Bangalore: Bangalore, a technology hub, will now be part of the Rockefeller Foundation's global project, 100 Resilient Cities (100 RC) that is dedicated to help cities around the world to become more pliant to the physical, social as well as the economic challenges that have cropped up in the 21st century.
Surat city has been selected by the Rockefeller Foundation for the development of a resilience strategy remaining to its susceptibility to earthquakes and floods. Bangalore too will be selected among the 100 RC's in the next round of search for cities which will face huge development problems.
Rockefeller Foundation has devoted 100 million dollars to this project. The other major global cities that have joined the global urban resilience initiative are Melbourne, New York, Glasgow, Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco and many more to name.
Resilience, the foundation states, is not only resilient to shocks and stresses to natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, epidemics, but also acts as daily stresses that a city likely face such as water shortage, problems along with public transportation, excess taxation, unfortunate happenings of all kinds, high unemployment, social and community unrest.
Michael Berkowitz, president, 100 RC said that, “I understand Bangalore has serious problems around water connections, transportation and lack of infrastructure. How can we help Bangalore to be resilient to all these crises? We will help build a city that can respond to adverse events and is better able to deliver basic functions to its residents. We will develop a resilience strategy for Bangalore to help cope with the problems it faces.
Though Surat has been the first city in India to be selected to the 100 RC, Bangalore will come up for selection in December this year when we announce a second round of cities,” he further added.
Berkowitz is part of the Foundation too that is driving the project.
In the next round of selection, more and more Indian cities will be selected. The selection depends upon the clarity to outline the problems and also in the solutions to overcome. Out of 400 applications of which 32 were selected in the first round by the Foundation. The second round of selections will be held in December.
The number 100 (cities) came up as the Rockefeller Foundation turned 100 in 2013 and wished to celebrate the occasion with a project for social good. The idea then was to select 100 cities in the world that needed resilience to cope with varied challenges. The project will bring into the planning process stakeholders across city government, from the private sector, non-profits, NGOs and civic groups.
The Cities, which are part of the 100 Resilient Cities are given required resources so that they can develop a roadmap to resilience along the four paths - financial and logistical guidance for establishing a new innovative position in the city government, a Chief Resilience Officer, who will lead the city's resilience effort; experts to help chalk out the resilience strategy and support the office; connecting member cities to solutions, service providers and partners who can help implement the resilience strategy; last but not the least, a membership in a global network of member-cities that will enable the selected cities to learn something new from each other.
