Organizational learning for resilient cities, through realizing eco-cultural innovations

This article is about cities and climate change, and about ways to make cities more resilient to the effects of climate change. It presents the two dominant strategies of mitigation and adaptation, and goes on to present a systems view on the city in which resilience is the key response to climate change. The article argues that resilience depends on three dimensions or areas: a city's physical form, infrastructure and technology, its people and particular multilevel governance, levels of human connectedness and communal self-reliance, and the innovative capacity as well as the level of inclusion of marginalized groups within the economy. Teaching and training is seen as an important element in strengthening resilience, and the article presents a number of case studies showing the relevance of learning processes as conditions to work successfully in urban networks in the areas mentioned. The article takes organizational learning as its main orientation and presents important concepts such as “reflective action”, “learning by doing”, “mental maps”, the “experiential learning cycle” and the “5 disciplines of the learning organization”. This forms the base for the design of concrete educational material. This material is centered on a number of eco-cultural innovations: concrete ideas, technologies, systems or activities that focus on neighborhood-based activities that reinforce the local economy or introduce small-scale technology for water, renewable energy or waste.