Speaking in Glasgow recently, Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, drew attention to Glasgow's role as one of the first cities selected to be part of the 100 Resilient Cities programme, pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Glasgow features prominently in her new book 'The Resilience Dividend', a powerful volume drawing lessons from the programme so far in helping cities manage disruption, avoid disasters and grow stronger as a result.

She emphasised that resilience lies in people, in cities, and in systems, and drew attention to 5 key features of resilient cities, namely

• awareness - the capacity to take in information;

• diversity - diverse strengths to fall back on;

• integration - sharing information across systems;

• self-regulation - rethink and re-organise when necessary; and

• adaptability - the nimbleness to act as required.

She identified major challenges cities face stemming from climate change and globalisation.  Cities are continuing to grow rapidly, and it has been estimated that 40% of the infrastructure cities will require by 2050 has still to be built.  It was therefore important not to get it wrong, and to learn lessons whenever possible.

She saw crises, of many sorts, as the new normal, which made it all the more important to be prepared in time, rather than wait for a new crisis before acting.  The essence of the resilient city lies in

• learning through data;

• investment in infrastructure and in social capital;

• efficient connected governance and leadership; and

• focus on innovation.

In her terms, the resilience dividend lies in readiness, recovery and re-vitalisation.

It was interesting that several members of the audience raised issues of where, in this apparently rather 'top-down' approach to resilience, was the place of learning, social capital and community capacity building? 

Many of the issues identified in her work and the Rockefeller Foundation programme link closely with the learning city concept being developed in PASCAL.  When asked about the link, Judith Rodin was clear about the importance of learning at all levels, even if she had emphasised learning by cities themselves through developing data and analytic resources. She was clear that resilience was learned and not innate.  There clearly needs to be more dialogue about promoting an overt recognition of the role of learning in city development generally and in city resilience in the face of 21st century pressures.