Toward integrative resilience: a healing justice and trauma-informed approach to urban climate planning

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cities are on the frontline of the climate crisis and, as such, are poised to experience more frequent and severe climate-related disruptions including heat waves, floods, and epidemics. The personal and societal costs of these threats will only escalate as the effects of climate change continue to be felt more acutely, yet municipal action plans currently lack comprehensive indicators for tracking their impact on human health and wellbeing. In response to this gap, this paper proposes an integrative approach to urban resilience that is premised on: 1) a bioecological reading of vulnerability; 2) a trauma-informed approach to climate planning; and 3) a ‘healing justice’ orientation to policymaking. Informed by the cases of New York City and Copenhagen, it offers theoretical and policy contributions not only to the process of building resilience to climate change in cities, but to many other contexts where disaster and health emergencies, systemic risk mitigation, and community empowerment are concerned.