Resources are scarcer, competition for investment greater, and the pace of change is faster. Pandemics, climate change, AI, migration, infrastructure deficits and increasing inequity, pose increasing threats to urban living.
Ten years ago, the City Resilience Framework was published by Arup, with support from The Rockefeller Foundation. It provided a new way to help leaders, across the public and private sector, to identify and respond to the risks and uncertainties they faced.
In the decade that has followed, the concept of resilience has become more familiar across society and culture; but given its complexity, taking action to achieve it remains as challenging a task as ever.
Informed by the experiences of cities and their Chief Resilience Officers over the last ten years, Arup with the support of the Resilient Cities Network has updated the City Resilience Framework (CRF’24) to help cities accelerate action.
The goal with this new edition is to provide a more accessible tool, one that will help a wider cohort of leaders, planners and investors to embrace collaborative and coordinated action on the resilience priorities their cities face.
CRF’24 now empowers improvements at city, neighborhood or precinct levels, including masterplans for new developments and urban regeneration. It helps to pose the right questions, to identify the right priorities, and achieve coordinated action across departments and stakeholders.
Benefits of CRF’24:
- A simplified framework, with goals based on best practice and industry standards
- Provides a common language around resilience, promoting a shared understanding and facilitating better engagement with diverse stakeholders
- Encourages systemic thinking by identifying interdependencies between objectives.
- Identifies which goals to prioritize, based on city-wide and local challenges
- Provides a straightforward methodology to assess a masterplan’s potential performance
- Helps cities evaluate projects to ensure that they demonstrate cross-cutting resilience outcomes and better meet the funding criteria of IFIs or climate funds
Chief Resilience Officers describe using CRF’24:
“Broward County recognized the need for a more holistic approach to resilience, focusing on how to strengthen its organizational resilience to better serve its communities. The CRF provided a structured and holistic approach to addressing our resilience challenges.”
Dr. Jennifer Jurado, Chief Resilience Officer, Broward County
“The City Resilience Framework provided a valuable platform for meaningful dialogue among stakeholders across Penang Island, Seberang Perai, and the Penang State. It was easy to understand for everyone involved and related directly to the issues we face on a day-to-day basis, helping us clearly identify what it takes to build a resilient Penang.”
Muhamad Husni Bin Mahmud, Chief Resilience Officer, Penang State
“Resilient Sydney has recently used the City Resilience Framework (CRF) to structure our city-wide community engagement and risk assessment for the second Resilient Sydney Strategy. Using the CRF has helped us develop purposeful actions across the four dimensions of resilience.”
Beck Dawson, Chief Resilience Officer, Greater Sydney