A spatial-hormetic approach to urban resilience

A spatial-hormetic approach to urban resilience

Forgaci, C.
Van Timmeren, A.

Architecture and The Built Environment

Urbanism

2014-05-26

While the complexity of urban environments is growing, the effectiveness of action-driven strategies appears to be decreasing. This paper speculates on three alternative approaches: (1) strategies of inaction; (2) strategies of subtraction or, even more, (3) strategies of hormesis, that keep their subject (cities, neighbourhoods, communities, etc. in our case) under a small, controlled and continuous dosage of stress, with the purpose of strengthening it for the eventuality of a possible future large shock of the same kind. The last strategy may be rooted in the first two if inaction or subtraction causes deprivation, especially when, say, consciously inducing lower-than-usual levels in relative comfort of living. In this sense, the paper is testing the hypothesis that by applying such strategies in urban environments we will improve social-ecological resilience. And this “requires understanding of ecosystems that incorporates the knowledge of local users” (Folke et al., 2002, p. 438), but also – as claimed in this paper – the understanding of how social processes can minimize their impact through calculated and targeted inaction, with the ultimate goal of improving the capacity of our urban environments to face disruptive change. Social processes need to embrace change and let ecological processes help in responding to it. Three cases will illustrate real-world situations that may offer insight into the potential effect of such strategies in resilience building. The first case – an abandoned 189 hectares large retention lakeinside the city of Bucharest transformed into an ecological ‘oasis’ with the biodiversity of a delta – shows how inaction can lead to unexpectedly high ecological qualities. Second, the Dutch woonerf and the concept of shared space are shown as examples of targeted subtraction. The third case looks at the inhabitants of Venice and their lifestyle adapted to regular seasonal floods. Of course, this is a situation where ecological resilience is very low, but, as the interaction between social and ecological systems forced people to adapt, social resilience seems to be high. These three cases will be concluded with a discussion on how to formulate strategies that eliminate unnecessary action and on understanding to what extent urban systems can live with induced stress without suffering from it.

action bias
inaction
subtraction
hormesis
urban resilience

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:fa46a750-7e4e-4f30-b5e2-b1d14f15c56d

International Conference URC. Urban Regions under Change: Towards Social-Ecological Resilience, Hamburg, Germany, 26-27 May 2014

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2014 The Author(s)