Alessandra Faggian

Over the last few years, resilience has emerged as a “new way of thinking” for dealing with cities’ uncertainties and challenges. As promoted by UN Sustainable Development Goal 11, urban resilience is increasingly seen as a driver for change. At the same time, resilience is commonly criticized for being too ambiguous and an “empty signifier”, as it is difficult to operationalize it.

The concept of resilience has arisen as a “new way of thinking”. It was applied in planning at th...e end of the last century as a concept that encourages policies to face stress factors and react by renewing and innovating cities. Resilience becomes instrumental in addressing both causes and effects of significant global challenges. As it motivates the transformative potentials of cities, resilience is commonly named “co-evolutionary resilience” or, most recently, “transformative resilience”.