What do we mean by resilience? It can be defined as the ability of a community (or a system) to manage and adaptively respond to shocks and adverse events. From a societal perspective, there is an emphasis on transformative aspects, the capacity to catalyse innovation and learn from social diversity. However, increasingly, there is a common understanding that resilience can adopt multiple meanings depending on context, traditions, values, or socio-economic legacies. Resilience, as a concept, can have various dimensions based on the types of crises we discuss, or it could also have a meaning based on ‘who’ is building resilience. What are the implications of these diverse meanings?
Narratives of redevelopment
While reading Crisis Cities by Gotham and Greenberg, I started to ponder the redevelopment processes and how managing the aftermath of a crisis could shape our approach to building resilience. Academics have long emphasised the need to reinforce anticipatory actions (often named anticipatory governance, among other cool words) and to strengthen a culture of preparedness. Yet, governments continue to react to crises in various ways, even when they are prepared. Thus, the “post-crisis” moment becomes quite significant.
However, not everything is that beautiful and easy as many policy documents suggest… Concepts like co-creation and participation sound promising, but cities are already contested spaces even during “non-crisis” periods. Urban conflicts over city planning are common, as evidenced by elections where candidates propose diverse and often conflicting visions for city development.
The redevelopment process, typically framed as a path to resilience, thus becomes a battleground where various groups struggle to control the narrative and outcomes. During redevelopment, there is more room for manoeuvre; actions are often adapted to “emergency” regulations, which can open the door to opportunism. Opposing groups and interests will battle to control the framing of a crisis and to prescribe and justify particular political interventions and visions of an ideal, post-crisis future.
These contradictory opinions—often masked under “participatory processes”—are institutionalised within a mix of ad-hoc commissions, new planning organisations, or committees. These groups are shaped by pre-existing power relationships, resulting in redevelopment processes built on the foundations of already uneven representation and societal inequality.
What future, which ideas?
But what future do we, as regular citizens, want? Are citizens truly considered by policymakers and practitioners, or is participation an illusion perpetuated by academics and superficial policy documents? Are redevelopment processes built from more or less organised community groups, or are they proposed and led by governments, including pre-existing arrangements with key stakeholders? What is the room for “new ideas” for a future that could be significantly different from contemporary policy goals?
The future we build is also based on the concepts framing 'redevelopment' and 'resilience'. These concepts can permeate down to regular citizens trying to understand what is happening in our world (and hopefully take active roles in participation) . But let's call it by the (right) name. Resilience is typically associated with crises, which are shaped by various factors including underlying risks. We can talk about blended risks (and thus, blended crises), interconnected, interacting, or cascading ones—all connected to one key variable in the definition of a crisis: time. We need a temporal definition.
However, Collins Dictionary announced ‘permacrisis’ as the word of the year (2022). It was also presented and discussed by recent media articles or even policy documents such as the European Strategic Foresight Report 2023. The term expresses the feeling of living through a “period” of war, inflation, and political instability, as described by the BBC. It can also refer to a different mix of risks. The European Commission has defined that “we are living in an era of ‘permacrisis’ in which we can no longer improvise”.
While there is temporal definition (‘period’, even indefinite, refers to time), we should avoid installing the idea of permanence, crises that seem to persist without resolution. We are talking of how a narrative is build and thus how solutions will be based on the discourse and (un)common ideas we share. Crises should be seen as turning points as single or interlinked series of events with a start and end. Working in ‘silos’ is indeed not good (both for the framing and for solutions), but we should clearly understand the nature of events or challenges to properly address them. Otherwise, we risk making short-term decisions without tackling pre-existing patterns of vulnerabilities, including inequalities.
What ‘meanings’ and which ( possible) ways forward?
Think about apocalypse and post-apocalypse. There is an end, and there is something after that end. Can we build on crisis and post-crisis situations to redefine what we want our world, nation, region, or city to be after a disaster? It is a framing process that should avoid being poisoned by capitalist logics, pre-existing power arrangements, and neoliberal intervention strategies. Post-crisis periods tend to reinforce and perpetuate existing power relations and social inequalities, thereby creating new patterns of risks and vulnerabilities.
There will be a destructive and constructive logic intertwined in the redevelopment processes, leading to changes in society, economy, and politics. Is it possible to change the way we live? Do we want to change the way we live? The symbolic framing process requires understanding the dynamic conditions of the urban landscape we live (the one we all lived, and not that one making part of the mainstream narrative!). Cities are constantly transforming, vulnerabilities evolve, and capacities need updating to align with emerging trends and technologies. Risks can also change; for example, evolving climate conditions are making phenomena like floods or wildfires more recurrent.
Given the persistent state of change in urban environments, it is imperative to govern for continuous change rather than aiming for a fixed state of stability. Multiple scholars, including myself, have argued the need to govern for uncertainty. However, we must acknowledge that the way uncertainty is built is also a dynamic societal process, linked to changes in values, perceptions, and societal ideas.
Transformative resilience is important but should be approached through effective inclusive methods. Otherwise, the risk of creating an uneven redevelopment landscape will persist. The use and redirection of resources following built narratives often favour those who can shape these narratives to their advantage, leading to further power imbalances. By addressing the underlying political and economic structures that drive inequality, cities can move towards more inclusive and equitable futures.
Redevelopment after crisis is a window of opportunities – if framed appropriately as collective processes where all voices are heard.
