Geoff Ghitter

The concept of resilience has two simple and related meanings. First, resilience is a system’s capacity to withstand shock without permanent damage — resilient systems are pliable, like old Gumby toys or young hockey players. Second, resilience is the ability to recover from, or adjust easily to, misfortune or change — resilient systems are more adaptable so they rebound faster and further after a calamity.

But what happens when we want to apply these straightforward ideas to cities? To our city? Simple-sounding concepts can quickly become complex when discussing real places and real people in real time.

On one level it means taking an informed peek into the future to see what kinds of disruptions we may have to contend with, but have no control over. On another level it means honestly assessing our ability to withstand short- and long-term shocks and how to deal with adversity. On a third level it means taking proactive action to enhance our strengths and address our shortcomings.

The best-known modern example illustrating the difference between rigid and resilient systems is the comparison of New Orleans, following Katrina in 2005, and Cuba’s response to Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

The results in New Orleans are well known. A lack of preparation, including the delay of expensive yet critical maintenance to the city’s infrastructure, combined with ad hoc evacuation plans (get in your car, if you have one) and a bumbling response from federal, state and municipal agencies turned a simple disaster into a monumental catastrophe.

Cuba’s response to Ivan, a Category 5 hurricane that hit the Caribbean nation a year earlier, is less known. There, authorities implemented a well-rehearsed disaster response plan. To ease concerns and encourage at-risk people to abandon their homes, tough anti-looting strategies were implemented. As a result, 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to designated shelters prior to the hurricane’s landfall, leading to minimal casualties despite the loss of 20,000 homes.

In New Orleans it took weeks to organize a co-ordinated response. In Cuba, electricity was mostly restored and the cleanup begun within days. Although damage to personal property and civic infrastructure was extensive, local communities weathered the storm due to foresight and advance planning — including details like having sufficient supplies of refrigerated insulin for evacuated diabetics. In Cuba, everyone knew what to do. In New Orleans, no one did. That was the difference.

Because they had a plan in Cuba, community organizations and family life spontaneously regenerated as the essential characteristics of their communities were sustained in crisis. In New Orleans, where social resilience was lacking, many communities simply disappeared.

The nature of the threats facing Calgary is less tangible. There are no hurricanes here. Yet the lessons in this example are readily adaptable as we contemplate the city of our future.

Unhappily, a pragmatic look at Calgary’s urban growth pattern forebodes trouble. Much as in New Orleans, a lack of willingness to make the required investment in social, physical and community infrastructure will leave us naked when one or more of the looming global threats emerges.

Resilience is what allowed the Cubans to cope, and its lack resulted in the devastation in New Orleans. But resilience isn’t just one thing. It is the accumulated benefit of many processes, small and large, material and social, that together provide alternatives for people to meet their needs when things change. In upcoming articles we will be discussing these ideas and how they will make a difference to Calgary’s long-term success.

Some elements of resilience concern physical infrastructure, such as transit, energy distribution and waste management. Others attend to the social sphere and the economy. Institutions that encourage amenities such as community gardens, public art, public toilets, quality parks and green space, solidify community networks and support local businesses. And issues such as NIMBYism, metropolitan governance, place making and sense of community also strongly influence urban resilience.

To end the series we bring it together with a proposal that combines many of these elements in a long-range plan to transform Calgary’s Manchester district from what it is now — a low-density, light industrial zone — to being the centrepiece of a new vision for Calgary’s future.

You know the destination: sustainability. To be sustainable, cities must also be resilient. They must be able to adapt and change to new circumstances as they emerge. And the fact we cannot exactly predict the conditions that will confront us reinforces the need to remain nimble.

But there is a danger, because resilience and sustainability are not the same. Systems that produce lousy results can also be resilient. So it is important not to lose sight of the big picture. We do know that no system is sustainable without also being resilient. What matters are the values we instill, and the ethic we embed in the bricks and mortar of a sustainable city.

Coming next: Trams, trams, trams

Geoff Ghitter holds lectures with the urban studies program at the University of Calgary. Noel Keough is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary and is co-founder of Sustainable Calgary Society.