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.