Resilience and Urban Governance: Securing Cities by Katarína Svitková

Author:Katarína Svitková [Svitková, Katarína]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Public Policy, City Planning & Urban Development, Spain & Portugal, Europe, Latin America, Social Science, Political Science, Urban, History, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781000413083
Google: zKYvEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-07-22T13:20:53+00:00

In the dimension of knowledge, experts assembled in research networks, alliances, and consultancies construct a standard of resilience based on quantifiable indicators, using data and science to legitimize it. Merging with the dimension of funding, expertise is used for the purposes of risk assessment and insurance in order to quantify resilience as a value, juxta-positioned to vulnerability as a liability. State governments and international organizations of various kinds, including UN agencies and philanthropic organizations, provide funding in forms of grants and development schemes, in addition to loans and investment from development banks. This is where resilience funding merges with technology, with a unique position held by private sector. From corporations to start-ups, resilient technology is sold to cities in forms of upgrading urban infrastructures, critical networks, and defensive elements to mitigate impacts of disasters. Resilient hardware and software are developed and installed to enable constant monitoring and surveil-lance of urban flows of people, goods, and data. This is where the scheme comes full circle back to the dimension of knowledge, merging technological advances with the data that powers the former.

Deploying resilience as a technology of government, resilient urban sites and subjects are constituted with the help of actors and practices identified in the Diagram. It is by no means an exhaustive list; rather, it is a simplified representation of how the resilience-powered governmentality can be interpreted. The form of overlapping circles also over-simplifies the openness and fluidity of the governmentality assemblage. In other words, the number of other specific stake-holders and practices that could be included is virtually unlimited. The resilient subject, as both agent and product of this governmentality, is not explicitly included in the Diagram; however, it is ever-present in a sense of their subjectivity and behaviour which are the ultimate targets of the described knowledge-power mechanism.

The analytical framework discussed earlier is used further in this book to highlight different ways in which resilience has been assembled across three different urban centres. Attention is paid to the distinction of the established regulatory networks of institutions and organizations claiming to implement resilience on one side, and the intersubjective effects of resilience on subjects on the other. The unique local contexts, institutions, and actors have shaped different political and practical manifestations of resilience. As a result, the implementation of seemingly straightforward policy concepts and ideas can vary considerably across different sites.

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