Desarrollando ciudades resilientes 1 Millón de Escuelas y Hospitales Más Seguros
 

CHACAO, VENEZUELA. MUNICIPALITY OF THE MONTH NOVEMBER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emilio Gaterón (Alcalde de Chacao) y Ana Liz Flores (Asesora en gestión ambiental y de riesgos)

Cities that join the UNISDR Campaign “Making Cities Resilient” share an intervention approach for addressing urban dweller´s demands that is based on the integration of planning, governance and comprehensive security services. In this regard, the experience of the municipality of Chacao is illustrated through examples on three areas of intervention: the social, the financial and the planning components.

 

Regarding the social component, Chacao has managed to ensure that its residents get involved in the projects and initiatives concerning participation in the city development process and the establishment of a “citizen culture”. The municipality´s yearly agenda includes more than 1,300 street activities A high percentage of them addressing environmental management, disaster risk and cultural issues. Many of these events take place at night and in areas with high social vulnerability. In this process 17new public spaces have been open; that the citizens have taken ownership of these new public areas is shown by the fact that they have an average of 32,000 frequent visitors per month

As for the financial aspects, by comparing public investment in resilience versus the financial burden of the investment in police security, we could confirm how, without increasing investment in police security but increasing investment in sustainability and resilience, crime rates have decreased as the implementation of the Campaign strategies advance. It is worth highlighting that the investment in sustainability and resilience is 15 times lower than that on security

Finally, the Chacao Plan (Local urban development Plan), which is regarded as the emblematic achievement of the city´s planning process, uses environmental and disaster risk management issues as the basis for its development. It should be noted that changes in city planning, generated by the resilience strategy, bring along medium and long term structural impacts.


To learn more about what the municipality of Chacao is doing on disaster risk reduction, please visit: http://www.unisdr.org/campaign/resilientcities/cities/view/1992

For general information on the Municipality, visit http://www.chacao.gov.ve/