Understanding global catastrophe
From ancient city walls to Cold War fallout shelters, the built environment has always reflected the threats that most deeply concern its creators. The same is true in the twenty-first century. As...
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Understanding urban resilience, part I: Surat
We live in an ever-more complex and unpredictable world, marked by rapid urbanization, dramatic technological evolution, and climate change. As a result, policymakers and designers are increasingly...
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Resilience lessons from Mecca
Mecca’s population more than triples for several weeks each year during the Muslim pilgrimage. We spoke with University of Toronto professor Amer Shalaby, a transportation expert, about what the city’s...
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Understanding urban resilience, part II: Concepción
Last week, we introduced the recently released City Resilience Framework, a tool developed by our International Development group and the Rockefeller Foundation to help demystify urban resilience. This...
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Understanding urban resilience, part III: New Orleans
A few weeks ago we introduced the new City Resilience Framework, a tool developed by our International Development group and The Rockefeller Foundation to help demystify urban resilience. Here’s a...
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Understanding urban resilience, part IV: Exploring social dimensions
Arup’s International Development group has spent the past 20 months working to help cities understand and measure resilience. Braulio Eduardo Morera, the London-based project manager and researcher for...
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On resilient infrastructure
Over the past few years, the impacts of climate change have become evident. Storms are more frequent and powerful, resulting in large monetary losses along with tragic human costs. Hurricane Sandy,...
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Cities, water, and climate change
Climate change and sea level rise have begun to reshape our shorelines. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the US federal government created a yearlong competition exploring ways to strengthen coastal...
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Mitigating disaster risk in informal communities
The United Nations predicts that the world’s urban population will be 2.5 billion higher in 2050. Because most of this growth will occur in developing nations that lack the resources to prepare for...
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Global call for ideas reveals promising resilience solutions
After Hurricane Sandy took the lives of dozens of New Yorkers, left millions more without power, and caused $19 billion of damage within the five boroughs alone, the need to protect the city from...
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Beyond the big one: Real recovery in San Francisco
Last year San Francisco’s Patrick Otellini became the world’s first municipal chief resilience officer, a position sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation as part of its 100 Resilient Cities (100RC)...
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Cutting through the noise on urban resilience
Lisa Dickson recently joined Arup’s Boston office to lead the firm’s climate risk and resilience work in the Americas. She spoke with Doggerel about the state of the urban resilience field. * What do...
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Data plus community: A winning formula for green infrastructure
Digital networks have placed an unprecedented amount of information within the reach of designers, offering revolutionary possibilities to reshape the built environment. Although this has led to...
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How to beat extreme heat
Four years ago, Louisville, Kentucky, awoke to an alarming urban trend. This forward-thinking southern city — recently ranked as America’s most livable by the US Conference of Mayors — had landed at...
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A new model for resilient skyscrapers
Designers and clients are increasingly aware of the need to create buildings and infrastructure to withstand future shocks. A new tower in San Francisco — “probably the most resilient tall building on...
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HUD’s resilience revolution
At first glance, Minot, North Dakota, might not look like a cauldron of resilience innovation. This modest city of about 50,000 on the Souris River is mainly known to the outside world for a nearby air...
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Lessons learned in an earthquake’s aftermath
Disasters are never entirely natural; the risks inherent in our environment can be amplified or diminished by any number of factors, from culture to politics and economics. Similarly, building back...
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Can spacesuit science keep New York’s subways dry?
In October 2012, I moved to the US from Newcastle, England, to lead Arup’s New York civil engineering team. Two weeks later, Hurricane Sandy hit. My building flooded, and I was evacuated into a shelter...
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Lecciones aprendidas después de un terremoto
Los desastres jamás son totalmente naturales; los riesgos inherentes a nuestro medio ambiente pueden verse amplificados o disminuidos por una serie de factores que van desde la cultura y la política,...
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Don’t call us climate refugees
The Isle de Jean Charles in Terrebonne Parish has been home for more than a century to members of southern Louisiana’s Native American tribes, a close-knit community living in ramshackle houses amid...
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