As climate change increases the frequency of storm events, flooding risk, prolonged drought, and other hazards, enhancing resilience becomes the goal of cities worldwide. How can societies prepare for and address a multitude of disturbances that can threaten the functioning of a city? A perhaps-unlikely answer is to increase diversity in all its forms. Economic, industrial, environmental, administrative, institutional, and sociocultural diversity are intertwined in cities, and diversity in all of these systems enhances resilience. Diversity as a key element of urban resilience.

In the ecological sciences, increasing biodiversity is the best strategy for achieving resilience. When there are multiple species it is more likely that the extinction of some species will not completely change the state of an ecosystem. As one species becomes extinct, another similar one fills that niche, performing the same ecological functions of the extinct species and preserving the functioning of the entire ecosystem. In this sense, a system is resilient when the functioning of the system continues in spite of disturbances.

Enlace: http://www.watersecuritynetwork.org/diversity-as-a-key-element-of-urban-resilience/