Urban Resilience for any city is a gap to be fully understood and assimilated in Urban Planning. Globalization and rapid Urbanization in recent years have led to newer challenges as higher densities, greater demand for infrastructure, resources, environmental and man-made hazards are on the increase. Cities are trying to cope-up with the rising demands through various planning techniques and modern applications and planning models. However, each city’s landscape is different and many a times these approaches might not adhere appropriately to every aspect of a city. One of the worst situations where the reality could be understood; resilience of a city would be truly realized, is when disaster strikes.
The flood in Kerala State that happened in August 2018 is one such example where a lot can be studied. Not only the fact of ‘coping up to the maximum damage possible’, it is also ‘how fast human lives can be brought back to their normal stable level’. The level; whether prevailed original condition prior to hazard or higher or acceptable lowest, is another question to be resolved. In most cases the governmental and other agencies would strive is to attain the lowest acceptable level. However, it is most appreciated if the resilience exceeds the original level with new approach to planning, design and infrastructural capabilities so that the disaster, even if it strikes again will affect the damage prevention better. The ability of the city or the extent of resilience shown by Kerala is very strong, especially when compared to similar scale disasters that have struck in India and even other parts of the world.
The paper tries to study and evaluate these factors that lead to faster resilience of the state of Kerala in order to model a flexible and more effective urban resilient planning approach.
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