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Resilient urban systems:
a socio-technical study of community scale climate change adaptation initiatives
On a smaller scale, the WOC’s decade long engagement with the water systems from conception to
operation has also meant that the physical systems and the institutional arrangements that have built around
them are capable of addressing disturbances as they arise. In the case of WestWyck, this is particularly
evident from the experience that the community, developers and contractors have all gained in constantly
adapting to small system faults.
At WestWyck, there is an explicit focus by the WOC to expand the existing knowledge base and reduce
dependency on just a few key service providers. This perspective extends to a future when the developer
and all initial contractors may not be present but services and system governance will be just as necessary.
“[The WOC] gives them [residents] a reason and a mechanism to … to deal with the
issues that they’re left with…and sustain them as a community when the developer
goes.” (S3)
5.3
Social enablers
Households represent another key component in system functions that affect infrastructure resilience and
adaptation to shocks and disturbance.
Analyses of the different arrangements at each location and the associated options, or lack thereof that they
create for householders, have led to the identification of three factors, or social enablers, that are recognised
as contributing to the underlying conditions influencing householders’ practices and their capacity and
confidence to deal with disturbance:
1.
Knowledge:
Provides individuals, householders and the community with the range of options they
can draw on;
2.
Context:
Factors that shapes this knowledge so that the range of known options is further refined;
and
3.
Agency:
The level of agency, influence or control householders have in dealing with issues and
disturbances.
The social enablers associated within each of the three areas are neither mutually exclusive nor hierarchical,
as Figure 6 illustrates. They are constantly interacting with and influencing each other, and changes in one
might bring about changes in the other(s). This advises against any planning or interventionist approaches
that might consider strategies focused on one or other element with the assumption that the desired
outcome will naturally follow.