Ecology and Environment > Home > Urban Risks > Issue
In order to deal with climate change and variability, many cities around the world have developed strategies to promote sustainable urban development (the “green agenda”), and in more recent years, urban resilience and adaptation (the “blue agenda”). In the past couple of decades, “eco-districts” have become an increasingly popular urban strategy for furthering the green agenda, the Écoquartier Program in France being one prominent example that aims at producing districts that are ecological, sustainable and innovative. But what about the blue agenda? This discussion paper explores to what extent France’s Écoquartier Program helps to facilitate the integration of resilience, adaptation, disaster preparedness and risk reduction. It describes the evolution of the Écoquartier Program, the various requests for proposal, the Écoquartier Label, and design teams’ responses to show the gradual incorporation and promotion of these concepts. It also uses an example of a certified and recognized écoquartier project in Paris, the Clichy-Batignolles écoquartier, to highlight the convergence of the green and blue agendas towards a “turquoise agenda”. Finally, it discusses how the Écoquartier Program could help contribute to resilient city-making at the national scale.
Governments use mapping of natural and industrial risks as a regulatory tool for managing risks and anticipating their consequences in terms of land use planning. However, it often fails to take into account the spatial and temporal dynamics specific to each risk situation. In Risk Society, Ulrich Beck shows that it is not just a question of juxtaposing heterogeneous dimensions but also of showing the links between the spatialities and temporalities of risks. Moreover, mapping in a risk society means developing new risk metrics and revealing the many translations the latter entail. The article thus proposes taking a navigational approach to overcome the limits of traditional risk mapping.
Hurricane waste management is a significant post-crisis issue. Based on review of articles on hurricane waste management in several Caribbean and US territories and on a survey a few months after Irma hurricane in the Saint Martin island, this article shows difficulties in the hurricane waste managament (inappropriate location of temporary debris staging; difficulties of sorting and recycling; water pollution; soil pollution; illegal dumping; open burning…). Also, this article highlights some specificities of waste management in island (difficult access to other territories; low diversity of treatment and recovery options). These specificities make particularly difficult to manage hurricane waste.
Pratt stream flooded downtown Coaticook several times and caused serious damage, particularly in 2014 and 2015. To improve understanding of risk and move towards better management, adaptation and resilience, the vulnerability of the population and the territory is mapped and analyzed by the Groupe d’étude sur la capacité d’adaptation et la résilience (GECAR), affiliated with the University of Montreal, using an analysis method developed in collaboration with the Quebec ministry of public Security (MPS). A damage analysis is also performed. In addition, the analysis method integrates the involvement of local stakeholders and citizens in order to gather local knowledge and move towards achievable, accepted and context-specific strategies and actions to build resilience in Coaticook. The iterative approach conceives resilience as a dynamic, adaptive and flexible process and is part of a commitment to risk awareness and a real paradigm shift: adapt by going beyond the return to normality.
