Resilience:

As the Director of Resilience and Infrastructure Calgary, Chris Arthurs knows floods and fires can’t hold the city back for long, but she’s busy helping to ensure it goes beyond just coping – by making the city resilient.

Building resilience into cities in Canada is a growing movement. In an era of climate change, bursting populations and other shocks to their systems, municipal governments are working with organizations to develop detailed resilience strategies.

In Calgary, Ms. Arthurs, is responsible for helping to implement a Resilient Calgary strategy recently adopted by the city. “We’re building the idea of being resilient into our planning and budgeting. We’re also part of a national and global dialogue, talking with other cities to learn how they’re responding to their stresses and shocks,” she says.

That means identifying the potential stresses the city faces – from prolonged economic downturns, climate impacts, infrastructure decay and social inclusion to sudden shocks such as flooding. “We are using a 3-L approach – lens, lift and leverage: We put a lens on all most pressing areas of stress, we lift awareness of the good work already underway and we work together to leverage the resources of the community to look ahead,” Ms. Arthurs says. While she calls it a “made-in-Calgary approach,” other cities in Canada are also building resilience.

“The resilience movement is largely a response to the impacts of climate change, but it has other components,” says Robert Plitt, Executive Lead at Evergreen, a national not-for-profit working with cities to generate forward-thinking ideas that help communities thrive. “Resilience requires that we look for signals about the future and design solutions that look ahead to the rapid transitions that are affecting us. These include things like climate change, disruptive technology, changing demographics and job markets,” says Mr. Plitt.

Evergreen is a founder of Future Cities Canada, along with the McConnell Foundation, TD Bank Group, Maison de l’innovation sociale and Community Foundations of Canada. Future Cities Canada provides a platform for cities to share ideas that advance urban innovation, addressing challenges posed by climate change, declining infrastructure and overstretched social services.

In November, a Future Cities Canada Summit at Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto will bring together thought leaders and public and private sector innovators to discuss discuss the work being done at the community level; among the topics will be resilience.

“Resilience requires a complex and interconnected system of planning and organizing. It goes from the house level, at the level of the house, the block, the neighbourhood, the city, right up to federal policy and funding,” says Mr. Plitt.

Future Cities Canada is advancing work in bringing together municipal and community leaders to create a Canadian network that would build capacity for cities across the country to become more resilient in climate-impacted future.

It’s important to gather people who have different perspectives on the same situation, says Ewa Jackson, Managing Director at ICLEI Canada, which is part of a global network of more than 1,750 local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development.

“Getting together municipalities with health authorities, business associations, community groups and others is helpful because they all have different ideas on protecting cities [when they are under environmental or social stress],” she says. “That way you can look at both the physical and social impacts. In a crisis, pipes and wires may need attention, but you also might have seniors and new Canadians at risk and needing attention, and small businesses might need help too.”

Cities including Calgary and Vancouver are bringing together their experts to understand and plan for stresses in a more across-the-board, more holistic way, Ms. Jackson explains.

“A flood is more than just a lot of water where we don’t want it. There’s an economic and a human impact too. After floods in High River, Alberta a few years ago, it was reported that anti-anxiety prescriptions went up by 200 per cent. We need to understand the impact of knowing what it means to have your home at risk.”

Smart cities such as Calgary, Vancouver and Peterborough tap into local expertise. Who will be in charge of marshalling the help for seniors, for example, or helping businesses recover from lost revenues? “These cities want to understand what the local consequences are and how to be ready for them. You need people right there, on the ground,” Ms. Jackson says.