Resilient planning

Apr 14

The essay was written for the cultural studies class of Prof. Dr. Susanne Hauser at the University of Arts Berlin.

Introduction

This article focuses on the concept of resilience in systems theory and its significance for spatial and urban planning. The reflections on the topic of resilience are predominantly based on a comparison of two texts: the overview text “Vulnerability and resilience in a socio-spatial perspective” by Gabriela Christmann, Oliver Ibert, Heiderose Kilper and Timothy Moss (2011) and an article on spatial development “At the beginning of an urban development era of resilience? Consequences for architecture, urban planning and politics” by Thomas Sieverts (2013). At the beginning, the terms resilience and the related terms: Sustainability, Vulnerability, Risk and Uncertainty, are explained. The overview text “Vulnerability and resilience...” deals with the term in an abstract and more generic way and thus has a universal effect. Sieverts' text on spatial development relates resilience to practice and thus makes the normative concept tangible for architecture and urban planning. A division of the work into a theoretical discourse to clarify the term and a practical explanation based on examples is intended to reflect the content of the two texts.

Resilience - definition of the term

The term resilience is defined in the dictionary (Pons, 1984) as “indestructibility”, i.e. a state in which a body is not vulnerable. Since the 1990s, the term and its meaning has become increasingly significant for many disciplines, including spatial and social sciences. The definition could be based on the resilience of a physical body, i.e. its resistance or ability to return to its original state after a molding caused by stress. Similarly, a biological body or a psychological state can be affected by stress. For Sieverts, resilience means robustness, adaptability and the preservation of identity and individuality under severe stress. The overview text forms a more complex definition of resilience that includes categories of society and system, i.e. successful adaptation of societies to natural risks. Resilience has been defined normatively and is attributed by all authors to ecology and sustainability: stress requires resilience of the body or (ecological) system. A body should retain its functionality after absorbing the shock or disturbance and return to its original state. Sieverts provides an even broader definition of resilience that is relevant both for people and for planning: according to him, resilience is a behavior and an ethical attitude that can be applied to technical and economic planning in architecture and urban development.

Another strand of theory aims to emphasize that resilience - although it has its origins in the sustainability of ecosystems - also relates to complex social systems. The shortcomings in the definition of resilience are also due to its relationship with the concept of sustainability, i.e. that the dynamics of ecosystems cannot simply be extrapolated to the social economy. In systems theory research, Christmann and Ibert emphasize the dichotomy between materiality and immateriality, as well as the interaction between physicality and action, technology and infrastructure. Many dimensions - social, political, spatial and temporal dimensions - are not taken into account in a normative definition of resilience.  The related concepts of vulnerability, hazard, uncertainty and risk should be mentioned in the theoretical definition because they contribute to the discourse on resilience. The concepts of risk and uncertainty have a theoretical basis and are related to each other. At the beginning of the 20th century, the opposite of the term “risk” was still defined as “uncertainty” (Knight, 1921), but by the end of the 20th century this had changed to “hazard” (Luhmann, 1991). As a result, security has become an empty concept in postmodern society and acting under uncertainty has become the norm. Economic growth contributes to the emergence of risks because it produces uncertain future scenarios. In today's world, dangers are socially constructed (i.e. by society). Vulnerability is a current state in which one is not prepared for particular (projected, and future) dangers: in society, it can arise as a physical, physiological or social vulnerability.

Defining the world as an overall system makes it possible to observe and predict the emergence of hazards (production of risks) in this system. The observation of uncertainty takes place at the levels of political decisions (governance) and social sciences. At the first level, measures for resilience strategies and decisions for their implementation are made and actions are taken so that a government has the capacity to prepare society for hazards. There is also scientific, critical observation of the “first level” at the second level. This second-level observation aims to identify the “blind spots” and self-reflection of the system. The theoretical foundation is intended to determine what has been overlooked in the system that produces dangers for itself.  Numerous theoretical discourses move beyond the ecological level of resilience and its relationship to sustainability and relate resilience to more complex social systems and political planning.

Resilience and sustainability

Resilience derives from the concept of sustainability, which it takes as a prerequisite. Sustainability was conceived as a pragmatic term for forestry in the 16th century and meant that one could only fell as many trees as could grow back in a certain amount of time. In the 20th century, the meaning of sustainability was discussed in conferences, giving the normative term a spatial and temporal dimension. These included the global Brundtland Commission (1987), the conference in Aalborg (1994), which focused on local thinking and action, and the United Nations' Local Agenda 21 in Rio (1992). Sustainable development referred to future action and the use of resources located in space. Sustainability was primarily an economic concept to which the missing social component was introduced in the form of thinking about future generations.

