Urban Planning for Transitions

4 iv) Defining the resilience lens: based on the seven qualities of resilience, that is: reflective, resourceful, robust, redundant, flexible, inclusive and integrated.

5 v) Defining focus areas: based on the city’s challenges, which are: social cohesion and education; energy transition; climate adaptation; cyber use and security; critical infrastructure; changing urban governance (changes in society and democracy, driven by moving away from the top–down hierarchy to a more bottom–up approach with much greater levels of community and citizen involvement); a changing economy that is driven more by sharing and technological innovation “Next Economy”.

6 vi) Define the resilience goals: based on the city analysis (12 aspects);

7 vii) Define actions and related actions: connected to the vision and objective of each goal.

The Resilience Strategy 2030 adopted by the city of Rotterdam includes seven goals with reference from the resilience qualities: (i) Rotterdam: a balanced society; (ii) World Port City built on clean and reliable energy; (iii) Rotterdam Cyber Port City; (iv) Climate Adaptive city to a new level; (v) infrastructure ready to face the 21st century; (vi) Rotterdam network city; and (vii) anchoring resilience in the city.

Figure 1.1. Resilience goals of Rotterdam Brochure. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/douay/transitions.zip

(Source: Rotterdam Resilience Strategy 2016) .

The city of Rotterdam managed to launch the resilience strategy by featuring good public participation and the involvement of different stakeholders such as the Rotterdam residents, public and private organizations, businesses and knowledge institutions in the decision-making process. Table 1.2presents a summary of most of the stakeholders that participated in the process of coming up with the Resilience Strategy 2030.

Table 1.2. Stakeholders and actors

(source: Rotterdam Resilience Strategy)

Following this, Rotterdam took a comprehensive approach on the city’s efforts for resilience, targeting a holistic way to face challenges in smaller scales. All the goals scheduled to be acted upon by the different stakeholders were described in each section. It also included a description of the financing methods or feasibility; the current status of development or implementation; the categorization of the response – as short, medium or long term; and the owner and the level of impact, in the scale of an individual, district or the city.

Table 1.3. Rotterdam Resilience Goals

(source: Rotterdam Resilience Strategy 2016)

This Resilience Strategy adopted by the city has managed to cover different scales, starting from the smallest one that is buildings and people to the world-wide scale through connecting with and recognizing other cities with global resilience strategies. Therefore, the strategy managed to focus and reasonably integrate the following key aspects.

The strategy has adopted different programs and initiatives that made it distinctive, creative and applicable as well. The following ideas present how the strategy has succeeded in being creative in dealing with city’s threats and how they formulated their weaknesses into opportunities (the following programs and initiatives are based on personal preferences):