A growing majority of the world’s population lives in cities, and the concentration of people and critical services in cities increases their exposure to acute shocks and long-term stresses. Therefore, building resilient cities that are able to resist and absorb threats and are capable of adapting to and recovering from shocks and stresses is vital for the wellbeing of society. Although the literature offers several studies on how city resilience can be improved, operationalizing resilience is still a challenge. This article describes the different phases of the cocreation process followed in the development of a maturity model that can guide cities in assessing and future improving their resilience level. This co-creation process was conducted using different methodologies involving an interdisciplinary group of international experts who contributed their knowledge and experience to the development process of the maturity model. The outcome of this process is the final version of a maturity model that operationalizes the steps that should be taken to build city resilience.

Introduction

The world is experiencing the largest wave of urban growth in history. Over half of the world’s population is now living in cities and according to the United Nations estimates, by 2050, 66% of the total world’s population is expected to be urban (UN, 2014). With this rapid urbanization, cities are facing a variety of acute shocks derived from natural disasters and long-term stresses, such as the effects of climate change (Harrison and Williams, 2016; UNISDR, 2015a). Therefore, there is a need for cities to implement policies for increasing resilience and improving preparedness to cope with both acute shocks and longterm stresses (Spaans and Waterhout, 2017). The concept of resilience has been applied in many different disciplines such as climate change, disaster risk reduction, and planning (Peng et al., 2017). This research considers resilience as a transversal capacity to deal with all kind of threats, expected and unexpected. Resilience goes beyond traditional risk management approach and it does not only take into account the type of threats towards the city is already preparing for but it is also focused on developing preventive and adaptive capacities to deal with any kind of unexpected threats (Park et al., 2013; Risk and Resilience Research Group – Center for Security Studies, 2011). Making cities resilient to shocks and stresses in order to ensure the welfare of society has become a major concern for academics, emergency management practitioners and governments (Chmutina et al., 2016).