When giants like Rockefeller Foundation, whom we all look up to for when it comes to funding urban projects, interpret resilience of a city as an alien venture for the vulnerable halves of the urban community, we are made to reevaluate our disposition. Recent demise of 100 Resilient Cities project, has raised doubts on external philanthropic supports for mitigating urban risks. The organisation’s president exclaims, “It’s a shift in the foundation’s focus to delivering measurable results for vulnerable people, with a budget framework that works.” This unexpected withdrawal has awakened many urbanists, who are now beginning to redefine the way urban resilience is perceived.

Urban resilience depends on urban mindset, understood as the manner in which societal roles are perceived by individuals in an urban community. People respond to city level risks based on the urban mindset they adopt. This imparts value to various planning variables and becomes the guiding source for policy making. Hence while building resilient cities, political parties and planners focus on strengthening the city for public use but fail to reform the urban mindset.

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This narrative is inspired by writer’s own visit to the site and entails her personal viewpoints, not aimed at a community or beliefs of others.

We have learnt to provide effective spatial orders for the living, but it remains evident that we are still unaware of accommodating our societal differences in the spaces we inhabit. Racism is an evidence of our societies moving away from social sustainability and this needs to be addressed frequently for its upheaval. Dachau lets us look back and observe the faults of an orthodox system with its severe infliction on our architectural perseverance.

An absolute bareness with its arms stretched wide open coldly welcomes the visitor, a chilling experience for lighthearted. It is only the bareness which engulfs the sight as far as it goes, as if declaring the reign of death. With sparse poplar tress at distance, tall enough and far enough to be of no use for rescue from the beating sun, again evidently striking on the harshness of the ground. On right, withstands the restored quarters of prisoners, furnishing hardly a ground coverage of 8 country houses, which inhabited 6,000 prisoners at once during last few months of its functioning.