Global Resilience Strategies : A Comparative Study of the One-Hundred Resilient Cities using Computational Text Analysis

As the world’s cities continue to grow in population and their systems become increasingly interconnected, urban resilience is becoming more of a pressing imperative. Natural and manmade disasters will put more people, places, and capital at risk of catastrophic loss from cascading failures across interconnected sectors of society. However, the existing literature has no consensus on defining resilience, let alone identifying a common policy approach for achieving resilience. This paper uses computational text analysis of the Rockefeller Foundation’s “100 Resilient Cities” strategy publications to reveal global trends in resilience strategies and variations across regions that face different challenges to resilience. Results show the diverse set of threats to future urban centers, how cities are adapting to our turbulent times, and where the participating cities are putting vital limited resources. Of continued importance is the emphasis on hard infrastructure, political leadership, and community leadership. However, throughout the Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities corpus, there is a lack of discussion of and preparation for epidemics or pandemics, which is a monumental oversight given the unprecedented effects COVID-19 has had on the world’s population centers. A critical view of our current resilience strategies can inform future planning and inform global cooperation through a better understanding of effective resilience strategy