Elevated office buildings in Concepción, Chile were built to withstand a tsunami. The city was hit by an 8.8 earthquake and tsunami in 2010. (Walter Mooney, U.S. Geological Survey/ flickr/ cc) 

The prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology is exploring cost-effective ways to design cities to withstand climate change and natural disasters.

The Resilient Cities Housing Initiative, launched this spring, emphasizes remedies that can help a city’s “least advantaged,” Kathryn M. O'Neill writes in the MIT Spectrum. The newsletter is distributed to the university’s friends and supporters.

Architectural changes and stricter building codes are among the ideas being studied by researchers. They’ll also examine ways to encourage cities to prep for the next disaster — even if it’s an abstraction that’s years or decades away.

O’Neill notes that sound urban planning can spare lives. A 7.0 magnitude earthquake destroyed much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 2010 and killed hundreds of thousands. Yet an 8.8 earthquake in Concepción, Chile a few months later killed only 525 people. Earthquake-resistant designs and enforcement of rigorous building codes in Chile kept the death toll low, according to MIT. Read more about the new program here.

> via citiscope.org