Abstract

In a rapidly urbanised world struggling to adapt to a climate crisis and the public health emergency of a global health pandemic, how do we make our cities, communities and economies more resilient in the face of far-reaching, life-changing threats?

In this closing keynote, a panel of experts explore how we adapt and change to prevent, avoid and mitigate against disaster to create the healthy, resilient city of the future.

Commenting on the views from the five panellists, congress chair Jeremy Myerson, from the Royal College of Art’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, concluded: “You’ve got this tension between the organising principle of the city and the diversity and inequality, and non-linear, erratic, unpredictable aspects of cities.

“How do you have an organising principle without destroying the things that makes cities so attractive, colourful and diverse? These are all issues that city planners have been dealing with for year but they are more current than ever.”