Community resilience and the co-creation of urban spaces

As the world is swamped by another crisis triggered by a pandemic, the attainment of a resilient society is an ever-more attractive concept for policy makers and urban communities. The property of a resilient system to spring back to normal in the face of disruptions, which can be observed in nature, has been often invoked as highly desirable for an urban context (Caputo et al. 2015). Tomorrow’s resilient cities are those that can resist to climate change, population growth or decline, economic downturns (Pickett et al., 2004) or – as we are experiencing today – social distancing. Resilience can be described as ‘the human capacity to face, overcome and ultimately be strengthened by adversities and challenges' (Masten and Yates, 2004). Similar to this definition, community resilience enables local groups to ‘withstand disturbances so to maintain their social infrastructures’ (Magis, 2010). Resilience of physical infrastructure and the urban environment can be achieved through design and engineering. Instead, community resilience is a much more complex attainment, which requires the economic and social fabric of communities to remain in place in the face of disruptive calamities such as flooding or, likewise, long term chronic adversities that hinder a balanced and healthy development.