Preface to the Book: Now more than ever, cities are hot spots responsible for threatened global ecological boundaries. Climate change impacts and global environmental change are challenges for urban dwellers, planners, and managers. To develop opportunities for the sustainable development of cities, researchers from multiple disciplines are studying the feedback, dynamics, and behaviour of urban systems in the face of change. During the 2011 Resilience Conference1 in Arizona, USA, a group of young researchers from different countries discussed critically the potential use of the resilience theory in understanding the dynamics and development of cities. Given the highly scattered literature related to ‘urban resilience’ and the different interpretations and applications of the concept, these researchers decided to set up an international urban resilience research network (later named URBNet2, Urban Resilience Young Researchers Network). Eight months after this first contact, the URBNet founders organised the First International Workshop on Urban Resilience, held in Barcelona on 18 and 19 November of 2011 with the support of the Master Programme in Landscape Intervention and Management at the Barcelona History Museum (MUHBA). The aim of the workshop was to share resilience perspectives applied to different urban contexts. The workshop was attended by more than 40 graduate students, researchers and practitioners. This report summarises presentations of the ongoing research of the network’s members that were given during the two-day workshop. The result is a review and discussion of examples showing how resilience is applied to different contexts. As a first step in understanding these contexts, we hope this compilation will inspire readers to create ways of complementing sustainability science with resilience thinking. Contributors to this report are Lorenzo Chelleri (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain), Marta Olazabal (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom and Basque Centre for Climate Change, BC3, Spain), Lilia Yumagulova (British Columbia University, Canada), James J. Waters (Tyndall Centre, United Kingdom), Anna Kunath (Helmholtz- Centre, Germany) and Guido Minucci (Politecnico di Milano, Italy). Through this report, URBNet aims to contribute constructively to the discussion on urban resilience and the opportunities and benefits of applying urban resilient thinking in urban environments.

Fostering resilience in the face of environmental, socioeconomic, and political uncertainty and risk has captured the attention of academics and decision makers across disciplines, sectors, and scales. Resilience has become an important goal for cities, particularly in the face of climate change. Urban areas house the majority of the world's population, and, in addition to functioning as nodes of resource consumption and as sites for innovation, have become laboratories for resilience, both in theory and in practice. This paper reviews the scholarly literature on urban resilience and concludes that the term has not been well defined. Existing definitions are inconsistent and underdeveloped with respect to incorporation of crucial concepts found in both resilience theory and urban theory. Based on this literature review, and aided by bibliometric analysis, the paper identifies six conceptual tensions fundamental to urban resilience: (1) definition of ‘urban’; (2) understanding of system equilibrium; (3) positive vs. neutral (or negative) conceptualizations of resilience; (4) mechanisms for system change; (5) adaptation versus general adaptability; and (6) timescale of action. To advance this burgeoning field, more conceptual clarity is needed. This paper, therefore, proposes a new definition of urban resilience. This definition takes explicit positions on these tensions, but remains inclusive and flexible enough to enable uptake by, and collaboration among, varying disciplines. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the definition might serve as a boundary object, with the acknowledgement that applying resilience in different contexts requires answering: Resilience for whom and to what? When? Where? And why?

This paper uses two diverging interpretations of resilience to review and assess current UK policies for urban resilience. Both developed in scientific studies, the first interpretation is based on a mechanistic model of systems that can recover their original state after shocks, and the second is based on an evolutionary model enabling adaptation to disturbances. The literature review demonstrates that at present urban resilience is predominantly associated with the former. By contrast, only few policies and studies are inspired by the latter, although this is better suited to analyse dynamics of urban adaptation and manage cities accordingly. The contribution of this paper to an understanding of urban resilience is therefore twofold. First, an identification of the long-term consequences on the built environment associated with each model is provided, with the mechanical model ultimately hindering adaptation. Second, some approaches to generate effective responses to environmental and societal change are identified. Ultimately, this paper emphasises that the idea of a resilient city is fit for this age characterised by uncertainty, albeit it requires the recognition within planning practice that urban adaptation cannot be attained with current methodologies, and that much can be learned from theories on the resilience of ecosystems.

As remarked in the presentation of the special issue of the A|Z Journal - Cities at risk - the increasing losses due to natural hazards, often combined with technological ones, let arise the need for new approaches addressed to evaluate vulnerability and resilience of cities in face of hazard factors, in order to better drive disaster mitigation policies. Tacking up this challenge, this contribution focuses on the “multifaceted” concept of resilience that, bridging different research fields (ecology, sustainability, risk, climate change), can play a key-role for enhancing cities’ capacity to deal with the heterogeneous factors currently threatening them: climate change, individual and coupled hazards, from scarcity of resources to environmental degradation. In detail, based on the in-depth analysis of the capacities of a resilient system and of the different models of resilience up to now carried out, an interpretative model of Urban Resilience has been outlined. Such a model represents a methodological tool for driving planners and decision-makers in building up resilient cities, enabling them to frame, into a comprehensive approach, the currently fragmented policies addressed to tackle different issues: from the climate change to the complex chains of hazards; from the environmental decay to the scarcity of natural resources.

