RESUMEN
Adopting and enforcing redundancy, diversity, robustness, and integration principles are required to create spatially resilient cities. However, no studies have demonstrated their significance and application to local urban spatial planning legal frameworks (policy documents) and plans. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap through an ex-ante review of six Ethiopian spatial planning policy documents: the Urban Development Policy (UDP), the Urban Planning Proclamation (UPP), the Structure Plan Manual (SPM), the Urban Plan Preparation and Implementation Strategy (UPPIS), and the first and second Growth and Transformation Plans (GTP I and II). Besides, the paper undertook post-ante evaluations of the 2001 Development Plan (DP), 2011 Structure Plan (SP), and the 2020 existing land use (ELU) of Kombolcha, a secondary city located in the South Wollo Zone of Amhara National Regional State, Ethiopia. Site observations supplemented the desk-based policy evaluation, Google Earth images, and data gathered from twenty-three purposefully selected key informants. NVivo 12 plus software aided the content analysis, where codes and categories were created based on the characteristics, and respective scores/coefficients were recorded. The findings revealed inconsistencies in the principles' mainstreaming with integration was well assimilated into the policy documents, receiving a score of 67.22, followed by redundancy, a value of 54.21. The tally for diversity and robustness were 44.84 and 31.83, respectively. Concerning policy-specific review, GTP I and II received the highest values of 54.28 and 57.74, respectively. However, UPPIS got the lowest with 18.50. Despite the plans' optimistic visions of addressing hazards and population growth-induced development pressures, their practical implementation had been hampered by the dominance of residential and manufacturing land-uses, haphazard block arrangements, and the municipality's limited ability to implement the proposals. The study, hence, necessitated capacity-building activities to improve local governments' spatial plan implementation capacities. The active participation of stakeholders and institutional collaboration also need further attention from all tiers of government.
RESUMEN
The resilience measurement focuses on urban shocks and stresses, which are excluded from current spatial resilience assessments. As a result, existing literature suggests that research in secondary cities of the global south is needed to understand better spatial resilience in the face of multivariate, intersecting, and uncertain challenges. This study aims to determine the factors affecting the spatial resilience of Ethiopia's secondary cities to urban uncertainties using household perceptions of Kombolcha city. The study collected empirical data through questionnaires and key informant interviews, and then analyzed those using SPSS and the Analytic Hierarchy Process. Accordingly, seventeen environmental and physical urban problems affecting the spatial resilience of the country's secondary cities were identified. Deforestation, surface flooding, landslides, poor solid waste management, and inadequate drainage facilities were perceived as top priority urban problems in Kombolcha city with the respective values of 19.73%, 13.02%, 12.70%, 7.59%, and 6.82% of the four hundred sampled households. However, water scarcity and wind-related shocks, scoring 1.48% and 1.89%, respectively, were the least recurring urban problems. The city's spatial resilience is further limited by unsustainable material and resource consumption, a lack of infrastructure, poor transportation system conditions, poor implementation of response measures: lack of appropriate planning, and non-long-lasting biophysical measures. The household perception also showed that the urban uncertainties are severe in the city, with a 49.48% response rate. The findings also revealed a relationship and commonalities amongst the problems exacerbated by land-use zoning changes and the thriving informal settlements. The study implied that improving secondary cities' coping, adaptation, and governance systems are critical for mitigating the perceived urban problems and making cities spatially resilient. Thus, the study's spatial planning implications are that local governments in secondary cities commit to localizing international initiatives, strictly establishing and enforcing local resource utilization strategies, and improving living conditions in their cities.