TY - JOUR
T1 - Beyond bouncing back? Comparing and contesting urban resilience frames in US and Latin American contexts
AU - Muñoz-Erickson, Tischa A.
AU - Meerow, Sara
AU - Hobbins, Robert
AU - Cook, Elizabeth
AU - Iwaniec, David M.
AU - Berbés-Blázquez, Marta
AU - Grimm, Nancy B.
AU - Barnett, Allain
AU - Cordero, Jan
AU - Gim, Changdeok
AU - Miller, Thaddeus
AU - Tandazo-Bustamante, Fernando
AU - Robles-Morua, Agustín
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the US National Science Foundation (awards #1444755, #1832016, #1934933), the Chilean CONICYT-FONDECYT (award #3150290; Science Technology, Knowledge and Innovation Ministry of Chile), and the ITSON’s Programa de Fomento y Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación (PROFAPI). This work was done in collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras and Medical Sciences Campus.
Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the US National Science Foundation (awards #1444755, #1832016, #1934933), the Chilean CONICYT-FONDECYT (award #3150290; Science Technology, Knowledge and Innovation Ministry of Chile), and the ITSON's Programa de Fomento y Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigaci?n (PROFAPI). This work was done in collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico, R?o Piedras and Medical Sciences Campus. We thank Mikhail Chester for his insightful reviews of the manuscript.
Funding Information:
The Governance Survey is one of several assessment tools of the Urban Resilience to Extreme Events Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN), aimed at understanding how climate resilience efforts are governed in diverse cities. Formed in 2015 with an award from the National Science Foundation, the network includes researchers and practitioners from six cities in the U.S. (Baltimore, Miami, New York, Phoenix, Portland, and Syracuse) and three cities in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) (Hermosillo (Mexico), San Juan (Puerto Rico), and Valdivia (Chile). The goal of the UREx SRN is to improve the resilience of cities as social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) in the face of the growing challenges that climate change poses to urban areas. The cities in the network are affected by extreme climate events, including floods, heatwaves, and droughts, and represent diverse populations, infrastructure, and climates. Each city has an interdisciplinary city team, with natural and social scientists, engineers, and city practitioners from diverse backgrounds and with experience working together to address urban sustainability and climate issues in their respective cities.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021
PY - 2021/10
Y1 - 2021/10
N2 - Urban resilience has gained considerable popularity in planning and policy to address cities’ capacity to cope with climate change. While many studies discuss the different ways that academics define resilience, little attention has been given to how resilience is conceptualized across different urban contexts and among the actors that engage in building resilience ‘on the ground’. Given the implications that resilience frames can have for the solutions that are pursued (and who benefits from them), it is important to examine how transformative definitions of urban resilience are in practice. In this paper, we use data from a survey of nine US and Latin American and Caribbean cities to explore how the concept is framed across multiple governance sectors, including governmental, non-governmental, business, research, and hybrid organizations. We examine these framings in light of recent conceptual developments and tensions found in the literature. The results highlight that, in general across the nine cities, framings converge with definitions of resilience as the ability to resist, cope with, or bounce back to previous conditions, whereas sustainability, equity, and social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) perspectives are rarely associated with resilience. There are noticeable differences across cities and governance actors that point to geographic and political variation in the way resilience is conceptualized. We unpack these differences and discuss their implications for resilience research and practice moving forward. We argue that if resilience is going to remain a major goal for city policies into the future, it needs to be conceived in a more transformative, anticipatory, and equitable way, and acknowledge interconnected SETS.
AB - Urban resilience has gained considerable popularity in planning and policy to address cities’ capacity to cope with climate change. While many studies discuss the different ways that academics define resilience, little attention has been given to how resilience is conceptualized across different urban contexts and among the actors that engage in building resilience ‘on the ground’. Given the implications that resilience frames can have for the solutions that are pursued (and who benefits from them), it is important to examine how transformative definitions of urban resilience are in practice. In this paper, we use data from a survey of nine US and Latin American and Caribbean cities to explore how the concept is framed across multiple governance sectors, including governmental, non-governmental, business, research, and hybrid organizations. We examine these framings in light of recent conceptual developments and tensions found in the literature. The results highlight that, in general across the nine cities, framings converge with definitions of resilience as the ability to resist, cope with, or bounce back to previous conditions, whereas sustainability, equity, and social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) perspectives are rarely associated with resilience. There are noticeable differences across cities and governance actors that point to geographic and political variation in the way resilience is conceptualized. We unpack these differences and discuss their implications for resilience research and practice moving forward. We argue that if resilience is going to remain a major goal for city policies into the future, it needs to be conceived in a more transformative, anticipatory, and equitable way, and acknowledge interconnected SETS.
KW - Climate change
KW - Equity
KW - Social-ecological-technological systems
KW - Sustainability
KW - Transformation
KW - Urban resilience
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U2 - 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104173
DO - 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104173
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85110485276
VL - 214
JO - Landscape Planning
JF - Landscape Planning
SN - 0169-2046
M1 - 104173
ER -