Delaying or avoiding the collapse? Testing different strategies for reducing vulnerability
by Chloë Voisin-Bormuth | La Fabrique de la Cité
Is resilience a new imperative? It may seem that way at first glance: everyone talks about it, though not everyone means the same thing, to the point that resilience can seem like just another empty marketing concept with no real substance behind it. While that is certainly the case from time to time, it shouldn’t preclude all interest in the concept. On the contrary, that fact makes it even more crucial to hammer out a clear definition of the term. Above all, it requires us to investigate the concept’s operability by analyzing case studies of areas that have implemented resilience strategies. Because resilience is less about the successful or precise application of a concept, and more about a capacity to steer actions and unify a wide range of stakeholders. This action aims primarily to make our societies less vulnerable to contingencies and reduce the extent of shocks. What strategies have been enacted? How effective have they proved?
Becoming resilient, or doing better with what we (still) have
Several major changes have disrupted the way we understand urban risks:
- climate change, above all. Due to its planetary scale, massive extent, irreversible nature and capacity to provoke virtually unmanageable chain reactions, the implications of climate change go far beyond a rise in the number of natural disasters. Climate change has radically altered our “constellation of risks” (Quenault[1]) and represents one of the greatest challenges humanity will face over the next decades.
- next, the emergence of new, wide-scale systemic risks. These include risks of various nature (social, economic, ecological, etc.), tied to the widespread interconnection accompanying globalization.
- and finally, a growing awareness of the finite nature or rising costs of accessing certain essential resources, like water, food or metal deposits. The World Bank, in a report published in May 2016, pointed out how shrinking water resources poses a massive risk to economic growth (with losses potentially reaching 6% of GDP in some regions) — and to global political stability as it is expected to fuel vast waves of migrants. Another study[2] just published in Nature Sustainability by M. Flörke, C. Schneider and R.I. McDonald, shows that over one hundred metropolitan areas may experience severe water shortages by 2050. Los Angeles, Jaipur, Dar es Salaam, Dalian and Karachi face the most immediate risk.
The extent of these changes forces us to reflect not only on how to reduce contingencies (difficult to manage because of their planet-wide scale), but also on how to make our societies less vulnerable in the face of this new generation of risks. A city’s vulnerability is defined as its relative capacity to preserve its essential functions in the aftermath of a shock or crisis. There are two ways to reduce vulnerability: limit cities’ exposure to shocks or adapt cities following a disturbance. In this case the major challenge becomes durability: how can we make the resources at our disposal last longer, even in the face of shock? How can we reduce the impact of a shock on the urban system? At the Cerisy conference on “Resilient Cities and Territories,” organized by La Fabrique de la Cité, Institut Veolia and Sabine Chardonnet Darmaillacq in September 2017, numerous presentations stressed the idea that reducing vulnerability first means “recuperating resources” (Alexis Delaunay, engineer at the General Council on the Environment and Sustainable Development (CGEDD)) and reducing dependencies. Circular economy, synecoculture, modular building and other solutions have emerged to respond to this question: how can we do better with what we (still) have? Though this new way of producing the city and managing resources can help delay the collapse, will it be enough to avoid it? Many have cast their doubts and called into question the fundamental growth paradigm that our urban societies are currently based on, even in their “sustainable” forms. And they have done so in order to lobby instead for a truly systemic approach to resilience and reducing vulnerabilities.
Shrinking resources, a two-part challenge for resilient cities and territories
In today’s world, it is hard to ignore the rising scarcity of resources, the growing cost of accessing resources and the rapid loss of biodiversity. A study by Inge de Graaf (Utrecht University), presented during the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in December 2016, showed that about 1.8 million people in 2050 may live in regions experiencing absolute or partial water scarcity — first among which are India, Australia, Argentina, California, and southern Europe. Why? Demographic growth and an uptick in personal, agricultural, and industrial consumption rates have placed stress on all types of natural resources, not just water. Over the course of the 20th century (1900/2009), global extraction of raw materials (biomass, industrial and construction minerals, metal ores, fossil fuels) has climbed from 7 to 70 billion metric tons[3]; between now and 2020, that figure is expected to reach 80 billion metric tons[4], which doubles the quantity extracted 40 years earlier and marks a clear acceleration in the rate of extraction. Since the 1980s, our world ecological footprint has in fact exceeded the Earth’s capacity to produce the amount of natural resources we consume and to absorb the waste we produce.
