City resilience has become a much more pressing concern in recent years.

It’s forecast that by 2050 an astonishing 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities – the highest proportion in human history. This statistic is focusing people’s minds on how important cities have become and on how vulnerable they can be. Cities are where people, infrastructure, businesses, and institutions converge, making them a nexus for both opportunity and risk.

Moreover, we live in a volatile world in which several stress factors are becoming more pronounced. These include climate change which gives rise to more extreme weather events. In addition, factors like congestion, automation, wealth inequality, and resource depletion must be added to the mix.

In response, a lot of good practice in relation to city and urban resilience is being developed across the globe. Contributors include the World Bank, UNISDR, UN Habitat, and the OECD.

For our part, BSI has drawn on these resources and consulted more than 200 senior city stakeholders to produce an authoritative and practical guide to city resilience: BS 67000:2019 City resilience – Guide, the world’s first city resilience standard on how to build a more resilient city.

What is a Resilient City?

By ‘resilience’, we mean ‘the ability to absorb and adapt in a changing environment’. In the context of cities, it’s both the capacity to manage shocks and carry on through short-term disruption, as well as to adapt to stresses and other challenges that present themselves in the longer term.

When shocks occur in a city, the interdependent systems that enable everyday life can be compromised or fail, disrupting the services that people rely on. While severe shocks tend to hit the most disadvantaged the hardest, their impacts generally radiate widely, imposing human and economic cost curbing growth, and stifling opportunities.

A resilient city is one that can mitigate the consequences of an acute shock and recover in a timely way. They are also agile in the face of risks, can adapt, and even take advantage of some of the opportunities that chronic stresses and longer-term change can produce.

To learn what the role of public sector standards is in government, click here.

What is BS 67000?

This British Standard provides practical guidance and tools for increasing the resilience of cities. 

BS 67000 builds on a growing body of guidance on this evolving subject and draws on global good practice as well as the expert knowledge and experience of 200 senior city stakeholders.

This city resilience standard defines key concepts and terms and sets out a general framework to assist in the development of local resilience strategies and plans. These will:

• Engage and motivate city, community, and business leaders to address resilience and provide the necessary conditions for success

• Improve situational awareness over the short, medium, and long term

• Support and build deeper, broader, and more integrated capacity in the city

• Prioritize and strengthen capital investment decisions

• Recognize and prepare for changing demographic, technological, physical, and economic needs

BS 67000 is intended for use by all stakeholders who contribute to city resilience, whether from the private, public, or third sector as applied across communities, governance, the environment, and infrastructure.

Why has BS 67000 been Written?

City resilience isn’t a new concept, but the need for it has become pressing. A “perfect storm” of stress factors such as climate change, resource scarcity, wealth inequality, an aging population, housing shortages, congestion, etc, have highlighted the need to address city resilience.

City resilience has become a more prominent policy objective, but people who’re given responsibility for resilience in their organization are having to make it up or improvise due to a lack of agreement and standardization on what resilience is and how it should be done.

BS 67000 was written to supply authoritative guidance on building resilience which cities can use to tackle future challenges and exploit opportunities.

How will Cities Benefit from City Resilience Standard BS 67000?

The standard aims to move cities away from a reactive, response-focused strategy, and ultimately towards a foresight model where resilience is seen as a means of exploiting opportunities and anticipating future changes which allow sustained economic competitiveness. 

Cities with robust resilience can expect:

• Increased preparedness and agility in face of change and disruption

• Increased attractiveness to people and business

• Increased competitiveness against other cities

• Improved community cohesion

• Improved quality of life

• Increased financial stability

• Improved integration, collaboration, and shared benefits for city stakeholders

• Empowerment of citizens, businesses, and communities around common goals

• Reduced disruption, therefore increased productivity

• Future-proofing of the city through long-term planning

Across the public sector, our standards are designed to help you establish good practice, build resilience, and embrace new technologies to help our cities be fit for the future. With a BSI Knowledge subscription, city resilience is at your fingertips with instant access to over 100,000 best practice documents. Request to learn more.

Ensure your city is embedding resilience in its practices by adding standard BS 67000 to your collection today.