Why Small and Medium-Sized Cities Matters?

In a rapidly urbanizing and warming world, natural hazard resilience is a pressing challenge. This is particularly true in Small and Medium Sized Cities (SMSC) where significant urban growth is projected through the mid-century, where there may be limited capacity to increase resilience and less adaptive capacity to respond to cascading and complex climate impacts. While much of the attention till date has been focused on large cities and mega-urban regions, addressing this challenge likely requires knowledge co-production and integrated urban services tailored to the unique needs of these communities. 

The objective of this presentation is to highlight the importance of SMSC in the current context of climate change and how they can contribute to the Sustainable Developments Goal (SDGs), using literature review. As SMSCs undergo rapid changes, urban planning and climate change preparation became a key aspect for these spaces. Achieving this requires a deeper understanding of their urban systems and how urban climates can support sustainable and resilient development in SMSCs.

The main aspect that are having a significant impact in the field are: studies related to land used/land cover changes using remote sensing data, local climate maps generation, analysis of urban heat island (UHI) effects in both surface and canopy layers, heat waves and flooding impacts based on modeling tools or micro-meteorology related to specific areas of the city analyzing wind patterns, heat exposure, air pollution and others.

The end goal of this presentation is to come up with collaborative mechanisms of improving the preparedness and resiliency of SMSC; to find pathways and solutions to the economic and social damage caused by natural disasters. Co-producing knowledge to improve the livelihood of residents of SMSC who are destined to face more challenges in future due to the changing climate.