Making resilient cities: Some axioms of urban resilience

This paper considers issues of urban design and urban resilience in the wake of disaster, with special reference to the trauma inflicted on New Orleans, USA by Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005. Based on a variety of historical examples, it argues that cities are remarkably resilience entities, and have survived and even flourished in the aftermath of horrific destruction, whether caused by human action, natural catastrophe or a combination thereof. The paper reviews historical cases of urban disaster in order to isolate important design and planning factors influencing the capacity of a city to rebound and recover. These include London Fire, 1666; the Great Fire of Chicago, 1871; Great Tangshan Earthquake, 1976; and the Mexico City Earthquake of 1985. It then focuses on the key role of a resourceful citizenry in determining post-disaster resilience. Hurricane Katrina not only devastated the built environment of New Orleans but, by forcing a mass evacuation of residents, tore apart its social fabric as well. Plans to rebuild the city's physical infrastructure have lagged in part because the social fabric and communal networks have yet to recover. Only with strong citizen involvement at the grassroots level will the rebuilding of New Orleans yield a robust and inclusive metropolis, rather than a theme-park shadow of its former self.