Governance for resilient smart cities

Abstract

Cities are becoming more complex as their population, size and diversity increases, as well as incorporating a growing range of networks that permeate them. Many such systems are emergent phenomena, arising from the interactions between people and place, while others have been deliberately created (e.g. power grids and transport networks) to manage the city. Furthermore, the governance of urban centres and regions amid the challenges of climate change, environmental impacts, economic crises, increasing inequality and social unrest demands an appreciation of the complexity of the city and its challenges. It also requires building resilience on many scales to deal with current and future challenges. In this paper we focus on fostering urban resilience within a smart city and propose various principles to link these two concepts. The proposed principles draw on the characteristics of complex systems which facilitates our understanding of modern multifaceted urban environments. Furthermore, we discuss the ways in which multiple urban systems operate and interact at different spatial-temporal scales, which is essential to understand, as the nature of change varies, depending on the area’s context. Through examples from the global South, we also point out the vulnerabilities of urban systems which smart city planning could have helped address. From this foundation we proceed to develop principles for the governance of smart and resilient cities that extend beyond disaster risk management, to build general resilience through sound planning and governance.