City Resilience Framework

Supported by The Rockefeller Foundation and developed by Arup’s International Development team, the City Resilience Framework is a holistic, evidence-based framework for understanding city resilience to inform urban planning and investment decisions. The Rockefeller Foundation is using the framework to create resilience-building agendas at city-level with current members of their 100 Resilient Cities Network. Presenting an inclusive method for articulating city resilience, the framework underpins and reinforces the City Resilience Index’s full suite of indicators and variables.

The report “provides a lens through which the complexity of cities and the numerous factors that contribute to a city’s resilience can be understood.” To do so, the framework contains 12 key indicators that describe the fundamental attributes of a resilient city. The 12 indicators fall into four categories: the health and wellbeing of individuals (people); urban systems and services (place); economy and society (organization); and, finally, leadership and strategy (knowledge). The indicators are performance indicators – describing the outcome of actions to build resilience, not the actions themselves.