The U.K. telegraph today published highlights of a upcoming report from Demos thinktank entitled Resilient Nation -How communities respond to systemic breakdown. Demos publishes all it's publications as ebooks free for download under a creative commons license.
The report looks at the complex interconnectedness of modern British urban life and suggests that an interruption or severe shock to any single node such as transportation, fuel, energy or food could quickly ripple outwards and paralyze the entire system.
Resilient Nation authors characterize the current state of affairs as a 'brittle' society, or one which is disaster prone and ripe to fast collapse. A city which relies on top down master planning or centralized decision making has huge implications for disaster preparedness when the head cannot connect to the surrounding areas or any single link is capable of disrupting the entire supply chain.
While not sounding alarmist like similar Y2k end of the millennium scenarios, DEMO's research suggests that city officials need to proactively look to popular social networking sites like FaceBook and Twitter to get out the message before problems arise.
Finally, Demo's suggest that 4 keystones for a resilient city include the four "Es" of - community engagement, education, empowerment and encouragement. Not such a bad checklist to use when thinking about and envisioning what could be a very unpleasant wake up call for any city!
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Resilient City Research Report
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