Metropolitan Resilience

Abstract

In recent years, the term “resilience,” or “metropolitan resilience,” has positioned itself for a precipitous career in research and urban policy. Resilience as a concept is becoming more and more widely accepted and is likely to become the standard for urban development policy. The worldwide program of the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities is an expression of this. Generally, resilience is a fundamental property of natural and social systems that include the city, region, or metropolis. The term means self‐renewal in a broad sense. Resilience itself as a term is neutral and is derived from the Latinresilire(rebound). It concerns how individuals or communities deal with environmental changes in the sense of preserving the system. It is a matter of survivability, safeguarding the habitat, adaptation to global challenges, and renewal following crises. Resilience refers to the ability of societies or ecosystems to respond to disturbances or shocks and to maintain their system functions. Resilience refers to a capacity for resistance to disturbances and crisis phenomena combined with a learning capacity for future challenges.