The normativity and vagueness of the definition were partially removed and the term was used more and more frequently. In the 21st century, the original ecological meaning needs to be related to more complex systems, e.g. cities, financial exchanges or political systems. Sustainability has little basis in the social sciences, but nevertheless includes categories of space, time and human action, as well as ecological, economic and social levels, i.e. all dimensions that are also claimed for the theoretical foundation of resilience.

Sustainability is based on the utopian idea that it is possible to live in the future without dangers. The discrepancy between this abstract concept and reality can be filled by resilience, which, among other things, projects how to deal with dangers in the (by no means utopian) future. Interestingly, the management of natural resources continues to play a central role because it sets the ultimate limits to growth. The meaning of “tree” in the original 16th century definition of sustainability expands in the 21st century to include fossil fuels or precious metals. This topic is examined more specifically in the section on metabolism. Both terms - sustainability and resilience - although often used as synonyms, have a differentiated definition. One distinction can be that sustainability defines the prevention of hazards and resilience the handling of (future) hazards. Sieverts also distinguishes between sustainability as an “embeddedness in context” and resilience as an “ uniqueness in context”.[1] The two examples prove that the time and space reference of the two terms is different. It can be argued that sustainability “first” emerged as a normative concept and that resilience is defined on its basis, i.e. that resilience prerequisites sustainability (but not always vice versa). The relationship to sustainability remains important because it defines the measures for resilience strategies, e.g. thinking about future generations, as well as the mobilizing power of the term for certain actors in political action. Critically, sustainability is often used as a slogan. The time and space categories of the two terms can be considered using examples from forestry, climate protection, quality of life or migration flows.  In the past few decades, the concept of resilience has been extended to the sciences, where it no longer refers to a single body, but to systems and networks.

Metabolism

In the definition of resilience, the categories of the material world - nature - and the immaterial world - culture, politics and abstract concepts - should relate to each other or the separation between the two should be overcome. The naturalization of hazard systems (through the material approach) and the social construction of threats (through the immaterial approach) must be integrated into an overall system. Attempts to theoretically underpin an overall system on which the dangers arise can be traced back to postmodernism. Both material and immaterial systems cause effects in the world. Natural spaces (oceans, forests, agricultural and urban landscapes) and natural events (storms, floods) can kill people, destroy plants, infrastructures and landscapes. The immaterial, socially constructed perceptions, on the other hand, can contribute to a negative image of the spaces or urban districts from which people move away, in which investors are not interested and which ultimately fall into disrepair. The effect that arises from the ability to act can be defined via a subject and its zones of action (Schütz, Luckmann, 1979). The first zone of action comprises the physical action within the subject's own reach and the second zone of action means an extended reach that is potentially achievable through technology and society. The latter approach is the basis of the actor network system theory. The two zones of action are used both to perceive dangers and to produce potential actions for building resilience. The postmodern approach of a subject in its zone of action combines physical (human, space, locality) and abstract (action, experience, knowledge, time) categories in which a pattern of action and a social and cultural system is constructed. The human being “socializes” the world and in a metabolic process, matter is processed and appropriated through human action (nature becomes culture). The first meaning of metabolism defines how nature is transformed into an urban landscape. In this new landscape, nothing seems to be “natural” anymore, but at the same time the new system produces no less dangers than the original ecosystem.[2] The transformation of nature through human activity reaches its limits as the environment is destroyed and resources are consumed. The definition of “metabolism” is an attempt to overcome the dichotomy in systems theory. In Marxist theory, for example, the transformation of the natural ecosystem into the sociological or urban system is defined by labor. Labor becomes a driving force of economic growth and the metabolism between nature and culture. The idea of human agency, subject and its zone of action is criticized for its conditionality and subjectivity, nevertheless it creates a basis for action settings and the Actor-Network Theory. The category of agency is not present in ecosystems and resilience is integrated in these theories precisely as action. There also exist other, non-natural, systems that are interrelated and whose elements are threatened or require adaptation.

Objects and actions

The elements function in a network of relationships, which makes systems become increasingly complex. In an ecosystem, there are elements that have a biological interdependency, while modern society can be assumed to have a network of relationships whose links are people, machines and objects.