Moreover, the much talked about “Earth Overshoot Day,” calculated by the Global Footprint Network, arrives earlier every year: in 2017, we used as many resources as the planet can produce in one year in just 7 months, meaning that we started living on credit on August 2. From a geological standpoint, some resources are obviously still a long way off from total scarcity. However, the cost of operating these resources will increase due to the difficulty of accessing certain deposits. McKinsey notably suggests that operating a new oil well will cost twice as much in 20 years as it does today[5].
This is alarming news. It poses a two-part challenge for resilient cities: on one hand, natural resources are essential to our survival on Earth, and their depletion represents a damaging shock that is likely to set off a chain reaction (from the environmental impact of resource overconsumption — greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, overproduction of waste, aggravation of climate change — to the social impact — mass migrations). This dire situation will require us to take appropriate adaptive measures in response. On the other hand, this unparalleled depletion of the world’s reserves will make territories more vulnerable to other shocks by leaving them dependent on importing natural resource.
The circular economy: turning resources into assets for new growth opportunities?
How can we cope with the challenges posed by the energy transition? How can we reconcile economic development, personal well-being and natural resource management? 75% of wastes are not reused, only 2% of wastewater is recycled, fewer than 20% of energies are produced by renewable sources, 20% of water in France is lost through leaks (Laurent Auguste, Veolia). These figures point to a new avenue for solving the equation of “producing more with less”: the circular economy.
The circular economy is a new economic development model that breaks with the linear economy model: extract, manufacture, consume, discard. It emphasizes sustainable ways of using natural resources while simultaneously creating new wealth — thereby renewing the economic paradigm based on growth. By focusing on the local scale and cooperation between local players, the circular economy rethinks modes of production, distribution, and consumption. It opts for short cycles that optimize material and energy supply chains, while also promoting moderation, extended life cycles, shared usage (vs. property) and recycling, in order to limit waste and raw material consumption as much as possible. In this new economic model, wastes and refuse become new growth-generating assets and sources of sustainable new jobs that cannot be outsourced, enabling Laurent Auguste, innovation and marketing director at Veolia, to declare at Cerisy: “the circular economy is an element in the renaissance of territories.” In a study published in 2015, McKinsey notably estimated that the circular economy could enable European countries, by 2030, to generate 1.8 billion in savings, while boosting annual productivity by 3% and GDP by 7% based on growth scenarios for the current economic model[6].
So what is the connection between the circular economy and resilience? First, the circular economy would help to reduce our ecological footprint and act directly on contingency in two ways (combatting resource scarcity and associated negative externalities — such as climate change); it would also make territories more robust by reducing their dependency on outside supplies and strengthening their social cohesion. In fact, one of the arguments put forward in favor of the circular economy as a vector of resilience is that it fosters new ties between local stakeholders — whose cooperation is crucial to crisis management — and between local stakeholders and their home territory, which stakeholders must understand in fine detail if they are to manage and adapt its organization as best they can.
Agriculture, cause and victim of global warming… but also a hope for more resilient cities?
In one sense, due to its production and consumption methods, agriculture can frequently appear like an underachiever in terms of its relationship to climate change and the circular economy. Indeed, today’s agricultural production methods contribute to climate change and amplify its risks: globally, these methods account for some 25% of greenhouse gas emissions; the adoption of industrial production methods is a major factor that has fueled deforestation, soil erosion and a sharp decline in the moisture-holding capacity of soils; the shift to monoculture and the massive use of agricultural inputs have brought along the main negative externalities of soil pollution and loss of biodiversity. McKinsey’s study shows that 31% of the available food supply goes to waste at some point in the supply chain.
