From community resilience towards urban resilience

Abstract

Climate change and resource scarcity effects pose challenges by themselves. In the context of the complexity of cities, these challenges become wicked and ill-defined as e.g. socialeconomic issues are added. To face these challenges, a city’s resilience on multiple scales has to enable it to both mitigate the causes and adapt to the aforementioned effects. In resilience literature the concept of panarchy connects resilience of multiple scales in a system, e.g. a city, and shows a causal relationship between them: a system is only as resilient as it’s sub-systems. Much like a chain being as strong as its weakest link. Despite the panarchy-principle, the complexity of the city thwarts pointing out the effects increasing resilience in a sub-system may have on the scale of the city. In an era of disruptions so significant that we refer to them in a single-name shorthand (think: 9/11, Katrina, Fukushima, Haiti, Sandy) what gives cities their ability to bounce back? In this study we focus on the social systems in cities, and specifically on grassroots initiatives. The number of grassroots initiatives (GRI’s) has increased tremendously over the last 10 years. Two major groups can be identified: those instigated by an immediate cause, e.g. in the wake of disasters like hurricane Katrina or Sandy, and those dealing with long term goals, such as those that are sustainability driven like the Transition Town movement. The latter GRI’s actively shape cities through themes like food growing, insulation of residential buildings , local energy generation, and civil participation. GRIs operate on the lowest organisational level in cities and form a loose, but potentially large system within the city. The hypothesis of this study is that despite the complexity of cities, GRIs contribute significantly to the social resilience of cities. To investigate this effect, a good understanding of their role in cities is necessary. This paper reviews relevant literature and combines them with observations to formulate a framework, within which GRIs can be placed. To test this framework, a first case study is done. Additionally, directions for further research will be discussed.