The Actor-Network Theory attempts to explain how the ability to act is distributed in this constellation and how this system reacts to dangers. The significance of this theory lies in the fact that - in comparison to social science, which examines the world as an overall system with its material aspect - it does not overlook the aspect of technology. The theory is strongly constructivist in that it equates knowledge about the world - nature and culture, everything social and material. The simple examples of objects such as a remote control (which allows TV channels to be changed from a distance) or a loaded gun (which allows violent crime to be committed by pulling the trigger) illustrate the role of technology in human action and its consequences. The system involves the material and immaterial components, in that objects participate in actions. Technology and infrastructure - just like society - become products of the the transformation of natural resources through human use. New technologies and economic growth are placing ever greater demands on systems. Resilience is created by reconfiguring the system (e.g. re-arranging the elements: relocating the household, demolishing a steep staircase or adding a fire door) by repositioning its links and making the individual components irrelevant to the change. In this way, for example, critical infrastructure is incorporated into the resilience strategies of the city or a river. The examples of the repositioning of spatial and human systems involve the material and immaterial components, e.g. elements of architecture [3]and landscape or elements of human relationships, values and perceptions.

A critical look at modern planning

Current spatial planning must be examined critically with regard to resilience. Sieverts emphasizes the importance of resilient planning, i.e. the flexibility of housing layouts and the possibility of their conversion with a view to crisis resistance. As with the definition of the term, there are similarities between “sustainable” and “resilient” planning. According to Sieverts, the latter means a partial departure from the planning principles of international modernism. A “less is more” principle, functionalism and a centralist “top-down” approach should be replaced by decentralized planning with plenty of leeway and openness of use. A little redundancy of “dimensions” in construction and the interchangeability of components should contribute to this. Sieverts mentions current forms and typologies of resilience that are used in both architecture and urban planning. Resilient construction planning is based on four levels: technology, the responsible planner, politics and society. In the resilient typologies, a distinction is made between constructive and social types (here, too, it can be seen that the social science and technological components flow into each other). The consideration of the time factor also remains a key aspect of planning: thinking in terms of material cycles and cycles of land use, focusing on process, as well as the adaptation of components and uses over the course of time should enhance the resilience of built structures. This way of thinking is not anchored in modernism, which radically breaks with the past and assumes new planning in the “tabula rasa”. Resilient planning, on the other hand, emerges at the interface between learning from the past and planning for the future, with recognition of the historical situatedness of planning.

In times of economic crisis or war, some measures are planned that future generations will regard as outdated and unnecessary. As people's memories fade over time, the chances of the crisis appear less and less likely, although the actual applicability of the measures remains valid. An example of this is the planning of apartments with an emergency chimney, which originated in the economic crisis of 1929 and in times of the Second World War. An example outside the construction industry that demonstrates the relative assessment of resilience is the production of vaccine doses for swine flu in 2008. The measures taken to combat the epidemic at its peak were in retrospect considered completely excessive. Resilient planning therefore projects possible dangers onto an uncertain future, even if they sometimes fail. Applied to the construction industry, the impact of multiple factors makes planning all more complex. Sieverts mentions the offences of the construction industry that modernism ignores: building waste, construction permits on fertile land, maximized building standards and small-scale ownership structures that make redevelopment and changes of use difficult. In contrast to modern planning, resilient planning perceives a much more complex initial state of the “tabula plena” with all existing conditions. Where modernity constructed a utopian and euphemistic future, the theory of resilience cautiously projects uncertain dangers. At the same time, the indeterminacy of the future leaves enough freedom for experimental behavior. The current question is how resilient planning can be made possible - given the multiplicity of influencing factors in a complex world with an uncertain, crisis-prone future.

The cost of resilience

In a world of limited resources, the cost of resilience remains an important issue. How much planned resilience is still economically viable? On the one hand, resilience means preparing for uncertain dangers by carrying out stress tests on the system and assessing the probability of dangers. Only the measures that are strictly necessary should be prepared. On the other hand, cost reduction means taking account of subjective categories that are socially and politically constructed. Consideration of the desired quality of life, living and working space per inhabitant, sharing models for construction and use, and fees for demolition and recycling is not merely on a constructive-technological level. An overarching crisis, which climate change represents, demands decisions in the previous view of growth and the desired quality of life at the social and political level. At the same time, certain life models and forms of housing are emerging beyond the architectural discourse and require the inclusion of the urban planning perspective for resilient measures in the present and future.

