Asia is urbanizing at a breath-taking speed. Of the 47 cities in the world that are defined as ‘megacities’, two-thirds are in Asia. According to the UN, the Asia-Pacific region became majority urban in 2019 for the first time in human history, with more than 2.3 billion people now living in cities. Fastest urban population growth is set to occur in secondary cities of Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

As these cities are growing, they face multiple slow-moving stresses at once. The governments need to manage housing and infrastructure for the millions of new city dwellers, but also expand the preparedness of their cities for slow but certain threats as climate change, gridlock, food insecurity and public health crises.

There is a critical need to strengthen resilience in cities in the Asia-Pacific by implementing strategic and long-term planning. However, many of these cities lack the capabilities to prepare funding proposals to potential financiers or investors to accelerate the development of resilience projects.

In this Asia Society Switzerland and Swiss Re event, the first in a series of two on Urban Resilience in Asia, we will explore what the different approaches are that make cities resilient against slow-moving threats, share best practices we can learn from, and explore the relation between political systems and the level of resilience of cities.

The event will take place in the beautiful auditorium at Swiss Re Next in Zurich. It can also be followed online via Microsoft Teams.

OUR SPEAKERS

Jonas Jörin is the Co-Director of the Future Resilient Systems (FRS) programme hosted by the Singapore-ETH Centre and funded by the National Research Foundation of Singapore. FRS is an interdisciplinary research programme which focuses on understanding and designing resilience in the context of high-density urban systems.

Jonas holds a PhD from Kyoto University, master’s degree from the University of Manchester (UK) and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Zurich. His academic background is in geography, environmental management and disaster management. His research interests are in understanding human-environmental processes, with a particular focus on analysing the resilience of individuals in the context of hazards.

Jonas is active in contributing to the research fields of community and social resilience as well as food system resilience and has done extensive field work in several countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.

Supachai Tantikom is the former Chief Resilience Officer of Bangkok. He developed the first Bangkok Resilient Strategy, which was launched for implementation in February 2016. The Strategy, which offers over 70 initiatives, is composed of three strategic areas, which are: increasing quality of life, reducing risk and increasing adaptation, and driving a strong and competitive economy. Prior to taking the position of Bangkok Chief Resilience Officer, he joined Bangkok Metropolitan Administration as advisor to the governor for over 6 years. He was assigned to take responsibility and oversee the infrastructure developments, climate change, sustainability development and green growth. The position gave  him the opportunity to take part as a speaker in various meetings and conferences in the world.

Dr. Supachai got his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Alabama. He is a professional and experienced civil engineer with ability in design and project management by practicing in structural, foundation, and civil engineering design and project management in private sectors for over 25 years.

He believes that with his background and all the experiences he gained from all his work he can develop Bangkok to be a livable and moreresilient city. To do so, he decided to race for Bangkok’s office. He was one of the candidates for Bangkok governor in the recent Bangkok governor election in May 2022.

Debjani Bhattacharyya holds the Chair for the History of the Anthropocene at the University of Zürich. Her work lies at the intersection of legal and environmental history. Her book, Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta (Cambridge University Press, 2018) won the 2019 honorable mention for the best book in Urban History. She is currently working on her second book Climate Futures Past: Law and Weather Knowledge in the Indian Ocean World. She is a non-resident fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.