Urban resilience, what’s up with that?

Many city makers use the word ‘resilience’, what’s up with that?

Yep, it’s a buzz word: resilience. It has been highjacked by sustainability professionals. It has been captured by professionals working on climate adoption measurements. It is linked to disaster recovery in crises. And it is often used to refer to social strength of habitants. I will unravel the multifaceted implications or resilience and see what the concept of resilience has to offer, when working in an urban context. And my plea is to use a stripped-down version of the concept, because it has too much value for mis-use.

Keep calm and just become resilient

The appeal of the word might have to do with the fact that city leaders and designers intuitively came to understand that managing a city is no longer a matter of planned interventions with a fixed outcome. The world seems to be changing so fast, that the whole idea of ‘managing and control’ seems outdated.
So, then what? Resilience! That has a different ring to it.
It assumes a certain moving-along with changes, yet with the intention of a good outcome. The concept seems more suitable.
Also, the use of the concept of resilience seems to be a way of avoiding inconvenient truths. Climate change demands for radical behavioral change. Not taking appropriate decisions, but envisioning a resilient city instead, communicates ‘keep calm and just become resilient’. And social issues in some neighborhoods are poignant, but if you don’t want to change the underlying system, your refuge might be: resilient habitants.
Let’s go beyond the superficiality of the buzz word and stay away from any specific context-limited understandings of the word and strip it down to the ‘clean’ essence of the concept. For that I build upon the work of many scholars, so the paragraph below might be too scientific for some, but I’ll get to a practical angle soon.

Deepdive into resilience

It often seems that the social scientific history of the concept of resilience starts with the publication of Holling in 1973 (Davoudi 2012, Folke 2006, Meerow and Newell 2016). Holling’s publication is based on research of evolvement of species and natural environments. In this publication he introduces a new perspective to resilience. While the traditional view, largely engineering-driven, contrues resilience as merely bouncing back to a fixed equilibrium -akin to a material reverting to its original state after the effects of external influences- Holling’s insight transcends this limited scope. recognizes more than one state or equilibrium in a system. In his view a system is only non-resilient when it dies. It is resilient when it can absorb and adapt to changes. This is a fundamental enrichment of the resilience concept. From that moment of publication on, the concept has gained in complexity.
Continuing the scientific trail Fraccascia e.a. (2018) did great work researching 154 papers regarding complex systems and resilience, covering multiple domains of application. This leads to an overview of resilience definitions in the five domains of ecology, organizational science, engineering, economy, and psychology. What stands out is the common denominator: the presence of an entity, the occurrence of a change and a resulting outcome, which, crucially, is not demise, but rather some form of viability. However, where distinctions arise is in the nature of this viability. Viability can be a bounce-back to an original state (as the engineering perspective mentioned above). Alternatively, it could emerge as a novel configuration. The litmus lies in whether this new state preserves its core functionalities.

Recent use of resilience in the urban context

There is also, specifically as of the second decennium of the 21st century, extensive literature on resilience in the urban context (a.o. Chelleri e.a. 2015, Meerow and Newell 2019, Leichenko 2010, Vale 2014, Shao and Xu 2017, Allan&Bryant 2016, Godschalk 2003, Wardekker e.a. 2020). Some scholars urge for the integration of values like sustainability, equality, or social inclusion into resilience (Adger 2006, Chelleri e.a. 2015, Vale 2014). By doing so, they aim to align their vision on the urban environment and the values they hold dear, with the concept of resilience. However, from my perspective this leads to a devaluation and a clouding of the concept of resilience and contributes to the buzzword status. And, to the core it doesn’t lead to new insights in the definition of resilience. As a response some other scholars, Meerow and Newell (2019), suggest that everyone should be transparent about 5 W’s of resilience: for whom, what, when, where and why. I’ll suggest an even more straightforward approach.

To get to this approach I will use the work of scholars Shao and Xu (2017) who made an overview of all features described in various relevant research in the urban context. They compared Godschalk’ work (2003), with Walker and Salt’s (2006), Tasan-Kok and Lu’s (2012), Davoudi, Brooks and Mehmood’s (2013) and ARUP’s (2014). They came up with corresponding characteristics of resilience: robustness, efficiency, diversity, redundancy, connectivity, capital building, flexibility, innovation and a category ‘other’. Many of the mentioned characteristics also show up in other publications. Variability for instance, is the term Holling uses, referring to diversity and patchiness (elements being available in different places). And Leichenko (2010) also mentions diversity, flexibility and adaptability.

