People are the heart of all cities: reflections on Resilient Melbourne

The urban environment of the Anthropocene connects more people than ever before to systems providing services depended upon for daily survival and quality of life. Primary systems such as energy, water and communications are relied upon for functioning food systems, health care, banking and more. The complex interdependencies of these systems in the context of increasing expectations of our modern lifestyles, means that the impacts of disruption become more and more perilous.

The global trends of urbanisation, globalisation and climate change are being felt at the hyper-local level no matter where we live. The urban footprint of towns and cities grows, requiring more resources to function and leaving environmental impacts in its wake. Regardless of evidence-based science and a growing societal consciousness, greenhouse gas emissions are still on the increase and biodiversity loss continues to grow.

Patterns of urbanisation also leave many people behind, with liveability distributed unequally across our cities. Often the areas most affordable are the riskiest areas to live in, in terms of flood risk and health concerns. Globalisation means that we are more connected than ever before and what happens on one side of the planet has implications for the other side. There are advantages resulting from this global connectivity, such as shared knowledge and innovation, however, our collective lived experience of COVID-19 illustrates that globalisation also raises significant risks. Climate change is the amplifier, with its own distinct impacts at global, national and local scales as well as being an amplifier of most other human challenges.

This is the context for the emerging practice of urban resilience; a practice that encourages a systems perspective to see the world as interconnected – an ecosystem. Urban Resilience is defined as “the capacity of individuals, institutions, businesses and systems within a city to adapt, survive and thrive no matter what kind of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience and to positively transform as a result [1]. Urban resilience also speaks to the siloed nature of the way we work and encourages a joining of dots across diverse work areas. Collaboration is one of the ways to encourage multi-disciplinary thinking, to enable emergent ideas while fostering new mindsets. It also helps everyone see themselves in the picture – as part of both the problem and the solution.

About the 100 Resilient Cities Project

100 Resilient Cities (100RC), pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, was created to support cities around the world prepare to meet the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. Melbourne was selected from 372 applicant cities around the world to be among the first wave of 32 cities to join the 100RC network in 2014. Providing seed funding for a Chief Resilience Officer in each city, 100RC activated a passionate global network of resilience practitioners. Each were tasked with understanding the acute shocks and chronic stresses relevant for their city and developing an urban resilience strategy complete with actions related to the identified focus areas for their strategy.

Resilient Melbourne, established as Melbourne’s 100RC program and hosted by the City of Melbourne, was tasked with seeking the involvement of all 32 Local Government Areas (LGA’s) across the city, highlighting one of the significant challenges of progressing resilience across the city and one of the greatest opportunities. Acute shocks and chronic stresses rarely respect municipal boundaries however local governments often struggle with the resources to invest in an increasing scope of services in response and prevention. The irony is that without the ability to afford strategic foresight, their challenges amplify over time, costing more and more as time progresses. Resilient Melbourne used the tagline "Stronger Together" acknowledging the efficiencies of scale in working together and the importance of team-like collaboration which unsurfaces creativity, knowledge generation and the courage to be more ambitious.

Reframing our challenges

Over six years Resilient Melbourne reframed the way we understand the challenges faced by a city. Acute shocks are sudden disruptive events that take a city by surprise and might include acts of terror, storms, flooding, pandemic or fire. Chronic stresses are slow burning, often social issues which can include social inequity, housing unaffordability, family violence and sea level rise. When a shock occurs at the same time as a stress, the impacts can be much deeper and surprising than occurring in isolation. Chronic stresses are often made visible in the event of a shock, such as food insecurity during COVID-19 and family violence following a disaster. Facing up to chronic stresses can help us understand their root causes and reduce the likelihood of them developing in the first place. If left unacknowledged these stresses can become the shocks of tomorrow. Ultimately resilience teaches us to be prepared for the unexpected.

Using the City Resilience Framework (CRF), resilience practitioners can carry out diagnostic activities to unpack resilience strength, weaknesses and opportunities across diverse sectors. Such frameworks can assist by making complexity more tangible and actionable. They can help us speak the same language and find new ways to illustrate the interconnectedness between systems, people, policy, experience and knowledge in order to cast light on challenges and opportunities in new and meaningful ways.

The CRF was the key tool utilised in developing the Resilient Melbourne Strategy and its power was its ability to delve, query and make resilience feel within reach across an entire city of systems. In its entirety, it represents the immune system of the city.

In the early days of Resilient Melbourne, much of the work was highlighting the holistic nature of urban resilience and dispelling opinions that it is all about emergency management. If urban resilience is about our capacity to 'adapt, survive, and thrive' (as per the definition outlined above), it is about our ability to:

• Change the way we live and work to respond to the challenges of today for the sake of tomorrow (adapt);
• Understand the challenges and learning about preparedness for the unknown (survive)
• Ensure that everyone can have the opportunity to thrive which is about living within our boundaries and having a strong social equity lens (thrive).

The CRF can also support our thinking around multi-beneficial outcomes in projects. For example, if we are developing residential dwellings, how can we maximise the natural environment for health and wellbeing plus ecosystem services? How can we enable connection between residents with shared spaces and incidental interaction? How can we reduce the impact of the development by generating renewable energy and considering solar passive design for the climate and the building materials we use. Prompting our thinking with the CRF can help us achieve outcomes beyond what we understand might be possible.

