Strengthening Urban Resilience Through Collaborative Systems Thinking in Four Asian Cities

The USAID-funded Asia Resilient Cities (ARC) project (2022-2027) aims to tackle complex urban resilience challenges in Rajkot, India; Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; and Khulna, Bangladesh. Building on the insights of the previous USAID-funded Building Healthy Cities (BHC) project, ARC employs a systems thinking approach for sustainable urban development. Prompted by the need to overcome fragmented departmental approaches and linear planning, ARC integrated USAID's Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) framework into a systems thinking-led co-creation process. This approach emphasized early and continuous stakeholder engagement, iterative learning, and adaptive management. Key steps in our co-creation process included identifying and engaging stakeholders, conducting context mapping workshops, holding community listening sessions, refining systems maps, facilitating leverage-action planning workshops, and securing community feedback and government approval. Utilizing the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle, we continuously refined strategies based on real-time feedback and new information. Our co-creation process achieved significant outcomes. We achieved integration of government work plans and community solutions into ARC’s design, fostering ownership and collaboration. Our participatory workshops engaged 671 stakeholders across the four cities, ensuring diverse and meaningful participation. This process helped stakeholders view the city as an interconnected system and shift from linear to systemic planning. Furthermore, it created an environment conducive to continuous learning and innovation, with stakeholders and local governments actively supporting and refining the action plans. By embedding CLA principles, ARC has set a strong foundation for future progress, demonstrating the effectiveness of early stakeholder engagement and adaptive management in addressing complex urban challenges.