School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences

City governments are increasingly interested in the concept of urban resilience. While theoretical debates continue to develop and critique the value of ‘urban resilience,’ a growing number of cities are organizing policies and projects around the concept. Building urban resilience is viewed as a key concern for cities facing, in particular, climatic threats –although other urban challenges and equity concerns are increasingly prioritized. Support from city leadership and large funding opportunities, such as the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program, have encouraged some leading cities to create and manage city-wide resilience strategies. Yet pioneering cities have few guideposts to institutionalize resilience. This research evolved out of conversations with city officials in Portland, OR who were interested to learn how other cities were organizing resilience work. We explore how urban resilience is being structured and coordinated in 19 North American cities, focusing on emerging definitions, organizational structures, internal and external coordination efforts, and practitioners’ insights. We situate our findings on emerging governance approaches and lessons learned within the current urban resilience literature on governance by reviewing 40 academic papers and identifying 6 recurrent factors for effective governance. Additionally, we conducted 19 semi-structured interviews with North American resilience practitioners to describe emerging organization trends and share lessons from practice. Based off our interviews, we propose 5 key findings for structuring resilience work in cities effectively. These include: establishing a clear, contextual definition and scope, bringing communities into the process, championing the agreed-upon vision, balancing a centralized and dispersed approach, and recognizing tradeoffs in organizational placement. This research provides practitioners with insights to help facilitate resilience work within their cities and contributed to the scholarly debate on moving resilience theory toward implementation.

Cities are restoring rivers to recapture the social, ecological, and economic benefits of rehabilitated rivers. But, traditional urban planning and flood management tools may not address the complex relationships between humans, the built environment, and natural elements in the social-ecological systems of which rivers are an important part. They also may not acknowledge and address the factors that led to channelization. The field of regenerative design and development—an eco-centric approach that aims to dismantle the underlying processes and viewpoints behind the most pressing environmental problems—offers tools to plan more effective and inclusive river restoration projects. To explore these issues and the potential of regenerative design and development, we reviewed 15 urban river restoration plans, followed by a comparative case study of the Los Angeles River, CA and the Kinnickinnic River, WI. We conducted a content analysis of plans and popular press articles, and interviewed key actors. Results indicate many participants exhibit regenerative thinking and participate in regenerative processes, but they are unable to fully implement regenerative projects due to several constraints at institutional, social, economic, physical levels. Study recommendations emphasize rooting restoration in the unique aspects of place, reframing projects as part of nested social-ecological systems, working from potential, addressing broader socioeconomic challenges, and leveraging strategic nodes. Changes to planning education and practice are needed to empower planners to think and act regeneratively.

For waste management in Asunción, Paraguay to improve, so too must the rate of public recycling participation. However, due to minimal public waste management infrastructure, it is up to individual citizens and the private sector to develop recycling solutions in the city. One social enterprise called Soluciones Ecológicas (SE) has deployed a system of drop-off recycling stations called ecopuntos, which allow residents to deposit their paper and cardboard, plastic, and aluminum. For SE to maximize the use of its ecopuntos, it must understand the perceived barriers to, and benefits of, their use. To identify these barriers and benefits, a doer on-doer survey based on the behavioral determinants outlined in the Designing for Behavior Change Framework was distributed among Asunción residents. Results showed that perceived self-efficacy, perceived social norms, and perceived positive consequences – as well as age – were influential in shaping ecopunto use. Other determinants such as perceived negative consequences, access, and universal motivators were significant predictors of gender and age. SE and other institutions looking to improve recycling can use these results to design effective behavior change interventions.