Introducing Resiliency into Sustainable Urban Planning in Pacific Rim Coastal Cities

I will critique the concept of sustainability as it is found in coastal urban centers, particularly regarding how perceived ecological sustainability effects and is effected by economic development and social disparities. Urban planning has come to rely on an approach that emphasizes balance between economic, social, and ecological development (Goodling et al. 2015). This has resulted in a prescribed list of sustainable options for implementation (2015). Recently, the introduction of resiliency theory into the practice of sustainability has begun to shift the discussions between urban planners and city governances (Sellberg 2015). Using examples of coastal urban centers located around the Pacific Rim, I will study urban planning that relies upon the traditional sense of sustainability as a groundwork, and how the fundamentals of this groundwork have and continue to change along with the introduction of resilience.

Sustainability, particularly in the context of urban planning, can be a dangerous word because it exists only as an ideal, rather than as a practical or physical process (Stables, 2013). Despite the broad nature of the word, the practice of what Sellberg et al. calls, “mainstream methods” of sustainability continues to be a limiting factor in most development systems (2015). Sustainability itself suggests a lack of change, which can be both impractical and undesirable in urban contexts. This stagnancy can also be counter-productive in the context of urban planning because the development part of “sustainable development” suggests change and growth (Stables 2013). Sustainable planning suggests a long-term design and infrastructure that will eventually cap the growth of cities. Resilience thinking, as proposed by Benson and Craig, could potentially be used as a tool in urban planning to create short-term infrastructure that allows for innovation and the inevitable change that occurs in any environment (2014).

Resiliency would allow urban centers to not only provide pre-emptive ecological protection, but to also “respond, recover, and reorganize” as a social and economic unit (Brown et al. 2012). Rather than systems that are created to never fail (“fail-safe”), resilient systems are created to be flexible under pressure, while maintaining the core of the system (“safe-to-fail”)(Redman and Miller 2015). Urban centers form the backbone of the world's economic system, are densely populated, and therefore are hugely important to the human population (McGranahan 2003). As such, the design in these centers should be one that represents the pinnacle of sustainable-resilient thinking. Instead, current sustainability approaches are utilizing classic environmental thought such as “think global, act local,” which has proven to be out of date and unsuccessful (2003). The turbulence in what is considered the “right” way of implementing environmentalism into cities has complicated the way in which urban ecological protection can and should be governed (Bulkeley 2010).

The development of coastal cities, particularly located around the Pacific Rim, is reliant on geography and pathways of communication and transportation between them (Boschken 2013). Subduction zones around the Pacific Ocean have been the cause of giant earthquakes and tsunamis in many areas of the rim, and volcanos are found in what is commonly referred to as the Ring of Fire (Satake and Atwater 2007). The volcano, earthquake, and tsunami trifecta results in major vulnerability and unique city planning in cities found in this region. Already the presence of such natural disasters has produced technology and systems to alert cities to the onslaught of earthquakes and tsunamis. They are also perfect candidates to implement the concept of resiliency; vulnerability to disaster means there is a greater need for cities to be able to bend and change when subjected to such forces, while still holding their fundamental function (Redman and Miller 2015).

While all Pacific Rim countries share the reality of the Ring of Fire and the dangers of shifting tectonic plates, they do not have the same resources, cultures, or histories. Core, northern countries such as the US and Japan deal with the results of tectonic plates and subduction zones with extremely different resources than what is available to semi- and peripheral southern countries like Indonesia and Chile (Satake and Atwater 2007). The dangers of natural disasters are integral to city planning in all four of these countries, and each design is tailored to the specific dangers that each country is likely to be dealing with. On top of the geological differences, each country has a different balance of internal and external resource use, as well as a variety of combinations between trade, transportation, and communication access. Country-specific traits are possible influences on the design and implementation of urban planning, as well as concepts of sustainability and development that drive design in today's market.