Resilient city

A new system that requires resilience strategies is the city. It is the a category that is threatened by all crises - local and global, natural and man-made. Moreover, the city can be seen as a high achievement of culture, with a human being as the link between nature, population and culture (Sieferle, 1979). At the same time, the city is an overall system that - according to Urban Political Ecology - incorporates categories of materiality and immateriality and thus connects all levels: social, ecological and economic. Urban political ecology makes no explicit reference to resilience, but does overcome the nature-culture divide by assuming the “urbanization of nature”[4] (Heynen, 2006). It deals with interrelationships between social and political processes, material metabolism and spatial form.

According to this strand of theory, the city is an urban, socio-ecological, natural landscape. There is no separation between “untouched nature” and “built city”, so a city like New York could be seen as a new nature, i.e. a new urban “ecosystem”.

The production of the city involves levels of politics, culture and power. An example at the interface of the ecosystem and infrastructure - as a product of the transformation of natural resources through human use - is water management in the city. A risk of flooding (e.g. due to softened dikes) requires measures to deal with the potential danger. The resilience strategies are based on the same levels on which the hazard was constructed: space, time and action. The spatial scale defines the positioning of a coastline, a dyke and a house, as well as the mobility of the latter in this network of relationships. The local scope of the effects of the flooding can also be considered spatially. The implicit reference to time means the speed with which the flooding spreads and thus also the speed with which action must be taken. In a similar way, crises in today's world: banking crises, economic crises, migration flows, are immediately visible in cities and require rapid adaptation of a city's infrastructure, housing structures and identity. Another example from a current geo-political situation is the flow of Ukrainians fleeing to Polish cities after the Russian attack at the end of February 2022. On the one hand, the Polish capital Warsaw grew by one city district within a few weeks, on the other hand, the infrastructure of the railroad stations was heavily congested in the first months after the war because it was not planned for the increase in the number of travelers within such a short time.[5] Other urban disasters, such as 9/11 in NYC[6] or the earthquake and the accompanying destruction of the nuclear power plant and its consequences in Japanese cities[7], clearly show how an entire nation and its collective memory can be shaped by crises in metropolitan areas.

Urban Political Ecology refers to important categories of social vulnerability and the vulnerability of urban society. In this strand of theory, the city is seen as a process of negotiation between different social groups. Although strongly capitalist in character, the theory aptly describes the situation of cities in the last 50 years. The “positive growth” and prosperity contributed to a tripling of the specific living space per inhabitant, an exponential increase in building volume and a fivefold increase in the number of cars. Many cities have completed their phase of historical growth, so that the suburbs around the cities are growing, but at the same time the previous prosperity cannot simply be continued. Clever structural and economic planning and a sustainable energy transition should lead to a new urban form. It should build resilience against hazards without any loss of urban identity and quality of life for residents.

Summary

Although resilience can be related to the stress on a subject or a body in each single case, it requires the inclusion of several levels (e.g. technological) for social, economic or urban resilience. The stress tests of a hazardous situation for systems, meanwhile, can no longer be reduced to the case of stress on the physical body or the logic of an ecosystem. This complexity removes the term from its original reference to an ecosystem and lays claim to a scientific foundation for the term.

The normativity of sustainability - despite the close thematic relationship - has a restrictive effect on the concept of resilience and should be overcome by postmodern social science theories.

The materiality-immateriality, action settings and Actor-Network approaches in systems theory for resilient planning are useful for establishing the concept, although they are by no means definitive. All theoretical approaches to overcoming the dichotomy are important because they incorporate new categories such as social vulnerability, adaptability of planning or the identity of a city. Resilient (and sustainable) planning should provide typologies and urban models that remain robust, liveable and adaptable for the uncertain future.

