17 January 2025 |
Building Healthy and Resilient Cities: Harnessing the Power of Community Resilience
by Dr. Su Aw (Assistant Professor, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Policy, NUS)
This presentation delves into the critical role of community resilience in creating cities that are not only healthy but also capable of adapting and thriving in the face of challenges. While much of the current research on resilience emphasizes individual or systems-level resilience, there is a critical gap in understanding how place-based, community-driven resilience is cultivated and can be measured. Traditional approaches often focus on social capital—relationships, trust, and collaboration between individuals—but this alone is insufficient to fully explain how communities mobilize to cope, adapt, and transform in response to disruptions such as climate change, disasters, and socio-economic stressors.
Drawing on insights from international literature, expert consultations, and case studies from the Regional Community Resilience Project, this talk introduces the Community Resilience ‘Head, Heart, Hands’ (3H) Framework. The framework identifies 35 critical capacities across individual, community, and national levels, essential for fostering place-based resilience. Going beyond social capital, the 3H framework incorporates broader capacities, such as local leadership and governance (Head), place attachment, shared values, and social cohesion (Heart), and practical actions and partnerships (Hands)—providing a more comprehensive and actionable approach to fostering community resilience.
This presentation will also highlight the Community Capacity Measurement Tool, a distinct instrument designed to assess these capacities, moving beyond traditional social capital metrics. Through real-world examples, I will reflect how this tool can be used to assess place-based communities and programs, offering valuable insights for planning, resource allocation, and evaluation.
Dr. Su Aw is an Assistant Professor at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, specializing in participatory research to improve community health and resilience, particularly in the context of ageing. With a background in psychology and community development, she focuses on addressing the social determinants of health and enhancing community capacity from the local to city level. Since 2015, Su has co-developed place-based initiatives, such as the ComSA initiative, to promote successful ageing, integrating health and social care, and designing age-friendly spaces in collaboration with community groups and stakeholders.
Her work spans Singapore, India, Thailand, and the Philippines, where she has developed tools like the Community Resilience Framework and Good Practice Checklist to support ageing communities. Su also explores the relationship between older people’s health and their attachment to place, including their perceptions and use of local spaces. She is the Co-Principal Investigator of a $1.6 million NUS project focused on senior-led, place-based initiatives to enhance community well-being and resilience.
24 January 2025 |
[to be shared closer to date]
by Dr Ahn Chaewon (Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, NUS and Urban Studies Faculty, Yale-NUS College
Assistant Professor Chaewon Ahn is an urban researcher who studies the relationship between social systems and the built environment using urban data and analytical frameworks.
Her research interests are formed through academic and professional experiences in architecture, urban design, data visualisation, and urban studies. Her research focuses on social networks and communities in cities; their relationship to the structure of the built environment; and the influences of urban planning programmes that engage them. She uses analytical skills to conduct data driven analysis that primarily focuses on big data, participatory data collection, spatial analysis and social network analysis to expose persistent issues of power in urban development processes.
Trained as an architect, urban designer and data visualisation designer, Asst Prof Ahn holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a Master’s degree in Architecture and Urbanism from MIT. She has worked with various research laboratories at MIT including the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism, the Civic Data Design Lab, the MIT Election and Data Science Lab, the JTL Urban Mobility Lab and the Senseable City Lab.
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