Nowadays,there are two buzzwords-Resilience and Sustainable.David Bello, Associate Editor over at Scientific American, has an interesting post here looking at the supposed tensions between “resilience” and “sustainability”. His argument shows that precisely the characteristics that make many urban systems resilient can also make them deeply unsustainable from an environmental point of view.

A resilient system bounces back from challenges, unharmed, and a big part of building in resilience includes building in ways to fail safely. Sustainability, on the other hand, means efficiency, at least in part, as designers strive to strike a balance between human needs and environmental impacts.

The sustainability of a smart city is based on four main aspects:

Economic: The ability of the city to generate income and employment for the livelihood of all its inhabitants.

Social: The ability of the city to ensure that the well-being (safety, health, education) of the citizens can be equally delivered despite differences in class, race or gender.

Environmental: The ability of a city to protect future quality and reproducibility of its natural resources.

Governance: The ability of the city to maintain social conditions of stability, democracy, participation, and justice.

Source(s) , Link(s) and Inspiration(s):

ITU

Scientific American

resilience and sustainability

Smart City