Urban Transformation

5 ways to resilience-proof our cities for an age of disruption

Resilient cities must plan for a range of future risks, including climate change and exponential population growth.

Resilient cities must plan for a range of future risks, including climate change and exponential population growth. Image: Wikicommons/Ken Lund

Fabienne Robert
Director, Sustainable Construction Observatory, Saint-Gobain
This article is part of: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
  • Resilient cities must plan for a range of future risks, including climate change and exponential population growth.
  • From sponge cities to repurposing housing, the construction sector is at the forefront of efforts to help cities meet these challenges.
  • Sustained and politically directed investment into resilience measures will also be vital.

Resilience is the ability of cities to survive, adapt and thrive in the face of shocks and stresses, whether immediate or long term. It means planning for future risks and ensuring that the built environment is ready to cope with them over the next 10, 20, or 50 years. Resilience also means bouncing back from disruption, using it as an opportunity to strengthen urban systems.

The challenge, therefore, is to start thinking in terms of adaptability, so that cities can withstand whatever the future may bring. First of all, there is global warming, which is increasing the severity and frequency of extreme climate events. How can we be better prepared for extreme heat and protect residents from its effects? How can we restore the ability of city soils to absorb torrential rains?

Have you read?

Second, there's the demographic emergency. Nearly 70% of the world’s population is expected to be living in megacities by 2050, with an additional 2.2 billion urban citizens, mainly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. What solutions will enable cities to absorb the exponential growth in residents? And can the impact of this growth on the environment be minimized, not forgetting the fact that major cities are subsiding under their own weight, as a result of rapid urbanization? As sea levels rise, large cities on the coast are at even greater risk of flooding.

How can we build resilient cities

Here are five ways to make cities more resilient:

1. Learn to live with extreme heat

The cities concerned are pulling out all the stops to avoid overheating during heatwaves: painting roofs white to reflect heat, unsealing soils, installing shade structures, alleviating heat islands, and so on. The hottest US city, Phoenix – located in the middle of the desert – uses “cool pavement” on its streets, a light-coloured coating that cools the streets more quickly at night than traditional asphalt. And the energy efficiency of its public buildings is optimized, through the use of electrochromic glazing.

2. Absorb rainwater

In the face of flood risk, the most obvious solution is to combat soil sealing in cities and urban sprawl, which are responsible for the disappearance of natural areas. Ultimately, this means returning to a virtuous water cycle – by restoring the soil’s capacity to absorb rainwater and then release it, by removing asphalt from the edges of buildings, municipal land and school playgrounds, and by increasing the number of green areas.

3. Make buildings reversible

Repurpose factories, offices and shopping centres into homes to rapidly adapt the existing housing stock to changes in population for resilient cities. This is possible by promoting the reversibility of buildings and adopting a “chronotopic” approach (i.e. changing use of a building over time). This type of construction has a “universal” structure and features finishing work that is easy to remove.

4. Make cities lighter

The solution exists: light construction. In contrast to conventional construction methods, which favour structures with load-bearing masonry walls (made of stone, concrete or brick), light construction uses lighter load-bearing structures in the form of timber, metal, or concrete “skeletons” to which non-load-bearing façade and partition systems are attached. This makes buildings considerably lighter, without compromising their robustness or strength.

5. Support investment in resilient solutions

Financiers need to come up with funding mechanisms that support investment in resilient solutions. Their challenge is to align short-term financial incentives with long-term resilience goals.

Insurance is a key driver of resilience. By drawing on scientific data on how climate change affects different risks, insurers can assess the positive impact investments can have on resilience, and thus fine-tune the insurance costs for resilient projects.

Political intervention: Public authorities must align their procurement strategies and infrastructure investments with their climate goals, promoting the transition to a more resilient economy in all sectors.

Discover

What is the World Economic Forum doing to promote sustainable urban development?

What more is needed?

To give cities a chance to become more resilient, the focus should be on three areas:

  • More collaboration: There are many stakeholders involved in resilient cities, often with differing road maps and goals. Setting them all on the same path requires increased cross-cutting dialogue within national and international bodies.
  • More long-term vision: Anticipating tomorrow’s risks requires rigorous planning and projection beyond the short-term interests of projects, two aspects that are sometimes in conflict in a construction sector that is still highly constrained by immediate challenges.
  • More training: Because sustainable construction solutions require specific skills and knowledge if they are to be properly implemented, as well as an openness to best practices being developed around the world.
Loading...
Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

Sign up for free

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Stay up to date:

Cities and Urbanization

Related topics:
Urban TransformationClimate ActionSocial Innovation
Share:
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Cities and Urbanization is affecting economies, industries and global issues
World Economic Forum logo

Forum Stories newsletter

Bringing you weekly curated insights and analysis on the global issues that matter.

Subscribe today

Reinvention, not recovery: How Bilbao-Biscay changed its game

Ainara Basurko and Gonzalo Olabarria

February 6, 2025

2:06

Almost half of Singapore is now green space. Here’s how it became a nature-first city

About us

Engage with us

  • Sign in
  • Partner with us
  • Become a member
  • Sign up for our press releases
  • Subscribe to our newsletters
  • Contact us

Quick links

Language editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

Sitemap

© 2025 World Economic Forum