Can we pull resilience from the rubble? experiencing earthquakes in Mexico City

Abstract

AbstractThis paper serves as an introduction to focus on the meaning of resilience as a notion that hypothetically enables cities and their citizens to remain unaffected by shocks and stresses of diverse nature, but in practice, is a parsimonious representation of a highly complex human endogenous condition that is often not adequately understood and addressed due to weak or weathered disaster risk governance. Through an empirical analysis, the relevance of the occurrence of disasters such as the one produced by the Mexico City earthquake of September 19, 2017, and its relationship to the meaning of urban resilience is addressed. Since the 100 Resilient Cities program launch in 2013, several cities, including Mexico City, have adopted diverse strategies to build and become more resilient to physical, social, and economic shocks and stresses. Nonetheless, the degree of success of such strategies expressed in everyday life within the cities, regardless of what the official documents report, reveals highly heterogeneous results. In the case of Mexico City, it is evident that the appropriate strategy for attaining the desired outcome of becoming a Resilient City has not been successful. Despite setting the goal of advancing disaster risk reduction through urban and regional planning, the impact of the earthquake of September 19, 2017, proved otherwise.