Housing tactics: Searching for community resilience in depopulated rural contexts (Huertas, South West Spain)

Abstract

Depopulation of the rural world jeopardises the continuity of many communities and the socioecosystems they support. In response to this situation, diverse strategies are activated to ensure the continuity of these socioecosystems. All these initiatives seek, directly or indirectly, to strengthen community resilience, with a view to making the changes required to reverse the population trend. One of the most obvious, but least studied, effects of depopulation is the abandonment of housing, which initially implies urban deterioration and collapse but which can also become an opportunity if these abandoned houses are turned into a resource at different levels and in different arenas. An ethnographic case study conducted in the Sierra de Aracena Mountains (South West Spain) allows us to explore the link between housing and community resilience, helping us understand how the use and management of redundant housing can be a fundamental component of resilience in rural settings marked by depopulation.

Community resilience in Spanish depopulated rural areas: A systematic review

“…Also, social capital is critical for community resilience (Aldrich and Meyer, 2014;Matarrita and Trejos, 2013). Social capital is understood as a cluster of factors among which studies highlight leadership, social and support networks, common values, a sense of community and collective identity, attachment to the territory and a wide-reaching network of trust and reciprocity (Cá ceres et al, 2021;Herná ndez et al, 2022). These attributes related to community resilience are relevant not just in rural settings.…”