Living with risk: Building the future of resilient cities

The disasters frequently happened these years made the term “resilience” gained increasing attention. Since the end of the 20th century, the way of responding to disaster risks has evolved from disaster prevention to reduction, and now to resilience governance, shifting from the pursuit of “zero risk” to living with risk.

Professor Guofang Zhai currently serves as the Director of the Center for Urban Safety and Development at Nanjing University was interviewed. His main research interests and practice include territorial spatial planning, urban public safety planning, and particularly focuses on the development and evaluation of resilient city construction both in China and abroad.

He highlighted the primary task is to enhance infrastructure resilience. Facing the issue of spatial imbalance of urban resilience, it is essential to give full play to the role of territorial spatial planning, with whole-process, multi-factor, multisystem research on urban resilience as an important reference for planning and design, and take disaster scenario simulation as a crucial technical approach. It is necessary to implement both engineering and non-engineering measures, to increase public awareness of risks and to encourage individual participation into the building of resilient cities. Planners and designers should also have a deeper understanding of the possible disasters and be prepared for emergency responses to disasters that exceed standard defense levels. 

The work entitled “Living With Risk: Building the Future of Resilient Cities” was published on the journal of Landscape Architecture Frontiers (February 15, 2024).