RMIT University undertook research on Resilient Melbourne’s approach and early impact, noting that “the project is an important vehicle to cross-fertilise existing policies and practices which may otherwise operate with little reference to each other; e.g. physical and social planning; economic and community development; infrastructure and biodiversity." [2].

Governance and collaborative relationships

Resilient Melbourne attempted to transform institutional governance within the existing multi-tiered governance system with the strategy referred to as an 'urban transformational innovation strategy' and the implementation of actions referred to as 'governance experiments' [3]. As Melbourne does not have a metropolitan governance structure, Resilient Melbourne did not have the authority to create change, however, the buy-in from local councils suggested that the institutionalisation of concepts went a long way to create cultural change, bringing others along on the journey.

The strategy development process elevated systems thinking and the interconnected nature of systems. It also emphasised the role everyone has to play in strengthening the city’s resilience.

One of the key successes of Resilient Melbourne was its capacity-building program, Resilience Fundamentals, which trained over 1000 practitioners over four years and supported architects, city planners, engineers, community engagement specialists, emergency managers and more to interact and explore pressing challenges in a way that linked and capitalised on their knowledge. The whole was always greater than the sum of its parts in such sessions, often providing lightbulb moments for participants.

Stakeholder engagement across all LGAs sought to understand the challenges experienced in each, and a gap analysis created actions that LGAs signed up to and got involved in. This was a profound capacity-building exercise with Councilors and Executives in some of our most influential government institutions.

The Steering Committee was key to the successful governance across organisations and raising the profile of resilience. The Committee included senior executives from Emergency Management Victoria, Local Government Victoria, CEOs from metropolitan LGAs and state government agencies. The success of this approach was evidenced when one of the strategy’s actions, Living Melbourne: A metropolitan urban forest strategy, sought and received endorsement from each of the 32 metropolitan LGAs plus state government agencies and water authorities.

One of the complexities experienced which was sometimes a constraint, was due to the holistic nature of urban resilience which resulted in some council officers feeling like their territory was being encroached upon and toes being stepped on. The counter approach was to show that building urban resilience was more about joining the dots and leaning into the expertise of specific work areas so that processes could be facilitated to deepen everyone’s knowledge.

Finally, Resilient Melbourne struggled to find a viable and sustainable operational model to continue its work past 2020. With around 25 LGAs providing annual financial support there was a shortfall and the emerging challenges of COVID-19 meant that resources were stretched. At the time of winding up many of the actions within the strategy had been implemented and most importantly new knowledge and practices had been embedded providing a legacy today. Some councils went on to develop their own resilience strategies, such as Resilient Wyndham.

People are at the heart of all cities

Urban resilience helps us re-focus and remember that all of the infrastructure and development within our urban environments is there to serve the people who live, play and work there. It is easy to get so caught up in development that we forget that without the people, the city is empty scaffolding. Behind this remembering is the importance of thinking about how we enable our communities to connect with each other, feel safe, foster belonging, equity and social justice. These are key to our individual and collective resilience.

People often ask, “what is the most important thing we can do to improve our resilience?” The answer is simple and the same wherever we live - get to know your neighbours! As humans we are wired to connect. Our communities and neighbours help us find the resources and answers to get us out of turmoil and can help save lives when disaster strikes.

‘Belonging’ is used in various contexts to describe people’s sense of being a part of something: social groups, physical places, or collective experiences. While there are multiple definitions of belonging, most are based on some form of social connection; that is, the extent to which people feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others [4]. This feeling often relates to some form of community ‘membership’ wherein people feel safe in their shared identity and have a stake in the future of that group [5].

For many years now, Professor Daniel Aldrich has researched communities in many countries and finds that social networks - the horizontal and vertical ties that connect us to others - are our most important defense against disasters. Aldrich consistently finds that communities with high levels of social connection are more likely to help each other when things get tough and when a disaster strikes. In developing social norms of trust, belonging, and supporting each other prior to a disaster, communities aid each other’s survival 6].

In a similar vein, Dr. Kelly-Ann Allen argues that to combat the potential risks of a lack of belonging, "we should strive to create a culture of social inclusion so that acceptance, inclusion and empathy towards others become social norms." [7].

So if at its heart urban resilience is about building our capacity to 'adapt, survive and thrive' in the face of our complex challenges, transforming through learning, and feeling connected to each other, what are the key takeaways we can take into our everyday work?

1. Better understand our challenges by looking at their interconnections. Think about the likely acute shocks and chronic stresses across the ecosystem of urban systems and services and what the impacts might be above what is immediately apparent.
2. Look to the chronic stresses and address their root causes so they do not become the shocks of tomorrow. Leave no one behind when thinking about who is impacted.
3. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. Break down siloes and encourage creative ways to think outside of the box to deal with complexity.
4. Build agency, self-determination and empowerment and involve people whose livelihoods are impacted by decisions in decision-making processes, especially those whose voices are not usually heard.
5. Within organisations ask how can we enable resilience in a way that encourages communities to self organise and rebuild trust and connection.

Shifting our mindsets to feel and respect the critical relationships between ourselves and natural systems will help us think and act in ways that connect, restore and sustain while learning from the world around us to truly transform. Learning, respecting and embedding Indigenous Wisdom is key to this process. It is liberating to think that in coming together and encouraging each other to do better we can not only achieve holistic societal regeneration and renewal, but the way that we work can give us hope while building social norms of trust and belonging.