Routledge Handbook of Resilient Urban Planning for Small and Medium-Sized Cities

by Seth Asare Okyere (Editor), Stephen Kofi Diko (Editor), Louis Kusi Frimpong (Editor), Matthew Abunyewah (Editor), Stephen Leonard Mensah (Editor)

Overview

Small and medium-sized cities (SMCs) are becoming the new frontiers of global urban growth and population change. Yet, they are overlooked in the policy and scholarship discourses about urban futures, particularly urban planning for resilient futures. This handbook aims to increase attention to the resilience of SMCs and explore the unique challenges they face, as well as provide practical recommendations for built environment practitioners to understand and respond to these challenges in global contexts. Chapters cover a range of important topics on the different dimensions of urban resilience such as climate-induced risks, heat resilience planning, access to urban infrastructure and services, socio-environmental inequities, urban safety, health resilience, walkability, and more. Contributors discuss ways to enhance policy and planning efforts to address these challenges and advocate for the need to pay attention to SMCs when promoting urban resilience to avert the risks often manifested in large cities. This handbook transcends disciplinary boundaries and expertise, bringing together a diverse range of contributions from scholars and practitioners in over fifteen countries across Africa, Asia, North and South America, Europe, and Oceania to counter the apparent paucity of attention on SMCs in the global resilience agenda.

This handbook is essential for scholars and practitioners working in the built environment, such as city and regional planning, public policy, public health, environmental science, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, spatial planning, and geography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032948874
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/04/2025
Series:	Routledge International Handbooks
Pages:	524
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Seth Asare Okyere is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Suita-Osaka, Japan.

Stephen K. Diko is an Assistant Professor at the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA.

Louis Kusi Frimpong is a Lecturer at the Department of Geography and Earth Science, University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Somanya, Ghana.

Matthew Abunyewah is a Research-Focused Lecturer at the Faculty of Health, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia.

Stephen Leonard Mensah is a PhD Candidate and Critical Urban Research Fellow at the University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Valorizing the resilience of small and medium-sized cities  PART ONE: GROUNDING URBAN RESILIENCE IN SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED CITIES  1. A Review of Resilience Research of Small and Medium-Sized Cities in Global North Countries  2. Framing the Resilience Research Agenda of Small and Medium-Sized Cities in Global South Countries: A Review  3. Climate and Environmental Risks and Resilience in Small and Medium-sized Cities in Africa  4. Pathways for Resilience to Climate Change in Sub-Saharan Africa: Insights from Bamenda, Cameroon  5. Climate change awareness and adaptive practices among riverbank communities along the Ogun River, Nigeria: Implications for climate resilience  6. Walkability in Medium-sized Brazilian Cities: A Scoping Review  7. Linking urban insecurity, private shuttle service adoption and resilience in South African cities  8. The Non-linear Spatial Grid of Urban Villages in Small and Medium-sized Towns: Implications for Urban Resilience in India  9. The Khon Kaen Model: Balancing Growth and Resilience?  10. The Economic Transformation of Ezulwini Town: A Case Study in Strategic Investment and Development  11. Urbanisation and Socio-Economic Vulnerability: Comparative Pathways for Urban Resilience in sub-Saharan Africa  12. Contextualizing Resilient Planning in Khulna, Bangladesh  PART TWO: PLANNING FOR RESILIENCE IN SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED CITIES  13. The Power of Planning: Mitigating diverse external threats among Small and Medium-sized Cities (SMCs) through the Texas Target Communities Program  14. Secondary Cities at the Interface of Disaster Risk Reduction: Assessing Institutional Readiness in Undersieged Towns  15. Fire Outbreaks, Disaster Resilience and the Right to the City: The Case of Informal Settlements in Namibia  16. The COVID-19 Pandemic, Urban Food Value Chains and Resilience Planning in Small and Medium-sized Cities of Namibia  17. Environmental resilience planning in overlooked small towns:  Examining temporalities and structural challenges in access to water and sanitation in Yilo Krobo municipality, Ghana.  18. Mainstreaming heat resilience in local development plans of small and medium-sized urbanizing jurisdictions: A focus on semi-arid Ghana  19. Stocktaking Nature-based Solutions in Africa: Implications for Equitable Resilience in Small and medium-sized Cities  20. Addressing Extreme Heat in US Cities via Nature-based solutions: A Mapping Approach to Identifying Places for Action in Memphis, TN  21. Re-envisioning the Metro Urban-Rural Linkages as a Complex Adaptive System Encompassing Anti-fragility for Building Resilience in Small and Medium-Sized Cities  PART THREE: INNOVATIONS AND PRACTICES FOR BUILDING RESILIENCE IN SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED CITIES  22. Bottom-up Governance for Resilient Urban Futures? Intersections and Tensions from Mahikeng, South Africa  23. Transforming Altenburg: The rise of right-wing populism and the restoration of local trust  24. Public Health Adaptation to Extreme Heat in Small and Medium-sized Cities  25. Urban farm-based businesses for circular waste management: Exploring Food Waste Circuits in Masaka, Uganda  26. Strategies for Sustainable Urban Renewal of Small and Medium-Sized Cities: The Canadian Experience  27. Indigenous Innovation for Managing Environmental Risk in Nigerian Small and Medium-Sized Cities  28. Governing Municipalities: Steering the Resilient Futures of Small and Medium-Sized Cities  29. In the Age of Skepticism: Building Partnerships with Nonprofits to Strengthen Resilience in SMCs  30. Revisiting Urban Resilience within the New Urban Agenda: The Role of informal urban agriculture in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe  Conclusion