Introduction
The majority of the world’s population live in the cities. The number of rural dwellers moving to metropolitan areas is ever increasing due to the opportunities present there. Many cities throughout the world have continued to become more and more concentrated centers of economic activity as well as human culture. Nevertheless, some of these cities are struggling with limited resources as well as polarized priorities that make adaptation hard. The high rate of urbanization has facilitated climate issues that are threatening human existence and, as a result, leading to a reduction in the resilience of the cities. Resilient cities are the metropolitan areas, which can respond as well as adjust to the altering circumstances (Yanez 1). The present paper focuses on resilience challenge in Los Angeles city.
Los Angeles city is among the world’s most complex megacities. It has infrastructure and population similar to those of nations and states. I choose this city because it is one of the U.S. cities at highest risk. The overall resilience capacity z-score for Los Angeles is very low. In particular, the increased risk of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, extreme heat, and disruptions to water supplies put this city at a high risk. In other words, the extreme events originating from the weather associated hazards such as extreme heat, earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes make Los Angeles city vulnerable. It is worrying to note that the communities in this city are at high at risk to the earthquakes, climate change, and drought. The city’s structures are also vulnerable to earthquakes and hurricanes. Consequently, if the city continues business as usual and no steps are taken to improve its resiliency, it might lead to deaths and destruction of properties in the future. The responsible individuals in Los Angeles, thus, need to find effective ways to prevent the occurrence of the extreme natural events and mitigate the effects when such events happen.
System resiliency is a fundamental factor in guaranteeing vital operational features, for example, productivity and safety (Zonnenshain and Harel 1). A robustly built environment is key to a resilient city. The earthquakes present a great risk to the city’s buildings. Consequently, the authorities in Los Angeles can come up with specific building code requirements to help strengthen the city’s structures being constructed and reduce the risks to the loss of lives. The implementation of these requirements by the developers would eventually increase the city’s resiliency. Los Angeles should be able to respond successfully and adjust to the changing circumstances. The city’s resiliency can also be improved through the establishment of a pipe network that is seismic resilient (Resilience by Design 6). It is worrying to note that the occurrence of earthquakes in the city might lead to the breakage of the water distribution pipes and, as a consequence, disrupt the city’s water supplies. The replacement of normal water distribution pipes with seismic resilient water distribution pipes would, thus, increase the city’s resiliency.
The enhancement of the resilience of the transport system is an imperative strategy to increase the overall resilience of the city. In fact, the resiliency of Los Angeles can also be increased through the modification of the transportation system. The city can first modify the transportation system through integrating climate resiliency features into the capital projects. The Los Angeles’ roads just like other roads are susceptible to the various threats such as floods caused by the climate change. The city can, thus, increase the resiliency of its transport systems through incorporating the best tools as well as practices for the management of storm water. As a result, this will prevent the flooding on the transportation systems such as roads and eventually improve the city’s resiliency. Furthermore, the resiliency of Los Angeles city’s transportation system can also be increased through the identification of its critical elements and enhancement of the transportation responses to the major occurrences through consistent resiliency planning exercises. The city can also modify its transportation system to increase resiliency through expanding the bus service network. The city dwellers can experience severe mobility challenges from the outages and disruptions of the subways. The city can resolve these challenges and increase the resiliency of its transport system by adding some quick transportation routes.
The improvement of an existing resiliency plan or implementation of a resiliency plan take some time. For this reason, there needs to be an effective way to be used to hasten the process. In an attempt to implement a resiliency plan effectively, the Los Angeles city officials ought to first develop an implementation strategy with long-term, medium-term, and short-term priorities as well as activities. The officials should then define and organize the structure and roles of all the parties that will be involved. The other thing that the city officials should do is to develop the needed mechanisms and mobilize the resources to help implement the plan. Lastly, the city officials should ensure that all the stakeholders participate fully.
Works Cited
Resilience by Design. 12 Feb. 2016. Web. http://www.aiasfv.org/temp/R-by-D-report.pdf
Yanez, K. Visions of a resilient city. ARUP and Engineers without Boarders. 2013.
Zonnenshain, Avigdor, and Avi Harel. "Resilience-oriented design." Seventh Conference of INCOSE-IL, Hertzelia, Israel. 2013.
