not be dictated to by regional government. Rather, it is the responsibility of government to enable and encourage people to do things for themselves thereby easing pressure on the state.
The London Riots of 2011 is another example of community resilience. Without any sort of encouragement from local councils, the people of London got together to clean up the streets. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the Occupy Movement somewhat ironically redeployed their resources to help those in need in New York, thereby delivering effective community resilience actions.
We can learn from examples such as these that people will self-mobilise and act in the name of their community. Generally people are positive and proactive and if enabled, they can be a force to be reckoned with. This a worthwhile resource to tap into.
“In the event of a significant challenge, we have to assume that there won’t be enough resource to go around,” says James. “And we have to assume that community will step in.”
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