Resilience thinking and urban planning in a coastal environment at risks of tsunamis: the case study of Mehuín, Chile

Abstract

It is critical to understand how to accommodate the 'resilience thinking' approach in city planning, in order for urban environments to adapt to extreme natural events. This study explored from both a conceptual and applied perspective, whether or not the resilience thinking approach has been adressed in urban planning , using Mehuin, Chile, as a case study. The methodology involved a qualitative review of planning tools, in orden to analyze the extent to which urban resilience attributes (e.g. diversity and redundancy) are addressed in Mehuin's planning, documents , along with a quantitative evaluation of resilience dimensions (i.e. physical , environmental and social) for Mehuin's urban environment. Our fi ndings indicated that the environmental dimension has the greatest infl uence on the adaptive capacity of Mehuín; however, this is not addressed in the urban planning tools. These divergent results are further discussed with respect to the potential challenges that could arise in current planning science, as we know it. RESUMEN La comprensión de cómo acomodar el "pensamiento resiliente" en la planifi ca-ción de ciudades es fundamental para la adaptación de los entornos urbanos a eventos naturales extremos. Este estudio explora si el pensamiento resiliente se ha abordado en la planifi cación urbana, tanto desde la perspectiva conceptual como de la aplicada, utilizando Mehuín, Chile, como caso de estudio. La metodología se basa en: Una revisión cualitativa de las herramientas de planifi cación para analizar en qué medida los atributos de la resiliencia urbana (por ejemplo, la di-versidad y la redundancia) se abordan en los documentos de planifi cación; y una evaluación cuantitativa de las dimensiones de la resiliencia del medio ambiente 1 We would like to acknowledge CONICYT Fondecyt Project N°1150137 for funding this study and Ms. Mina Fallahzadegan for collaborating with data collection and analysis. Artículo recibido el 7 de marzo de 2016, aceptado el 12 de mayo de 2016 y corregi-do el 13 de junio de 2016.