Abstract:
Planning practices primarily focus on arrangement of urban spaces to realise potentialities and development priorities. It also has the challenge of responding to uncertain urban futures. In this context, planning systems need to explore innovative ways to deal with uncertain urban future pathways. This study proposes considering vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities as the key priorities for determining opportunities to achieve sustainable urban development. The concept of urban resilience in spatial research has focused more on the development of spatial dimension incorporating attempts to become ‘more sustainable’ and ‘dealing with change’ (Muller, 2011). Another dimension that incorporates and extends these concepts is increasing levels of resilience. Urban systems must be designed and operated in ways that accommodate sudden and unexpected changes (Eraydin & Taşan-Kok, 2013), also to cope up with long-term crises that can induce changes in unpredictable ways. In this study it is argued that planning systems should frame up with preparing for uncertain future, since planning outcomes must now focus on building capacity to adapt and benefit from change.
