Resilient cities, a key solution to safeguard the environment

Abstract

In the 21st century, the world population is growing at a spiraling pace. Much of this growth is occurring in developing countries, where access to food, sanitary water, education, and health is severely limited. The ever-increasing urbanization highlighted the need for sustainable development based on human-environment interaction. The excessive and unplanned expansion of cities has resulted in numerous environmental predicaments due to clearly emphasized economic issues at the expense of social and environmental concerns. The most significant features of megacities are indicated in this paper and the environmental, social, physical, and economic criteria are addressed in order to attain sustainability and resilience. To examine the practical use of these criteria, extensive studies and field activities were carried out at District 14 of Tehran Municipality. The results of this study highlight the desire of authorities to move toward sustainable development as their activities indicated environmental improvements during the 2009-2014 period. At the end, several recommendations are made based on the obtained results to speed up the move toward sustainability and resiliency.