Footnotes:

[1] „Vom Begriff der Nachhaltigkeit unterscheidet sich der Begriff der Resilienz in seinem Wesenskern, seiner Perspektive: Während die Nachhaltigkeit eher die Erhaltung des Ganzen, die Einbettung in den Kontext der Umwelt im Blick hat, schaut die Resilienz eher auf die Erhaltung der spezifischen Eigenart, des besonderen, eigenen Charakters im Kontext der Umwelt“, Sieverts, T., Am Beginn einer Stadtentwicklungsepoche…, p. 318

[2] A brief interim look at the concepts of self-creating nature (“natura naturans”) may be of interest:: „Since the seventeenth century, technology has replaced nature and what appears to be natura naturans is treated as natura naturata”, Mallinson, H., “Weather dissidents. From natura naturans to “space” and back again”, p.165-179, at: Weizman I., “Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence”, p. 166

[3] Sabine Hansemann defines the open plan and “monospace” in architecture as a background and an open stage for elements of the relational network of Actor-Network Theory: „With monospace buildings, it is particularly essential to turn to the reality of the building in the process of use in order to overcome the separation of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ space. (...) This very dichotomy that reduces the building to passive material” (s.16). Examples include the Neue Nationalgalerie (p.16), the Pantheon in Rome (p.39), the offices of Frank Lloyd Wright (p.40) and Sainsbury Cenre (p.105) and the Renault car Mégan Scénic (s.38), Hansemann S., Monospace and Multiverse, Exploring Space with Actor-Network-Theory

[4] „Das generelle Plädoyer zielt einerseits auf die stärkere Berücksichtigung von physischen und ökologischen Prozessen in Theorien der Stadt („re-naturing urban theory“, Heynen et al. 2006, 2) und andererseits auf die stärkere Berücksichtigung der Stadt in der Umweltforschung. Genauer geht es den Autoren um die Bedeutung historisch- geographischer Prozesse bei der <<Urbanisierung der Natur>>“, Christmann, G.; Ibert, O.; Kilper, H.; Moss, Vulnerabilität und Resilienz in sozio-räumlicher Perspektive, S.19-20

[5] Zubik M.; Sławiński A.; Wojtczuk M., “Refugees in Warsaw, the number of them is so large as if a city of considerable size had been incorporated into the capital”, online article in „Wyborcza.pl“ from 10.03.2022

[6] “The attack on New York City was not only an attack on perhaps the most prominent city in the world, but an attack on an icon of American capitalism (...) use of the term Ground Zero, an image of total destruction taken directly from Manhattan Project rhetoric describing the dead zone in New Mexico where the first atomic test took place in July 1945.”, Linenthal E.T., S.59, The Predicament of Aftermath, S.55-74, at: Vale L. J.; Campanella T.J., The resilient city

[7] “This overview of disasters in Japan and their role in the transformation of cities demonstrates that the response to urban trauma depends upon the larger political and socioeconomic, as well as cultural and technological situation and the special conditions of the city prevailing at the time.”, S.228, Hein C., Resilient Tokyo, S.213-234, at: Vale, L. J.; Campanella, T.J., The resilient city

Literature and Sources:

Christmann, G.; Ibert, O.; Kilper, H.; Moss, T. et.al. (2011) Vulnerabilität und Resilienz in sozio-räumlicher Perspektive. Begriffliche Klärungen und theoretischer Rahmen. Working Paper. Erkner: Leibniz-Institut für Regionalentwicklung und Strukturplanung

Sieverts, Thomas. (2013). Am Beginn einer Stadtentwicklungsepoche der Resilienz? Folgen für Architektur, Städtebau und Politik, in: Informationen zur Raumentwicklung, Heft 4. 2013, p. 315-323 (online)

Vale, L. J.; Campanella, T.J. (eds.) (2005). The resilient city: How modern cities recover from disaster. Oxford: Oxford University Press;
Linenthal E.T., The Predicament of Aftermath, Oklahoma City and September 11, S.55-74; Hein C., Resilient Tokyo, p.213-234

Weizman I., (Editor), Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence, Routledge, London, New York; Mallinson, H., (2014) Weather dissidents. From natura naturans to “space” and back again, p. 165-179

Hansmann, Sabine, (2021) Monospace and Multiverse, Exploring Space with Actor-Network-Theory, in: Materialities, Volume 28, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

Zubik M.; Sławiński A.; Wojtczuk M. (2022), Uchodźcy w Warszawie, jest ich tylu, jakby do stolicy przyłączyli spore miasto. "Wolontariusze to za mało",
/ own translation: “Refugees in Warsaw, the number of them is so large as if a city of considerable size had been incorporated into the capital”, online-article in „Wyborcza.pl“ from 10.03.2022

https://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/7,54420,28204250,w-warszawie-wyrosla-nowa-dzielnica-ukrainska-na-samym-entuzjazmie.html?disableRedirects=true,
accessed: 11.04.2023, 16:50 MEZ

Natalia Wyrwa