Abstract
Urban resilience is a critical principle in crisis and disaster management in urban areas. Thus, the resilient city is a safe and livable city, which can be characterized as defined by Godschalk (2003): • Disasters are minimized in the city, for people live in houses and neighborhoods with ordered services and infrastructure complying with building codes, and a lack of suitable land has not led to construction on floodplains or steep slopes. It benefits from a strong and accountable local government that respects sustainable urbanization and takes responsibility for providing resources to expand organization capacities before, during, and after a natural disaster. Local authorities and the public are aware of the risks threatening them and establish a local database around natural disaster casualties and risks. In addition to local authorities, the public is also entitled to participate in urban decision-making and planning powers, and people value their local and indigenous knowledge, capacities, and resources. Arrangements are in place for predicting and mitigating natural disasters, employing warning and rapid monitoring technologies, preserving infrastructure and public and private assets, including houses, cultural heritage, and economic and environmental capitals, enabling the city to minimize physical and social damage of severe natural or man-made disasters. It is able to respond rapidly, recover fast, and bring back vital services for social, institutional, and economic activities in post-disaster times. With these characteristics, urban resilience can be classified under four categories, namely social, infrastructural, organizational, and economic (Cutter et al., 2010). Infrastructural resilience refers to identified structural vulnerabilities including assets, buildings, and transportation systems. It discusses the capacities for protection and covering, health-care facilities, structural vulnerabilities to risks, vital infrastructure, and road access for evacuation and providing supply lines in post-crisis times. Infrastructural resilience also refers to the preparedness of the community for confrontation and reconstruction. Social resilience discusses the population composition in a community, which involves age, gender, race, disabilities, and socioeconomic status among other key classifications, including social capital. Although it is difficult to quantify social capital, it refers to a sense of community; in other words, it means the ability of citizens to adapt and develop a sense of belonging to a place. Economic resilience refers to the economic variety, employment, number of businesses, and their ability to function properly during a crisis. Organizational resilience focuses on governmental and nongovernmental systems running the community. Achieving resilience in the city depends on other factors including the size and scale of cities and the availability of adequate physical, economic, and social infrastructure. The proposed research will present the role of civil society on shaping resilient cities using the case of Famagusta as its contextual background. Main research question to be explored is: How can civil society organizations (CSOs) contribute to resiliency in urban environments? The research will discuss ways for a meaningful inclusion of communities in the decision making processes for resiliency. The research will focus on the city of Famagusta and explore qualitatively how civil society organizations lead the way for a participatory planning and what tools they use for empowering social engagement for shaping resilient cities.
