The Key to Making Cities More Resilient? Accountability.

Strengthening the resilience of developing country urban areas is an imperative. The stakes are high and growing even higher: Worldwide, an estimated 1.4 million people move into urban areas each week. This growing urban population is ever more vulnerable to a range of disasters, which together are estimated to cause average annual global losses of US$314 billion.

Building Urban Resilience: An Evaluation of the World Bank Group’s Evolving Experience (2007-2017)

This evaluation examines the World Bank Group’s evolving experience in building resilience in urban areas during the period 2007–17. The focus of this evaluation is the World Bank Group’s support to clients in building urban resilience—to cope, recover, adapt and transform—in the face of shocks and chronic stresses.

Reducing Risk Before Disaster Strikes: Seven Lessons from Turkey

In this IEG Project Lessons series, we take a close look at the World Bank Group’s projects to assess what has worked, what didn’t, and why, to better inform future projects and investments.

This brief captures the lessons from evaluating the World Bank’s Istanbul Seismic Risk Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Project. To read the full evaluation,