The Resilient Melbourne experiment: Analyzing the conditions for transformative urban resilience implementation

Highlights

• We respond to the call from urban resilience scholars to consider the 5Ws (who, what, where, when and why?) of resilience in our analysis of 100RC initiative in Melbourne, Australia.

• We develop an analytical framework to assess the 100RC Melbourne initiative against a set of conditions for transformative urban resilience implementation’ incorporating four dimensions – governance and institutional settings (how); inclusions/exclusions (who); framing and purpose (why and what); and system boundaries and interventions (where and when).

• We highlight the ‘institution building’ role the 100RC is playing mediating between, and connecting, actors, sectors, and interests.

• We argue that while experiments such as the 100RC initiative can demonstrate new ways of working collaboratively, explicit attention must be paid to the sets of conditions required to mobilize transformative change in urban resilience implementation.

Abstract

This paper examines the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) initiative in Melbourne and frames this as an experiment in urban resilience governance and planning. We respond to the call from urban resilience scholars to consider the 5Ws (who, what, where, when and why?) of resilience and consider what this means for reframing urban resilience implementation. Melbourne is one of the first wave of 33 cities involved in 100RC and the release of the 2016 Strategy is the first attempt at urban resilience governance and planning in this city. We examine its role in mobilizing urban resilience reflecting on the 5Ws and also the ‘how’, as a governance experiment. With no metropolitan mandate and within a highly fragmented governing context, we develop an analytical framework to assess the 100RC Melbourne initiative identifying a set of conditions for transformative urban resilience implementation incorporating four dimensions – governance and institutional settings (how); inclusions/exclusions (who); framing and purpose (why and what); and system boundaries and interventions (where and when). We reflect on how urban resilience has been framed and adapted within this initiative and the extent to which this process of urban resilience implementation may have the capacity to influence, disrupt or change mainstream urban policy and planning frameworks. We highlight the institution building role the 100RC is playing by mediating between, and connecting, actors, sectors, and interests. We discuss the prospects for shaping a more integrated and inclusive mode of urban governance and resilience planning, a need which has become particularly acute in the context of the shock and ongoing stressor of COVID 19. We conclude by arguing that while experiments such as the 100RC initiative can demonstrate new ways of working collaboratively, explicit attention must be paid to the sets of conditions required to mobilize transformative change in urban resilience implementation.

Introduction

This paper examines the Rockefeller Foundations 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) initiative in Melbourne. Melbourne is one of the first wave of 33 cities involved in 100RC and the release of the Resilient Melbourne (2016a) is the first metropolitan wide resilience strategy in Australia. It is described as “a starting point that brings together individuals and organizations critical to the resilience of Melbourne and its diverse communities” (Resilient Melbourne, 2018 n.d.). In examining this initiative, this paper also contributes to calls from urban scholars to better understand the prospects for urban resilience experiments such as the C40 network and the 100RC for changing or disrupting the status quo of embedded urban policy and planning frameworks (Davidson & Gleeson, 2017; Fastenrath et al., 2019; Wagenaar & Wilkinson, 2015; Wilkinson et al., 2010). Urban transitions and urban experimentation literature highlight the necessity of foregrounding politics and power in urban change processes (Evans et al., 2016; Hodson & Marvin, 2010; Luque-Ayala et al., 2018; Sengers et al 2019). Similarly, the need to consider the who, what, where, when, and why (5Ws) of urban resilience has been highlighted by a growing number of urban scholars (Davoudi et al., 2012; Meerow et al., 2016; Meerow & Newell, 2019; Vale, 2014). Davoudi et al. (2012) identified four issues that must be addressed in critically analyzing the adoption of urban resilience as a policy goal including the question of intentionality, outcomes and who gets to define resilience; system boundaries and potential exclusions and how political considerations are accounted for. These issues were later picked up by Meerow and Newell (2019) as they draw attention to the 5Ws of urban resilience, focusing on, for example, whose resilience is being prioritized; what networks and sectors are in the urban system; are short or long term resilience considered (when); where are the spatial boundaries and what localities are being prioritized; and what are the underlying motivations for building resilience (why) (Meerow & Newell, 2019). We draw on these considerations when we examine issues around urban resilience implementation.

Recent literature around the operationalization and implementation of urban resilience argues for the need to reframe resilience, to better understand the trade-offs, and to link to issues of institutional embedding of new practices and policies (Chelleri et al., 2015; Chelleri & Olazabal, 2012; Coaffee et al., 2018). Some of these authors highlight the need to, for example, understand and analyze the pre-existing governance models and capacities to govern and implement actions, how trade-offs are considered and assessed and what conditions are necessary for transformative change (as opposed to maintaining the status quo). In the next section we further explore these issues and drawing on this literature, we develop a conceptual framework for mobilizing transformative urban resilience implementation (Section 3). Our framework identifies four sets of conditions: governance and institutional settings (how?); inclusions/exclusions (who?); framing, purpose and learning (why and what?); and system boundaries and interventions (when and where?) which we use to assess the RMS (2016). In Section 4 we present the case of the 100 RC and RMS (2016) focusing on governance, framing and strategy process, and in Section 5 we apply our analytical framework to assess the prospects for mobilizing transformative urban resilience governance and actions through the RMS initiative. We conclude with some final remarks about the role the 100RC is playing by mediating between, and connecting, actors, sectors, and interests and discuss the prospects for shaping a more integrated and inclusive mode of urban governance and resilience planning. The need to better understand the conditions for transformative urban resilience implementation has become all the more acute during this year when we experienced the shock and ongoing stressor of COVID 19 which is reshaping our lives.