Resilience

Michael Quinn Dudley

The concepts of resilience and the “resilient city” have gained considerable currency in recent years among urbanists, not only as they relate to ecological sustainability but also in terms of urban disaster planning and adaptations to the anticipated threats of the 21st century, among them peak oil and climate change. While resilience emerged from the ecological sciences in the 1970s, it is now widely discussed in many disciplines, and interest in its application to cities has surged since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the 2003 North American power blackout, and Hurricane Katrina. The term is sometime used interchangeably with sustainability , and while they may be closely related in practice, they are distinct, both semantically and theoretically. For example, while sustainability is always considered an ecological and social good, a social-ecological phenomenon may be undesirable yet still be quite resilient to change. Resilience is a function of the adaptive ...

Users without subscription are not able to see the full content on this title. Please, subscribe or login to access all content on this website.