Global Forum for Urban and Regional Resilience

Lauren Rickards, co-leader of the Climate Change and Resilience (CCR) research program, and Raven Cretney, PhD student, represented the CUR at a recent workshop at the Global Forum for Urban and Regional Resilience (GFURR) at Virginia Tech, in Arlington, Virginia.

The focus of the workshop is a forthcoming edited book The Resilience Machine, being put together by Prof. Simin Davoudi (Uni. Newcastle, UK), a past visitor to CUR, and Prof James Bohland, Prof. Paul Knox and Dr Jennifer Lawrence from GFURR.

It was an exceptionally productive and congenial meeting at the beautiful GFURR facilities in Arlington. Highlights for Lauren and Raven were the high quality, coneptual discussions about resilience with other co-authors, such as Peter Rogers (Macquarie Uni), Jonathan Pugh (Uni Newcastle, UK), Julian Reid, and Chris Zebrowski (Loughborough Uni), and building on the collaboration with recent CUR International Visitor, Kevin Grove of Florida International Uni.

Lauren is writing a chapter for the book with CCR colleagues Wendy Steele and Martin Mulligan on rethinking Community Resilience. And Raven is writing a chapter on the (post)politics of disaster resilience based on her research on Christchurch’s response to the earthquake.