2013 cities international seminar: Resilient cities - Beyond mitigation, preparedness, responses and recovery

CITIES is an annual event hosted by the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember. Since the first time it was held, CITIES has covered a broad range of topics in spatial sciences. This year, CITIES aims to explore the theme ‘Resilient Cities: Beyond mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery’. Accelerated urbanization, especially in developing countries has put a lot of pressure on the built environment. This, in effect, influences the way the built environment responds to climate change, and natural and man-made disasters.

Disaster and resilience come at a cost. How much is lost, how much are we willing to pay, and how much can we afford to lose when disaster strikes? We search for quantifiable means to measure the amount of losses suffered when disaster strikes, and how much can be saved when mitigation and disaster preparedness schemes are put into practice?

The way we plan our cities and the built environment in general affect the way it performs in providing a safe, controllable, and comfortable content of activities. Spatial planning and urban design are considered as problem-solving methods in the built environment context. Are there possibilities for creative and innovative intervention? To what extent do urban planning and design affect the urban morphology, and what can they do to boost resilience in the built environment?

The term ‘resilient city’ encompasses physical planning and interventions aimed only at the built environment. Resilience can only be achieved and sustained through thorough integration of both the built and the social environments. In this case, we ask: how can communities contribute to creating and improving resilience?

Planning a resilient city is a challenge to urban planning and all disciplines involved in general. CITIES, being a platform to disseminate research and planning practices, invites those who are interested in exploring the questions we pose to participate in the 2013 CITIES International Seminar.

Topics include:

1. Climate change and its impact on the built environment;
2. Community and stakeholder engagement;
3. Planning concepts: creating, and re-creating urban and regional settings;
4. Contingency planning;
5. Disaster and resilience economics;
6. Disaster risk management;
7. Urban amenities and their role in enhancing resilience;
8. Hazards, vulnerability, and risk mapping and modeling;
9. Land use and transportation modeling;
10. Early warning systems: role and strategies;
11. Environmental carrying capacity;
12. Eco-regions and ecological footprint; and
13. Creative intervention measures.