Comparing Conceptualizations of Urban Climate Resilience in Theory and Practice

Abstract

Abstract:In the face of climate change, scholars and policymakers are increasingly concerned with fostering "urban resilience". This paper seeks to contribute towards a better understanding of synergies and differences in how academics and local decision-makers think about resilience in the context of climate change. We compare definitions and characteristics of urban climate resilience in the academic literature with a survey of 134 local government representatives from across the U.S. Our analysis shows discrepancies in how academics and practitioners define and characterize urban climate resilience, most notably in their focus on either "bouncing back" or "bouncing forward" after a disturbance. Practitioners have diverse understandings of the concept, but tend to favor potentially problematic "bouncing back" or engineering-based definitions of resilience. While local government respondents confirm the importance of all 16 resilience characteristics we identified in the academic literature, coding practitioners' free response definitions reveals that they rarely mention qualities commonly associated with resilience in the scholarly literature such as diversity, flexibility, and redundancy. These inconsistencies need to be resolved to ensure both the usability of climate resilience research and the effectiveness of resilience policy.

Recognizing Stewardship Practices as Indicators of Social Resilience: In Living Memorials and in a Community Garden

“…Resilience that is engineered (e.g., through grey infrastructure) is designed to bounce back to a previous state after a disturbance, but ecological resilience can bounce forward, transforming into a new design, a new location, or a new purpose [77,78]. We argue social resilience can also bounce forward.…”

The Infrastructure Trolley Problem: Positioning Safe‐to‐fail Infrastructure for Climate Change Adaptation

“…Climate change adaptation studies suggest that resilience is a key attribute that societies must consider when implementing infrastructure systems confronted by a nonstationary climate (Chester & Allenby, 2018;IPCC, 2014;Linkov et al, 2014;McDaniels et al, 2008;Miller et al, 2018). However, there is often a gap when communicating resilience from research to practice (Aldunce et al, 2015;Chang et al, 2014;Meerow & Stults, 2016). Few studies explore decision frameworks that promote resilient infrastructure, and many of those that do suggest that resilient infrastructure development requires the consideration not only of biophysical but also social and institutional factors such as institutional capacity, spatial variability, social vulnerability, and level of serviceability of existing infrastructures (Chmutina et al, 2014;Francis & Bekera, 2014;Y.…”

How Can Climate Resilience Be Measured and Visualized? Assessing a Vague Concept Using GIS-Based Fuzzy Logic

“…This requires also a parallel modelling approach which means that demographic and socioeconomic changes are projected in parallel to the changes of the climatic system consideration of socio-economic changes [16]. Over the last 10 years, the number of international publications on resilience in general has increased exponentially, underlining the attraction of the topic [17,18]. This enormous popularity leads to the stimulation of many interdisciplinary dialogues in academic and policy circles [18].…”

“…Over the last 10 years, the number of international publications on resilience in general has increased exponentially, underlining the attraction of the topic [17,18]. This enormous popularity leads to the stimulation of many interdisciplinary dialogues in academic and policy circles [18]. On the contrary, due to the wide-ranging forms of interpretation, this "fuzziness" often causes ambiguities in the scientific operationalization process and therefore impedes convergent decision making for new strategies and policies [19][20][21].…”