Measuring urban resilience to natural disasters for iranian cities: Challenges and key concepts

Abstract

The main aim of this chapter is to analyze the viewpoints and measures for urban resilience in case of natural disasters in Iran from an urban designer’s point of view. The urban codes are among the anthropogenic agents of change in the built environments. Current Iranian urban regulations which are used for urban risk reduction are recently applied for achieving resilience. This chapter studies the effects of the formalizing codes which are implemented in a mid-sized city, Golestan, Iran. It concludes by analyzing if the existing measures have been successful for delivering resilience considering the multifaceted complexity of the concept. The author has conflated urban design points of view with socioecological systems’ adaptive capacities to create a list of criteria for measuring resilience. The cities and neighborhood have gone through transformations imposed by the application of urban upgrading codes, and the question is: Have they become more resilient? In addition, if the socioeconomic, environmental, institutional, and cultural consequences of spatial interventions are not considered, we cannot claim to have proper resilience measures. Resilience is a relative concept, and so it is the measure for achieving it, but the main challenge is to consider the different aspects related to its meanings and implications incase of natural disasters.