Strip resilience to its core

Building on this work, my attempt is to strip ‘resilience’ from any context, get to the core of it, and then use it. Let me elaborate. I specialize in urban neighborhoods which are often depicted in red on graphs and feature prominently on political agendas. The very neighborhoods in dire need of revitalization. These neighborhoods a strategic approach is paramount. Yet, all too often, the reflex is to react to contemporary issues from a contemporary standpoint. This is what leads to the many different versions of resilience. However, the strategy you want for a neighborhood should also apply in 2050. It should be futureproof. The strategy you want to create for a neighborhood is one that can move along with future changes without the loss of core functionalities. Hence, resilient.
And from this perspective I see potential for consolidation in the array of characteristics highlighted above. Firstly, robustness refers to the state of a system with optimal strength, health and existing non-specific capabilities or entitlements (Adger 2006) and to completeness in itself and to independency. From this perspective the characteristic ‘efficiency’ is part of robustness and there is no need to mention this characteristic separately. Secondly, capital building, flexibility, adaptability and innovation all three refer to a capability to have and use feedback, learn from it and move forward in an adapted, flexible or innovative way. So, this can be grouped under one term: innovativity.
This leads to the following five-feature list: robustness, redundancy, diversity, connectivity and innovativity. As depicted below.

Law of nature

With this five-feature selection the definition of resilience is: the capacity of a system to adapt to transitions while maintaining its core functions, in any form. When this selection sinks in, it seems rather intuitive that this is the core of resilience.
Because, yes, of course:

a system is more resilient if its starting position is strong;
the functions of a system maintain working if you have ‘a spare part’ or when you can rely on a different ‘parts’ for the same function;
a system can handle more when it can get in touch with other systems; and
a system needs learning capacity to adjust.

It is almost like a law of nature.

Valuable for strategizing

This clear and clean resilience perspective enables a transparent application when developing urban strategies. On top of the resilience perspective, it is certainly valuable to involve e.g. sustainability, equality, social inclusion or other perspectives into urban strategizing processes. Please do. But don’t label it as resilience.

You can apply the five-feature list to all components of the urban context: people, infrastructure, facilities, housing etc. I would like to note beforehand that this application is not universal for every neighborhood. The application of resilience for a neighborhood strategy entirely depends on an in-depth analysis of each and every neighborhood.
I’ll provide a glimpse of a possible applications to the housing stock.
The first feature ‘robustness’ seems obvious. Robustness refers to a situation where a system (e.g. housing stock) can handle a change without adaptation. However straightforward this feature may seem at first glance, it’s worth pausing for a moment to reflect on the number of houses that are torn down due to unfeasible renovation costs or rendered uninhabitable by foreseeable natural events. During the construction process the tension between available capital and desired financial return on the one hand and robustness on the other, doesn’t always yield the most prudent outcome.
Next is redundancy: some overplus in the stock enables the housing of newcomers. At a moment in history where the highest number of people is fleeing from their home country, it makes sense to be prepared to adapt to this shift of living location.
Which brings us to diversity. In numerous neighborhoods, I observe a prevalence of family homes, yet both younger and older individuals struggle to find a suitable house. By fostering diversity in the housing stock, people are enabled to stay in a neighborhood during various stages of life.
Next is connectivity. In many countries there is an online system to see where houses are for sale and for hire, which enables habitants to easily see where houses are available when there are none in their own neighborhood. In this digitally developed era this type of connectivity seems so common, one would almost forget the value of it.
Finally, innovativity, this feature could lead to building houses that are flexible, that can hold different forms of households over time. It could apply to buildings in general, which would bring us to office buildings that can easily be used as apartments and vice versa.

Building upon this swift and illustrative application of the five-feature list to housing, the strategic value becomes unmistakably apparent. Particularly, it brings up possible choices that professionals don’t make when resilience is not taken into consideration. Moreover, this approach extends to all facets of a neighborhood: the inhabitants, the public space, the infrastructure, the local economy etc. Embedding this five-feature list into strategizing the development or the renewal of a neighborhood, creates transparency and deducible arguments. It contributes to a clear dialogue on often complex choices in the ever-denser urban environment.

Claudia Laumans, 2025

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