Designing Urban Resilience-building Programmes in Zimbabwe: An Exploratory Review

Abstract

This article is an attempt to explore the urban resilience programme
for Zimbabwe‟s urban areas. This is against the background that
Zimbabwe‟s urban areas are facing several challenges that stem from
social, spatial, economic and political dimensions. In summary, the
challenges are the failure to adequately treat sewage, failure to
provide clean water to residents, failure to maintain clean
environments through refuse collection and disposal and failure to
maintain decent infrastructure. Confronted by complex and diverse
social, economic, environmental, political and spatial problems,
resilience offers an opportunity to have systems that change, adapt,
and, crucially, transform in response to stresses and strains. The
emphasis of this study is on how to strengthen the resilience of urban
areas by making sure that basic services are provided to all societal
groups and that there is good governance in the provision of basic
services. In addition, the guide stresses empowering urban areas to
pursue comprehensive investment programmes to strengthen
resilience and access a broad range of financing options. However,
strengthening urban resilience is a complicated process as it is faces
problems in different socio-economic and political sectors.