Resilient Glasgow

What is it?

In April 2014, Glasgow was named as one of the first 32 members of the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) Network (a $100million initiative). Glasgow's membership in the network represents a major step towards creating a strategic, multi-agency approach in proactively managing the inevitable challenges, shocks and stresses the city faces.

Through membership of the 100RC Network, Glasgow is developing a resilience strategy that will act as a roadmap to greater resilience, as we look further into the 21st century. The strategy is being developed with reference to the four essential dimensions of urban resilience: health and wellbeing, economy and society, infrastructure and environment, and leadership and strategy.

On the 1 October 2016, Glasgow City Council appointed a Chief Resilience Officer to lead on Glasgow's resilience efforts. The resilient Glasgow strategy is being directed in collaboration with the people of Glasgow including our residents, businesses and public sector partners.

The 100 resilient cities network

100 Resilient Cities - pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation (100RC) is dedicated to helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century. 100RC supports the adoption and incorporation of a view of resilience that includes not just the shocks but also the stresses that weaken the fabric of a city on a day to day or cyclical basis. By addressing both the shocks and the stresses, a city becomes more able to respond to adverse events, and is overall better able to deliver basic functions in both good times and bad, to all populations.

Cities in the 100RC network are provided with the resources necessary to develop a roadmap to resilience along four main pathways:

1. Financial and logistical guidance for establishing an innovative new position in city government, a chief resilience officer, who will lead the city's resilience efforts;
2. Expert support for development of a robust resilience strategy;
3. Access to solutions, service providers, and partners from the private, public and NGO sectors who can help them develop and implement their resilience strategies; and
4. Membership of a global network of member cities who can learn from and help each other.

Through these actions, 100RC aims not only to help individual cities become more resilient, but will facilitate the building of a global practice of resilience amongst the public sector, the private sector, voluntary organisations and local communities.

Glasgow's resilient challenge

The history of Glasgow presents an extraordinary story of a city that has remained resilient through over 250 years of successive shocks and stresses that have produced massive disparities in income, health and opportunity.

With an ambition to be one of the most sustainable cities in Europe, we are recovering steadily from a post-industrial legacy of social, economic and environmental shock. Since the 1980s, Glasgow has transformed itself, drawing on cultural assets, investing in major regeneration programmes and diversifying the business sector.

However, the journey is not over and our resilience continues to be tested by shifting macroeconomic trends, poverty and deprivation, health inequalities, and emergency incidents. We have no choice but to continuously develop our ability to function in the face of challenging situations and recover from disasters. In order to do this, we will focus our attention on five areas.

These five focus areas have been informed through engagement with the people of Glasgow and contextualised using the economic, environmental and social profile of Glasgow.

A draft resilient Glasgow strategy is available. This document outlines our key challenges and proposes a number of recommendations that will help us to become a more resilient city.

The City resilience framework and our resilient Glasgow conversation draft outline our approach to building resilience.