Toronto is celebrated for its diversity, but what about its resiliency?

As the planet heats up and weather grows ever more extreme, cities around the world are taking a second look at themselves with an eye to making sure they’re up to the task ahead.

So it was no surprise that the Global Cities Summit devoted a whole session to the subject of urban resiliency. The conference, one of the most international Toronto has hosted in some time, wrapped up Friday evening. Delegates from places as varied as Haiphong, Helsinki, Mecca, Barcelona and Bogota descended on the city this week to hear how the University of Toronto Global Cities Indicators Facility (GCIF) has ushered in a new age of urban data collection, one that will enable city-to-city comparisons for the first time.

As the number crunchers soon discovered, cities everywhere are desperately looking at ways to ensure they’re prepared for the next deluge, drought, hurricane, typhoon, ice storm, blizzard … .

Listening to speakers from Manila and Shanghai describing the unprecedented flooding they now face, one couldn’t help but think of our own brushes with the new environmental reality. In July 2013, a record downpour dropped a month’s rain in one afternoon and did enough damage to cost insurers $850 million.

Last winter, an ice storm destroyed much of Toronto’s tree canopy and left residents without power for more than a week.

In the downward spiral that is fast sucking us up, one unintended consequence leads to another. With so many trees damaged or destroyed, their moderating effect reduced, the city is even more vulnerable when the next “weather event” hits.

But as Toronto engineer Carl Bodimeade pointed out, building resiliency “is also an opportunity to enhance our cities.” Using Philadelphia’s Green Cities: Clean Waters program as an example, he described how the $2.4 billion scheme to construct “green infrastructure” is expected to return $2 for every $1 invested.

He also gave delegates a quick overview of Waterfront Toronto’s West Don Lands, a mixed-use community that couldn’t have been built without the massive “flood protection landform.” It’s what will keep the new neighbourhood from being washed away next time the Don River overflows its banks.

Canadian attendees might have been struck by how many national governments play a part in the rush to resiliency. Cities in Japan, China, the Middle East and Europe all work with central authorities to implement new powers of urban recovery.

Canadians can only dream of a federal government willing to play such a role in this country’s cities.

As Niels Van Duinen, of Philips Lighting, also noted: “Resiliency is also about reducing energy use and cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.” He gave the example of the average American streetlight, which is 25 years old and technologically obsolete. Installing new equipment could save money and cut energy use by 60 percent or more.

It was left to Dan Hoornweg, of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, to remind delegates of what they already knew: “We’re handing our children a world that’s very troubled,” he said. “If you’re going to build a good, resilient city you need a good metric.”

In other words, we need accurate information as well as the ability to see how other cities deal with similar issues. That’s where the GCIF comes into the picture; it has established a system of measurement that allows cities to see accurately how they stack up against others.

These indicators, Roger Sherman of the University of California suggested, “allow us see what’s not there, what’s missing, in order to fix it.”

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In other words, the problems may be everywhere around us, but they’re nowhere to be seen.