Ideas for a Shanghai beyond oil in the Urban Planet Atlas
The sustainability discussion is often filled with difficult terms. Most of them can be avoided, but one that I actually find useful is the term resilience.
Resilience, in a simplified sense, can be said to be the elasticity of for example a society or an ecosystem. More exactly it refers to “the capacity of a social-ecological system both to withstand perturbations from for instance climate or economic shocks and to rebuild and renew itself afterwards”. Yet anoother way to describe it: As we cannot prevent all types of shocks, we have to be able to cope with them.
Today resilience could often be better. One example of that is how the effects of hurricane Katrina were much more severe because of a weakened wetland that couldn’t absorb the big waves. Another example is, as I mentioned in my last blog post, how vulnerable cities are if incoming food transports would stop for one reason or another.
One of the places where resilience is specifically studied is at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. This centre has now developed an online platform for sustainable urban development, which will be launched at the Expo2010 in Shanghai.
The idea is to point out the close connections between social and natural systems, and the fundamental role ecosystem services play for human wellbeing.
An upgraded version of the Urban Planet Atlas, as they call it, will be launched in Shanghai in October, but it is already possible to try it online. Shanghai itself is one of the example cities which are already put into the atlas. Check under “Solutions for Sustainable and Resilient Cities” and see how students at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm has envisioned a Shanghai beyond oil.
Read more about what resilience is at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Also read their and the organisation Albaeco’s interesting blog Sustainable Development Update.
Read more about Shanghai Beoynd Oil.
