resilience & climate

I need to do nothing more than look beyond the window sill to see that the weather is playing havoc. It is unstable and unpredictable. How do I address the ensuing sense of vulnerability? Can I have faith in the global powers with their finger on globalisation or, indeed, in the local mayor, who has a say on how the city shifts from vulnerable to resilient? I want to know that if the weather continues this way, often violent in its clash with the earth, I have the means to respond, confident that the powers that be are acting with urgency.

Indeed global warming is turning up the heat, and so it follows that bringing it down will restore balance to weather systems or, at least, not upset them further. As the talk given by urban designer Christopher John Ryan (below) shows, the global nature of the issue has been known for decades, first by scientists. In the public space, however, global warming has been a debate. So, while the weather plays havoc on cities, coastlines and the countryside, it actually tests our resilience. In his discourse on "liquid modernity", sociologist Zygmant Bauman shows that it is the individual citizen who takes the burden of global crises. 

Back in December 2009, just before the UN Climate Summit was about to take place in Copenhagen, Denmark, Professor Ryan gave a talk in Sicily, Italy,* where he pointed to the fabric of the lived city as the place of change. He gave a glimpse of his life work, that of "re-inventing" the city for the ensuing effects of climate change, educating governments, planners and architects, working with designers and people, and giving them "tools" to (re)envision the built city as resilient. 

(*I was involved in the organisation of the event, and did the simultaneous translation into (my rather poor) Italian. Video created by Giovanni di Maria.)


Chris Ryan, sguardi sul clima: ecoinnovazione futuro nel presente from Lacunae on Vimeo.