2015

This paper uses two diverging interpretations of resilience to review and assess current UK policies for urban resilience. Both developed in scientific studies, the first interpretation is based on a mechanistic model of systems that can recover their original state after shocks, and the second is based on an evolutionary model enabling adaptation to disturbances. The literature review demonstrates that at present urban resilience is predominantly associated with the former. By contrast, only few policies and studies are inspired by the latter, although this is better suited to analyse dynamics of urban adaptation and manage cities accordingly. The contribution of this paper to an understanding of urban resilience is therefore twofold. First, an identification of the long-term consequences on the built environment associated with each model is provided, with the mechanical model ultimately hindering adaptation. Second, some approaches to generate effective responses to environmental...

Palgrave Communications

Around the globe, cities seek to improve their resilience to face the stresses and shocks that are expected from global climate change and other threats. In implementing urban resilience policies, they are guided by different urban resilience conceptualisations. What is meant by the concept differs between scholars, governments, as well as international organisations that seek to study, advise on and implement urban resilience policies and governance interventions. This article presents a review of the urban resilience literature since the 1970s. It seeks to map and interrogate dominant urban resilience conceptualisations, and decipher whether and how different understandings of the concept can result in essentially different policies and governance interventions and outcomes. In contrasting the 'what' of urban resilience (various conceptualisations) with the 'why' of urban resilience policy (bouncing back, falling forwards, persistence) it investigates approaches to overcome some of the key critiques to urban resilience policy and research.

Sustainable Cities and Society, 2022

Considering the rapid urbanization trends in many parts of the world and the increasing consequences of climate change, more and more cities are at risk of natural disasters and other environmental, socio-economic, and political disruptions. To address these issues, resilience thinking has attracted the attention of a wide range of stakeholders. However, despite considerable attention to this concept and its frequent usage, resilience remains ambiguous with diverse interpretations in policy discussions and academic debates about cities. Since such vague interpretations would lead to difficulties in theory and practice, the present study aims to clarify some of these concepts by providing a comprehensive review focused on resilience features and comparing different perspectives regarding urban resilience. The study results showed that the main reason behind such ambiguities is that resilience has undergone fundamental changes since its inception, and recent approaches to resilience are generally based on the non-equilibrium model of resilience. There are three main dimensions, including systems, agents, and institutions, as well as three main approaches to urban resilience, including recovery, adaptation, and transformation. This study's conceptual framework of urban resilience provides scholars and policymakers with a more transparent and comprehensive picture of urban resilience and helps them make better-informed decisions.

This paper will focus on the concept of resilience in the urban systems context. Generally, urban resilience is defined as the ability to absorb, adapt and respond to changes in a city or urban system. (Da Silva, 2012). As urbanization expands globally in the face of climate change, natural disasters, and other shocks, resilience has been placed centrally in the planning agenda to tackle these threats. In this paper, two underlying challenges within urban resilience theory discourse and practice will be explored. The first challenge is found in the ongoing tension between viewing urban resilience through the lens of engineering systems or socio-ecological systems (SES). The second challenge is found in the ambiguous aspiration of urban resilience theory and practice to become more “transformative” in nature. While this paper does not offer a complete solution to either one of these challenges, it aims to clarify the debate and further shed light on dimensions that can strengthen application of the concept of urban resilience to the field of planning.

proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Urban Sustainability & Resilience, UCL London, 5-7 November 2012, ISSN 2051-1361

Given the rapid urbanisation doubled by the increasing variety, number and weight of today’s challenges [1,2], cities’ and communities’ ability to cope with a large diversity of unexpected situations becomes essential for their welfare and frequently even for their survival. Urban settlements live through people, thus it is not surprising they tend to be assimilated to biotic organisms. Investigating the various types of threats and difficult situations that contemporary cities are confronted with, this research decrypts the valences of urban resilience together with its associated models and guidelines proposed for promoting sustainable development. Besides natural risks, political conflicts, economic problems and social confrontations, attention is also paid to the failure to acquire funding opportunities. The thesis supported is that, despite possible calamitous appearance, each occurrence may have a positive side and today’s ingenuity consists in identifying and applying the mechanisms that allow the transformation of adversities into opportunities. 1. European Commission, Directorate General for Regional Policy, Cities of tomorrow - Challenges, visions, ways forward, European Union (October 2011) 2. FIG Commission 3, Rapid Urbanization and Mega Cities: The Need for Spatial Information Management, The International Federation of Surveyors (FIG), Denmark, (January 2010)

2015

Fostering resilience in the face of environmental, socioeconomic, and political uncertainty and risk has captured the attention of academics and decision makers across disciplines, sectors, and scales. Resilience has become an important goal for cities, particularly in the face of climate change. Urban areas house the majority of the world’s population, and, in addition to functioning as nodes of resource consumption and as sites for innovation, have become laboratories for resilience, both in theory and in practice. This paper reviews the scholarly literature on urban resilience and concludes that the term has not been well defined. Existing definitions are inconsistent and underdeveloped with respect to incorporation of crucial concepts found in both resilience theory and urban theory. Based on this literature review, and aided by bibliometric analysis, the paper identifies six conceptual tensions fundamental to urban resilience: (1) definition of ‘urban’; (2) understanding of sys...