The Resilience Revolution

Abstract

In the Anthropocene Age the world population is growing at a considerable rate. How long nature will be able to keep us with this growth is the main challenge for us, as citizens and planners. Climate change, water scarcity, pollution, broken urban cycles, and rising prices for resources show at an increasing rate that nature’s abilities are not inexhaustible. A resilience-oriented city, therefore, must have insight into its own metabolism. When we look at planning and managing cities as organism with their own metabolisms it becomes clear that city and nature are not separate entities. Cities use nature as their supplier of fuel, food, resource materials, and water, and nature also absorbs the output and the waste generated by those cities.