Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Roundtable: Urban Resilience in Latin America: The Road from Theory to Practice

(Sustainable Urban and Metropolitan Development)

Resilience to natural and man-made shocks poses a new conceptual challenge for communities, particularly when it involves accounting for existing social and economic stresses. The challenge of identifying and preparing for unknown future scenarios is a policy challenge for all levels of government, but particularly for cities with their tangible risks and present constituents—combined with their limited resources and, in some cases, fledgling institutions. The resilience rubber hits the proverbial road in cities.

Latin American cities are an especially appropriate context for discussing roadmaps to resilience given the region’s divergent efforts with innovative urban interventions yet persistent acute shocks and chronic inequality. To explore the institutional and practical barriers to urban resilience efforts, this roundtable brings together urban policy scholars, global urban intermediaries, and local government practitioners in Mexico City to discuss: 1) the external governance challenges for cities’ resilience-building within their nations; 2) the institutional and policy challenges within cities; and 3) efforts to intervene in both areas through global urban city resilience programs (like 100 Resilient Cities) and a local government’s Chief Resilience Officer.

Core questions to be asked of the roundtable participants will include: How is the resilience concept currently being mobilized in the Latin American urban context? How does this approach to resilience building in the region differ from past efforts to understand and manage metropolitan risk? And, how can policy research and evaluation be mobilized as a tool to understand how resilience principles are institutionalized within city government planning and operations?