Planning the resilient city: Concepts and strategies for coping with climate change and environmental risk

This paper contributes to filling the theoretical and practical gaps of city resilience literature, which lacks multifaceted theorizing and typically overlooks the multidisciplinary and complex nature of urban resilience. Furthermore, most studies on the subject make use of general, vague, and confusing terminology. This paper suggests a new innovative conceptual framework (the Resilient City Planning Framework or RCPF) that addresses the critical question of what cities and their urban communities should do in order to move towards a more resilient state in the future. Accordingly, the RCPF takes complexity and uncertainty into account. It is affected by a multiplicity of economic, social, spatial, and physical factors and its planning involves a wide range of stakeholders. RCPF is a network of four interlinked concepts that together, provide a comprehensive understanding of City Resilience. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.