Resilience - The Ultimate Sustainability

By: Aris Papadopoulos

Narrated by: Rich Miller

This pioneering audiobook by a career industry insider and 9/11 survivor spotlights why the multitrillion-dollar US-built environment is increasingly failing. His analysis exposes policies and interests that to this very day are the root causes of vulnerability. It discusses why the green movement has fallen short in addressing sustainable building development. The audiobook extracts 30 lessons for nations aiming to build a more disaster-resilient future. Guaranteed to stir building, policy, and sustainability circles, it signals a time for change.

• There are four principles or "laws" governing disaster risk. Learn about the primary driver of increased disaster risk in recent history and its only antidote.
• Understand the workings and history of property insurance. Why it failed to anticipate the major disasters of recent decades and how government policies are driving it away from the business, while in its place taxpayers are left to hold the bag.
• Learn how a superpower invested trillions in its built environment but now finds itself the world’s leader in disaster economic losses with large part of it vulnerable to natural hazards. Understand the role played by government policies and private interests in creating a building system that to this very day underperforms. Uncover those who benefit from non-resilience and obstruct changing the status quo.
• Understand why environmentalists should embrace resilience of the built environment. Learn how green and resilient movements can better relate to and work with each other in order to achieve a more sustainable future.
• Extract lessons from US experience that can help other countries avoid similar pitfalls, as they increasingly invest in their built environment. It is not too late for the US to apply these either.

This audiobook's predictions have proven correct during the last five years and will continue so through the 21st century.

It served as inspiration for the 2018 documentary Built to Last? shown on PBS.

©2016 Aris Papadopoulos (P)2020 Aris Papadopoulos

A Book Every Homeowner and Homebuyer Should Read

A book that every homeowner, current or potential, should read, if they want to possibly avoid becoming the next disaster statistic. It puts a spotlight on an industry that profits by the rules it makes and keeps those who pay the price (personally and economically) in the dark. Aris Papadopoulos educates and explains a complex issue in clear language and plenty of relevant examples. Having been on the industry inside, he knows how the system works. Disasters are caused by our faulty development, not nature. Read how Canada profits by exporting vulnerability to the US, how the government has worsened the problem with its costly flood insurance program and how the insurance industry needs to duplicate for property what they succeeded doing with car safety. Liked the dozens of lessons at the end for policymakers around the world to get us on a disaster resilient development track. Finally, a clear narration made this easy to listen.

Yes, but -- important but not broad enough

Makes an utterly compelling case regarding the problem of shortsightedness in the built environment. However, I expected much more on climate adaptation.

An Expert's Groundbreaking Thoughts on Resilience

A wonderfully narrated audiobook. Aris Papadopoulos's distinguished expertise shines in this seminal work on resilience and the systemic failures that make our built environments so vulnerable to disasters.

"Nature may generate hazards, but humans cause disasters." According to FEMA, for every $1 invested in Resilience Capacity, $4 are saved in disaster damages/losses. Why are poor building codes and weak materials so widespread? Why is there such limited data democracy for homeowners/buyers to understand the disaster risks of properties? Why has neither the government nor the private sector pulled this together?

The book opened my eyes to how poor building codes and materials, the national flood insurance structure, and industry lobbies act against resiliency. Mr. Papadopoulos provides compelling strategies, tactics, and applications to solve these (and other) systemic problems. Such thinking informs the book's title: ultimate sustainability means building things that last.