Research suggests that some communities are more resilient than others in the face of the same external stress. Both the local effects of and local responses to the 2008 financial collapse and economic recession have been geographically variegated. Drawing upon two case studies in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (Spain), this paper aims to understand why some historically deprived neighborhoods are proving more resilient than others in facing the effects of the Great Recession. We conclude that neighborhood resilience, strongly influenced by the precrash context and by socially produced conditions of vulnerability, operates in each community according to at least three context-specific and interdependent factors: built environment, social capital, and civic capacity. We focus on civic capacityunderstood as neighborhood ability to mobilize different sectors of the community to act in a coordinated fashion around matters of community-wide importanceand demonstrate that it is a significant resource contributing to neighborhood resilience.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.