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Certificate Programme in Urban Resilience

Certificate Program in Urban Resilience’ (CPUR) is an intensive program in promoting sustainable urban development and planning, tailored specifically for Naryn and Khorog and delivered by the University of Central Asia’s (UCA) Graduate School of Development (GSD).

The program has a carefully developed curriculum which combines to provide comprehensive training specifically targeting ‘high potential’ government civil servants in the Naryn / Khorog region. UCA

The idea of urban resilience in the application to remote urban economically challenged areas is aligned around five conceptual pillars: (1) Economic resilience at the macro-level, (2) Environmental resilience, (3) Socioeconomic resilience at the micro-level, (4) Cultural and civic resilience, and (5) Urban development.

The content of CPUR is concentrated in 30 academic credits (ECTS) accumulated across the 5 urban resilience pillars aligned through the four key practical management themes. The program is taught in three academic terms/semesters - 10 ECTS credits each. The program consists of 25 academic modules - 15 core and 10 electives. Each participant pass 21 actual modules (7 modules per semester), including 15 core modules and 5 electives from a list of 10 and a final ‘capstone project’ to be implemented jointly with the respective city administration. The workload is distributed between direct teaching (face-to-face work in class), self-studying, and distance learning and is therefore a hybrid form of training. Each semester occupy up to eight weeks with one semester planned per six months. Thus, the whole program requires an 18-month time.

Pillars

Modules

Economic resilience

Economic planning in the context of climate change

Municipal property governance and urban land management

Green economy - jobs, finance, tourism

Urban management for resilience I and II

Environmental resilience

Hazard, vulnerability, and risk assessment

Climate change, adaptation, and societal consequences

Disaster preparedness planning for core development sectors

Nature-based mitigation solutions

GIS technology

Socioeconomic resilience

Waste and water systems management

Demography and labour markets

Epidemics and health management

Poverty alleviation programming

Cultural and civic resilience

Resilient cultural tourism development for small mountain towns

Cultural heritage of small towns

Public-private partnerships for strengthening social resilience

Community-based social services and resilient social capital

Urban development

Introduction to urban resilience

Leadership skills (ICT, Language skills, Public Speaking)

Critical infrastructure resilience

Resilient urban planning and decision-making

Safe urban and rural development

Mainstreaming resilience into development sectors

Exchange experience with local self-governments

Landscape design

The main task of the CPUR program is to comprehensively train public officials in the sphere of urban resilience. The ultimate goals of the program include: creating a cadre of public policy officials equipped to apply for, obtain and manage externally funded projects; creating a knowledge base for the establishment of a national centre of excellence in resilience; increasing local capacity to create development solutions covering social, economic, and environmental development issues; and supporting the national capacity of stakeholders in mountain-based urban centres to deliver resiliency proof of concepts to demonstrate the value of using resilience tools in project selection and delivery.