Source: 100 Resilient Cities

By: DAVID SCHREINER

The Resilience Roundup highlights some of the most interesting, important city resilience news of the past few weeks. If we missed something you’re reading, let us know in the comments and we’ll consider it for next time.

FEMA MAKES STATE DISASTER PREPAREDNESS FUNDING CONTINGENT ON CLIMATE CHANGE PLANNING

The United States Federal Emergency Management Agency will only provide disaster preparedness funding to states whose governors approve plans to address and mitigate climate change hazards. The change predicates state access to FEMA funding for state disaster mitigation – worth an average total of $1 billion a year – on governors having approved plans that address climate change and mitigating its hazards explicitly.

A MAP FOR BANGALORE’S WASTE

Bangalore is a global IT hot spot, but faces a challenge familiar to many growing, new cities: burgeoning amounts of trash, to the amount of 4,000 tons a day in the Indian city. Waste pickers – informal “recyclers” that comb landfills for materials they can sell for a small income – are instrumental to decreasing the flow of trash into landfills. A new online database called I Got Garbage (IGG) connects track pickers with an online marketplace to which households, apartments, and businesses can submit requests for trash collection, creating a map of Bangalore’s trash is, and where it’s going.

 Total Waste Recyced Through IGG Efforts; credit, I Got Garbage

Learn more about how IGG is engaging the community to bring solve the issue of trash and bring greater predictability and dignity to the waste pickers' work.

RIO DE JANEIRO SEEKS TO BECOME GLOBAL LEADER IN SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY

Innovative tactics and strategies from Rio that offer inspirations for other cities pursuing sustainable, accessible transportation include: the operations control center that makes managing emergency response and collaboration more efficient; an expanding, modern network of bus rapid transit that serves nine million people a month; and an initiative to develop 300 km of new cycling infrastructure to improve options for cycling (and walking) instead of driving.

Read more about how Rio is promoting sustainable transport.

THE MAINSTREAMING OF “TACTICAL” AND “GUERILLA” URBANISM

With cities adopting parklets and promoting pop-up markets, tactical urbanism is not the fringe movement of just a few niche urbanists any longer. Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action for Long-Term Change explains the “what” and “how” of the movement so anyone can try to effect positive change in their city.

“It can’t solve the affordable housing crisis,” say authors Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia. But, “It’s about creating a different kind of process and bringing new ideas to people in a way that’s less threatening.”

BARCELONA IS BUILDING A BRIDGE THAT EATS POLLUTION

Barcelona is joining a long series of cities greening their hard infrastructure. But instead of repurposing a road, they are leaving cars alone and pursuing plans to upgrade a road bridge - a brige over another road - with sustainable tech that scrubs pollution from the air. Along with “photocatalytic concrete,” the bridge will feature expanded pedestrian walkways and natural greenery to block out road noises.