Does Every City Need A Chief Resilience Officer?

For cities, developing a plan for "sustainability" no longer sounds like enough. The word carries with it an environmental connotation (we need to live alongside nature in a "sustainable" way). And the absence of sustainability implies environmental disaster (resource shortages, rising sea levels, super storms). But many of the major problems facing cities in the 21st century don't quite fall under this category (poverty, economic crises, pandemics). And "sustainability" only speaks to half of any environmental story – you may power your entire city with solar cells, but what happens the morning after a hurricane passes through?

The new goal is now something more like "resiliency." This updated rallying cry takes as a given that some pretty bad things will inevitably happen: Cities will flood, and diseases will spread, and whole transportation networks will shut down. But now the mark of a competent city is this: How quickly can it bounce back?