Podcast host Sothea Ros speaks to Bruce Chong, director and climate and urban sustainability leader at Arup, on building cities' resilience against climate change.

As of 2020, more than half, or about 356 million, of the 660 million inhabitants in Southeast Asia, lived in urban areas. By 2025, those living in urban areas are expected to increase by an additional 70 million.  

For many governments, rapid urbanization is a challenge as it leads to uncontrolled urban sprawl, lack of basic services, environmental degradation, more air pollution, and carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. With climate change, cities also face increased temperature and sea level rises, more frequent and severe flooding, changes in rainfall patterns, intense typhoons and cyclones, and other natural hazard events.

In this episode of Experts Talk Solutions, Bruce Chong, director and climate and urban sustainability leader at Arup, talks about the need to adopt a systemic approach to ensure cities' climate resilience.