Urban resilience in practice

Preparation of a municipal implementation project

About the Project 

Cities are increasingly facing overlapping crises - from climate change to social tensions and technological risks. To deal with these effectively, resilient urban structures that don't just focus on individual measures, but on integrated action, are needed.

This is exactly where the seven-month preparation phase of the “Urban Resilience in Practice” project comes in. The basic assumption is that the resilient city does not need to be reinvented, but rather thought through more consistently. Many building blocks, such as green-blue infrastructure, digital solutions, and forms of citizen participation, have long been in place – but often side by side rather than in interaction with one another. The results of the previous study in the German context, “Wie halten Sie es mit der Resilienz?” make it clear that many municipalities want to become more resilient but often do not know how. There is a lack of common understanding, concrete implementation aids, and integrated approaches that go beyond individual topics such as climate adaptation. The aim is therefore to pool existing knowledge and develop it further in a practical way.

Part of the preparatory study involves systematically analyzing the current state of research on systemic urban resilience. Furthermore, existing resilience practices in German cities will be systematically analyzed, gaps identified, and existing findings meaningfully consolidated. Last but not least, technical experts will be involved in order to jointly develop the planned project ideas, better understand the specific support needs of municipalities, and create a tailor-made basis for a subsequent implementation project.

At the end of this preliminary project, a solid technical and practical foundation for the implementation project “Urban Resilience in Practice” should be in place, through which municipalities can be specifically supported in building urban resilience in the future - systematically, practically, and with a view to the growing, often parallel challenges of urban spaces.