417
at an institutional scale whose authoritative reach does not correspond with the geographical scale or particular spatial dynamics of a (…) problem”.
However, despite the complex nature of urban systems, there exist relatively
simple universal laws that are useful to be aware of when designing systems of governance for urban health resilience. One refers to the urban scaling effect and similarly counts for living organisms. It says that the bigger the organisation becomes,
the less energy per capita is needed. For cities, this means that with a doubling of
population size, energy supply, for example, increases sublinearly by 85% (one petrol station can serve more people), implying an economy of scale savings effect of
15% for energy and infrastructure. With regard to average wages, the amount of
crime and incidence of infectious diseases, the number of patents produced, or the
number of restaurants, there is a superlinear scaling effect of 1.15, manifesting systematic increasing returns to scale (West 2017, Bettencourt et al. 2010).
18.2 Climate Change Aggravating Existing Urban
Complexity
Demographic and technological changes have resulted in anthropogenic forces on
the climate system, greatly exacerbating the flow of energy and materials within
urban systems, increasing the complexity levels of urban systems and their functions. In addition, climate change aggravates the complexity of urban systems by
imposing direct and indirect impacts on the urban system variables and their functions. Climate change effects include increased intensities and frequency of rainfall,
droughts, storms and heat waves, due to warmer sea and land surface temperatures,
rising sea levels and reduction of albedo, which further exacerbates the warming,
and a range of climate uncertainty. These effects challenge the sensitivity of each
variable of the urban social-ecological systems and subsystems (da Silva et al.
2012). The geo-demographical change shows an overall trend of increasing population in increasingly multi- and intercultural urban areas, which challenges the
already precarious concept of sustainability of urban systems. The different magnitudes of climate change, therefore, accelerate and complicate both the general and
specified resilience of urban systems of multiple scales.
Resilience as a concept has been argued frequently for the case of climate change
for the reasons presented above. It is also primarily referred to as the adaptation of
climate change impacts. As urban systems are composed of complex environments
in which ecological, social, cultural and economic factors interact on multiple scales
and across different subsystems, climate change imposes not only direct impacts on
the grey, green and blue infrastructure in urban systems, basic life support functions
and manufactured goods, such as food, water, energy, transportation and their management and provision, but also indirect impacts on the health and well-being of
urban dwellers. Therefore, we argue that health should be an end goal of climate
change adaptation and a proxy to examine the level of resilience of complex urban
18 Resilience Management for Healthy Cities in a Changing Climate
at an institutional scale whose authoritative reach does not correspond with the geographical scale or particular spatial dynamics of a (…) problem”.
However, despite the complex nature of urban systems, there exist relatively
simple universal laws that are useful to be aware of when designing systems of governance for urban health resilience. One refers to the urban scaling effect and similarly counts for living organisms. It says that the bigger the organisation becomes,
the less energy per capita is needed. For cities, this means that with a doubling of
population size, energy supply, for example, increases sublinearly by 85% (one petrol station can serve more people), implying an economy of scale savings effect of
15% for energy and infrastructure. With regard to average wages, the amount of
crime and incidence of infectious diseases, the number of patents produced, or the
number of restaurants, there is a superlinear scaling effect of 1.15, manifesting systematic increasing returns to scale (West 2017, Bettencourt et al. 2010).
18.2 Climate Change Aggravating Existing Urban
Complexity
Demographic and technological changes have resulted in anthropogenic forces on
the climate system, greatly exacerbating the flow of energy and materials within
urban systems, increasing the complexity levels of urban systems and their functions. In addition, climate change aggravates the complexity of urban systems by
imposing direct and indirect impacts on the urban system variables and their functions. Climate change effects include increased intensities and frequency of rainfall,
droughts, storms and heat waves, due to warmer sea and land surface temperatures,
rising sea levels and reduction of albedo, which further exacerbates the warming,
and a range of climate uncertainty. These effects challenge the sensitivity of each
variable of the urban social-ecological systems and subsystems (da Silva et al.
2012). The geo-demographical change shows an overall trend of increasing population in increasingly multi- and intercultural urban areas, which challenges the
already precarious concept of sustainability of urban systems. The different magnitudes of climate change, therefore, accelerate and complicate both the general and
specified resilience of urban systems of multiple scales.
Resilience as a concept has been argued frequently for the case of climate change
for the reasons presented above. It is also primarily referred to as the adaptation of
climate change impacts. As urban systems are composed of complex environments
in which ecological, social, cultural and economic factors interact on multiple scales
and across different subsystems, climate change imposes not only direct impacts on
the grey, green and blue infrastructure in urban systems, basic life support functions
and manufactured goods, such as food, water, energy, transportation and their management and provision, but also indirect impacts on the health and well-being of
urban dwellers. Therefore, we argue that health should be an end goal of climate
change adaptation and a proxy to examine the level of resilience of complex urban
18 Resilience Management for Healthy Cities in a Changing Climate