Just urban futures? Exploring equity in "100 Resilient Cities"

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and associated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) view resilience, sustainability, and social equity as being inherently linked. However, several critical scholars have cautioned that theories of resilience fail to address issues of equity, justice, and power, which potentially puts these goals at odds with one another. To date, we have limited empirical evidence testing these theoretical claims. In 2013, the USA-based Rockefeller Foundation pioneered 100 Resilient Cities (100RC), a network of cities dedicated to building resilience in urban areas. Critical engagement with the outputs and "lessons learned" from this program, particularly around how participating cities operationalize concepts of equity and justice, is important and timely given the scale and influence of this global urban experiment. Using directed and summative content analysis of 31 100RC "City Resilience Strategies" from Global North and South countries, we examine the extent to which participating cities focus on social equity in their narratives, and whether justice is operationalized in the strategies' embedded actions. Actions featuring a focus on inequality and justice are piece-meal across the Strategies, suggesting that the decision to prioritize or ignore equity may not be a direct result of the 100RC program offerings. Furthermore, we identify a number of threats to social equity and justice that appear in the program itself, and its resultant City Resilience Strategies. We conclude by making recommendations that could enable future large-scale urban experiments to promote equity and justice more universally across member cities. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.