Equal role for residents in climate-resilient city planning, experts urge

A webinar hosted by Earoph Malaysia called for residents, officials and experts to be equal partners in building climate-resilient communities. Panellists stressed that community ownership and local knowledge must be embedded from the start, not retrofitted after projects end.

Residents, local government officials and technical experts must be treated as equal partners when building climate-resilient communities, panellists said during a webinar hosted by Earoph Malaysia last month. Titled “Building Climate-Resilient Cities and Communities: From City Systems to Citizen Resilience”, the discussion drew on perspectives from local government practice, city-network implementation, climate science, nature-based solutions and participatory planning.

The central message was that resilience is not just a technical or environmental issue: it depends on governance, community ownership, long-term coordination and the ability to turn local knowledge and scientific evidence into sustained action. The webinar asked how cities can move from short-term projects to long-term systemic resilience while combining infrastructure and nature-based solutions with social resilience, institutional capacity and community preparedness.

Melaka was presented as a practical case. Zuhaila Ahmad Zubel, the Melaka City Council town planning department director and the state’s chief resilience officer, offered insights from two neighbourhoods — Kampung Morten and Pantai Peringgit — involved in the Resilience for Communities (R4C) action plan, an urban climate resilience programme supported by the Z Zurich Foundation. The engagement process involved 1,777 participants, 11 engagement sessions, 31 interviews and 262 household surveys, she said.

Zuhaila emphasised that the R4C approach turned community knowledge into planning intelligence through a “Voice to Plan” concept. Residents’ experiences were not treated as anecdotal feedback but translated into evidence that could inform planning. In Kampung Morten, for instance, residents described problems such as homes trapping heat, drainage issues, flooding, lack of space, safety concerns, congestion and development pressure — problems they experienced as interconnected, even if they appeared separate from a technical planning perspective.

Karl Astbury, place-based resilience lead at the global Resilient Cities Network, said climate resilience needs to be designed into new developments rather than retrofitted after communities are already vulnerable. He argued that community ownership cannot be retrofitted either. “You cannot deliver for three years and then hand it over at the end and expect someone to catch it,” he said. He cautioned that if residents are consulted but no decision-making power or ownership is transferred, engagement becomes “theatre”.

Astbury also warned that “without resources, decentralisation is just risk transfer”. He defined resilience as the capacity of a place and its people to absorb shocks, adapt and retain the ability to choose their own direction. A city surviving a flood is not enough, he said — people should also have a say in what happens afterwards and what gets rebuilt.

Perrine Hamel, an associate professor at the Asian School of the Environment at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore, said there is no single climate risk priority for any locality, particularly in Southeast Asian cities. Potential major risks include extreme heat, flooding, sea-level rise, air pollution and coastal hazards, but the priority differs from city to city. She stressed that science can help cities understand future climate projections and the effectiveness of interventions, but that science alone cannot deliver resilience. “Champions who can turn evidence into actual projects and policy are critical,” she said.