Urban Planning for Transitions. Группа авторов

health, well-being, as well as mutual understanding and respect as central pillars of a balanced society. GOAL 2: World Port City built on clean and reliable energy: “Towards a flexible energy infrastructure for an efficient and sustainable energy mix in Port and City” Providing a clean diversification of energy sources and making the urban energy infrastructure would be a complex task; however, it provides the opportunity for Rotterdam to strengthen its economy and reputation, as well as it makes the city more flexible for the future. GOAL 3: Rotterdam Cyber Port City: “Rotterdam aims to be a cyber resilient city and port, an important condition required to attract new business and investment” The resilience of Rotterdam to cyber threats will be increased by enhancing awareness, sharing knowledge and experience, and joining forces to improve responsiveness and ICT products. GOAL 4: Climate Adaptive city to a new level: “Climate proof plus cyber proof critical infrastructure” The city of Rotterdam will work to better understand the cascading impacts of climate change and to factor these into their cost–benefit decision-making. Furthermore, they will also strengthen their crisis management approaches based on increased knowledge of flood risks, as well as enhancing their climate resilience strategy by taking action on cyber resilience. GOAL 5: Infrastructure ready for the 21st Century: “A robust and resilient underground infrastructure as a physical basis for a resilient Rotterdam” Rotterdam wants to increase resilience by enhancing the awareness of risk, developing a policy for more robust decision-making; more integrated planning practice both underground and over-ground, relating to infrastructural interventions. GOAL 6: Rotterdam network – Truly our city: “Residents, public and private organizations, businesses and knowledge institutions together determine the resilience of the city” The resilience strategy will focus on increasing government flexibility and will facilitate connecting several networks of locals, individuals and businesses, as a catalyst for more bottom–up community and initiatives, to share knowledge and experiences to the advantage of Rotterdam’s people and prosperity. GOAL 7: Anchoring resilience in the city: “With stakeholders in the neighborhoods,sharing knowledge and a facilitating organization” The city will develop an innovative and integrative agenda on the back of this resilience strategy to identify co-benefits and synergies.

      This Resilience Strategy adopted by the city has managed to cover different scales, starting from the smallest one that is buildings and people to the world-wide scale through connecting with and recognizing other cities with global resilience strategies. Therefore, the strategy managed to focus and reasonably integrate the following key aspects.

      1.3.3. Concrete resilient initiatives and programs

The strategy has adopted different programs and initiatives that made it distinctive, creative and applicable as well. The following ideas present how the strategy has succeeded in being creative in dealing with city’s threats and how they formulated their weaknesses into opportunities (the following programs and initiatives are based on personal preferences):

      i) WEsociety program

      The role of Rotterdam’s WEsociety program is that there is a place for everyone, and everyone has the same opportunity to participate in the city’s action plans as well. The stakeholders tend to make Rotterdam a place where people actively want to meet one another and demonstrate their understanding and respect to each other. Mutual dialogue and connection enable and facilitates the discussion of any perceived issues.

      The WEsociety program was initiated to make Rotterdam more resilient and resistant to potential harmful influences. It aims to strengthen connectedness in a sustainable way and create space for citizens to express issues and misgivings. Besides, Rotterdam is working also on expanding and strengthening the interconnectedness of the city among city dwellers, social organizations, population groups with different cultural backgrounds and with the municipal government as well. This will help the city to achieve the following different social qualities:

       – integration: accept and understand each other’s value and take action to reduce tensions;

       – participation: provide same opportunities to different population groups;

       – capacity for adaptation: through the cultural diversity of Rotterdam’s population;

       – resourcefulness and robustness: become strong and assertive to avoid the potentially negative consequences of world events;

       – redundancy: get benefits of the communication channels among local population to support actions during crisis;

       – flexibility: society can accommodate population groups that are facing difficulties.

For individuals, a resilient society means that everyone, regardless of their cultural, ethnic or religious backgrounds, is valued and respected and can participate – somehow – in the society (participation). Furthermore, differences and diversity will always be there, but mutual respect and understanding should always be observed (integration).

Table 1.4. WEsociety Program

       (source: Rotterdam Resilience Strategy 2016)

Scale	The whole city
Owner/partner	The Municipality of Rotterdam/welfare organizations
Status	On going
Result	Short-term/medium-term
Related actions	6, 7, 8, 9 (see Appendix 2 of strategy)

       ii) The Rotterdam Energy Infrastructure Plan (REIP)

      The transition to efficient and renewable energy will require – in addition to measures at the level of individual buildings – an energy infrastructure that can support this transition and proposals on how this transition can be implemented and overseen (a road map).

      This would be an important step towards a 100% CO₂-free built environment by 2050. To do so, the municipality has decided to start this process by using the Rotterdam Energy Infrastructure Plan (REIP). It seeks to respond to the strong and ambitious endeavors of the city such as solar energy and wind energy, by finding the means for the needed transition. As the existing infrastructure and facilities are based on outdated ideas in relation to the supply of energy and do not incorporate the concepts of emissions reduction and the finite extent of the earth’s