In a different sense, agriculture can also seem like a victim of climate change. The main risk factors weighing on the industry include the quality and availability of fresh water, rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion in coastal regions, a potential spike in climate risks like flooding, drought and rising global temperatures — as well as indirect effects including higher food prices, land scarcity and increasing energy and fertilizer prices.
In this context, how can we determine the best resilience strategy for securing the world’s food supply — considering that we will have to feed over 9 billion people by 2050, which will mean doubling global food production? Whatever resilience strategy we adopt, we will need to enact it over a two-step process.
- Immediate adaptation: the goal here is to develop technologies and growing methods that are suited to future climate conditions, apt to resist various deteriorations, and able to generate higher yields without exhausting resources or lands.
- Subsequent adaptation: the aim of this stage is to act directly on agricultural production methods in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve their environmental impact and use of resources, while also acting on demand by limiting overconsumption and food waste and adapting diets to include more products with lower emissions.
In addition to its role as both a cause and victim of climate change, does agriculture also have a role to play in solving climate challenges? The “land sector” could generate 20–60% of potential greenhouse gas reductions between now and 2030 by functioning as a carbon pump, producing renewable energies and materials — and making cities less vulnerable by offering a viable alternative to food import dependence. As it stands, cities rarely operate their own agricultural production. The functional relationship between cities and the domestic agricultural countryside has also deteriorated, giving way to a system of global agricultural production, which has significantly increased the average distance between where food is produced and where it is consumed — now around 2,000 km.
Masatoshi Funabashi, researcher at the Sony Computer Science Laboratories, demonstrated at Cerisy that another form of agricultural production is not only possible, it can also help to make cities much more resilient: synecoculture. By utilizing reduced spaces to ensure intensive and varied food production, this novel form of market gardening is adapted to the urban model. Its principle is based on “mixed polyculture with augmented biodiversity” (Funabashi), which greatly limits the use of agricultural inputs and amplifies biodiversity to guarantee better agricultural production. Polyculture, as opposed to monoculture, is less vulnerable to climate fluctuations, since its diversity not only promotes the adaptation and survival of a wider number of plant species, but also feeds off climate change: greater climate variation leads to more diverse agricultural production. It also makes it possible to diversify nutrition and meet new dietary goals, while creating a new local and sustainable socioeconomic ecosystem, which boosts cooperation between urban and rural areas, as well as producers and consumers, by favoring peer-to-peer systems. For example, in the Sahel Region, synecoculture was used to transform 500m2 of bushland into arable fields producing 150 different species per year and boosting per-capita GDP in Burkina Faso. With this system, cities with more options at their disposal would become more resilient, thanks to a stronger capacity to adapt.
Adaptable, flexible, modular: new paradigms in resilient architecture and urban planning
How can we do more with what we have? This question applies in a direct way within urban planning and architecture. Resilience is a challenge that operates on several levels:
- First, in reducing the ecological footprint of the construction industry.
Buildings and construction currently account for nearly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in France. Both in France and across Europe, construction is the most energy-hungry sector, even beating out industry, notably due to its high electricity needs. In addition, construction sites produce up to 40 million metric tons of wastes every year, adding to the 28 million metric tons of household waste. Despite its heavy environmental burden in this respect, construction still has ample room for improvement, notably by integrating eco-design principles. These concepts aim to reduce a building’s environmental impact by taking into account its full life cycle, social consequences and associated costs at every phase in its design and maintenance. In this way, the strategy can reconcile the sustainability and economic viability of eco-designed projects. This approach offers real benefits built on a systematic approach to sustainable development. As shown by Jérôme Stubler, Chairman of VINCI Construction, during La Fabrique de la Cité’s international seminar in Lyon in July 2017, eco-designed projects reduce the stress placed by the construction sector on all types of natural resources (energy, water, raw materials, biodiversity, etc.) by optimizing their use and protection, while also improving health. For example, the Horizon window developed by VINCI Construction and SunPartner Technologies transforms a simple window into a mini electric power plant, which helps to combat urban heat islands, improve occupant health and comfort by optimizing heat and light regulation, and promote optimized building use. On a similar note, the ParisTech-VINCI Chair on “Eco-design of building complexes and infrastructure” developed a tool, Biodi(V)strict®, to analyze biodiversity before operation and forecast its state after operation, in an effort to reduce the project’s environmental impact and favor the successful integration of construction projects into areas that support biodiversity.
