Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Rockefeller's Rodin Urges Cities to Build Greater Resilience
Judith Rodin’s new book, The Resilience Dividend, begins with her surveying the destruction wrought by Superstorm Sandy in October 2012. “There were the low-lying neighbourhoods of Staten Island exposed to sea rise, flooding and storm surge, where people had died in the storm. I saw damaged dunes and other soft, natural infrastructure that had been washed away, leaving neighbourhoods completely unprotected ... I saw homes destroyed, neighbourhoods disrupted, people’s lives destroyed.”
Rodin, who became president of US philanthropic organisation the Rockefeller Foundation in 2005, had already made building the resilience of cities and communities one of the foundation’s key objectives. But Sandy confirmed to her that “it was the most important work we could do”. Hence, the emphasis on the foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities programme, and now this book. “In a time as turbulent as ours,” she writes, “we have no choice: we must all work to build greater resilience.”...