Urban Resilience and Local Governance

The concept of urban resilience is used as a guiding approach in the publications below. Urban resilience can be defined as a holistic governance approach to tackle and plan for the upcoming multifaceted challenges which city governments are facing in regard to urbanisation in African cities. Resilience can be defined as the ability of a city and its institutional systems to survive, adapt and thrive despite short term shocks and long-term stressors that may destabilize the functioning of a city as well as its people (Resilient Cities Network, 2022). Here, it is especially relevant to plan in a sustainable and holistic approach and not in “silos” as is often the case. Visionary governance is needed, especially in African cities like Dar es Salaam. This series of thought pieces seeks to explore urban resilience in Tanzania’s main urban centres from various perspectives, focusing on ways that urban planning, its related aspects and political stakeholders influence urban resilience. It covers five important thematic areas, namely, politics and planning, informal settlements, food systems planning, urban greening, and community-led urban waste management. ICLEI-Africa is collaborating with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) Tanzania to publish this series of thought pieces on urban resilience and local governance in Tanzania.