- Next, in promoting adaptability in construction.
The second lever for action pertains to adaptability in the construction industry. This priority aligns with the first lever in that it helps to limit building obsolescence, while also focusing on a building’s long-term uses and functionalities. Resilience accepts the fact that cities will face brutal or deleterious shocks that will force them to adapt on a permanent basis. Natural disasters are one obvious example. But this also includes more common practices, such as adapting buildings to rapid urban growth or decline, as well as obsolescence in terms of how the building is used.
Flexible practices and modular planning represent interesting new avenues, as demonstrated at Cerisy by François Decoster, architect and co-founder of Agence AUC. Both strategies take a long-term view of the building as a structure that can adapt to changing needs and practices, whether structural or circumstantial. Tangram, winner of the Réinventer Paris (Reinvent Paris) call for projects, is composed of seven different modules: “1 — Solid, flexible platforms for offices or homes; 2 — Soho, activity venues in addition to housing; 3 — Appartement, a social housing program; 4 — Capable, a complex of loft homes with high ceilings, and a productivity platform; 5 — Coopératif, cooperative housing and offices; 6 — Vertical Factory, a productivity platform; 7 — Pavillon Productif, a ground-level productivity platform[7].” These buildings are modular in that each module can be updated over time to match occupant needs. In addition, the project is modular in that its final design is determined through a participatory urban workshop. As a result, these buildings become more resilient in that they are better able to bend under the pressure of various “shocks” and subsequently regain their shape.
Let’s turn our attention now to silent, more deleterious types of shocks: those caused by invisible urban boundaries erected by divisive and fractious urban planning or architecture, which fragment society in a way that degrades social cohesion — and, as a result, urban resilience more generally. This response comes from a renewed focus on the memory of place and a detailed understanding of how it operates in social and spatial contexts, with the aim of rebuilding ties and coherence between buildings and public spaces through meaningful action. At Cerisy, François Decoster notably presented the rehabilitation and transformation of the FCB industrial area in Fives, one of Lille’s most dilapidated areas. The project took a clear approach based on continuity, despite the site’s status as an enclave in the neighborhood, with its high walls that block the view and cut off through streets, as well as its radical embodiment of the dramatic decline of heavy industry and textiles in the Lille metropolitan area. It accepts the neighborhood’s industrial past and showcases it without nostalgia: renovations conserve the most visually appealing halls and buildings and reveal all their potential; the organization imagines a new life for the site which maintains a continuity with its industrial past. No high-tech commercial space here, but instead a site devoted to training a new generation of hospitality and restaurant professionals with a food court, urban agriculture, and a new location for the Meert bakery production unit. The end result is a site that is open, traversable, and brightened up by a garden tended by residents.
Temporary and reversible forms of urban planning also present many advantages: first by favoring a subtle integration of temporality into urban planning, enabling the dialogue and experimentation needed to lift invisible barriers, reveal the potential of sites and reestablish a new form of confidence between different players; next by allowing users to play a central role in projects by making experimentation and citizen participation an essential step in defining and carrying out urban development projects. One of the more emblematic examples of this approach comes from the Grands Voisins project in Paris. By opening the former Saint-Vincent de Paul hospital for temporary occupation by associations, solidarity enterprises, start-ups and a housing structure for poor and disadvantaged citizens managed by Association Aurore, the project revealed the site’s potential, rebuilt local ties within the neighborhood by creating a new local hub and, finally, helped outline the future of the program.
The softer they fall — but will they fall? A new paradigm for a long-term approach to resiliency
Not everyone has faith in these optimistic scenarios. Many have spoken out to show how proposed solutions for reducing the vulnerability of territories, due to their attachment to a growth hypothesis, simply continue the paradigm of resource depletion. Fréderic Lemarchand, co-director of the Risk Pole MRSH CNRS Division at the University of Caen, posed the following radical question at Cerisy: “Can we indefinitely substitute reproducible capital for the natural capital inevitably destroyed by our economic activities? Doesn’t resilience allow us only to delay the collapse, but not to avoid it?”
Christian Arnsperger and Domnique Bourg, researchers at the University of Lausanne, deliver similar nuance concerning the hopes placed in the circular economy as it is conceived today[8]. They notably demonstrate “[that] a circular economy would be one in which the growth rate for the consumption of a given material remains below 1% per year, because beyond this level, even if we recycle 80% of the material, almost nothing would change […] If we want our economy to align with the capacities of the Earth system, we must not only stabilize, but also significantly reduce the flows entering into this economic system [and] the scale of all our activities[9].”
On one hand, this position notably shows the promise of actions taken with a fundamental awareness of our ability to reduce vulnerabilities by altering production methods so that they preserve the equilibrium of our resources; on the other hand, it also points out the inadequacy of current actions and the need to continue our efforts across two main priorities:
- Promoting true systemic action: even if each individual sector develops its own separate strategy for reducing vulnerability, that will not be enough to make the economy, society or the city as a whole less vulnerable and more resilient. At Cerisy, Daniel Florentin, post-doctoral researcher at LATTS, cited the example of waste incinerators in Germany, which certainly align with the principles of the circular economy by producing heat and electricity from waste. However, the systems have become so widespread that it is now necessary to import waste from all over Europe just to keep them running…
- Succeeding in adapting not only our production methods, but also our consumption methods to avoid the dreaded “rebound effect,” which occurs when environmental gains achieved by adopting a new technology are canceled out by overuse. For example, drivers of fuel efficient cars take advantage of the situation by driving farther with the same quantity of gas — instead of simply reducing the amount of gas they use.
All this means that we need a more profound paradigm shift if we are to implement a long-term resilience strategy. And it is certainly no easy task to continue turning cities into places that offer more (more well-being, activities, movement, interactions, projects, etc.) with… less.
La Fabrique de la Cité wants to thank Maya Cohen, doctoral candidate at Paris Diderot University, for her contribution to our work on resilience.
[1] Quenault, B et alii (2011), Vulnérabilités et résilience au changement climatique en milieu urbain: vers de nouvelles stratégies de développement urbain durable? MSHB, pp.203.
[2] Flörke et alii (2018) “Water competition between cities and agriculture driven by climate change and urban growth,” Nature Sustainability, Volume 1, p. 51–58
[3] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/global-total-material-use-by
[4] OECD (2008), OECD Environmental Outlook to 2030.
[5] McKinsey Global Institute (2011), Resource Revolution: Meeting’s the world’s energy, materials and food and water needs.
[6] McKinsey Global Institute (2015) Growth within: a circular economy vision for a competitive Europe. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/sustainability%20and%20resource%20productivity/our%20insights/europes%20circular%20economy%20opportunity/growth_within.ashx
[7] http://arsenal.napsy.com/projets/2576-tangram.html
[8] Arnsperger A, Bourg, D (2016) “Vers une économie authentiquement circulaire. Réflexions sur les fondements d’un indicateur de circularité,” Revue de l’OFCE 2016/1 (N°145), p. 91–125.
[9] http://www.millenaire3.com/interview/croissance-verte-economie-circulaire-et-economie-permacirculaire
