Applying the Resilience Perspective to P...

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Applying the Resilience Perspective to Planning: Critical Thoughts from Theory and Practice Edited by Simin Davoudi and Libby Porter Resilience: A Bridging Concept or a Dead End? Simin Davoodi School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, U.K Introduction The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. (Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929) We live in challenging times with a heightened sense of uncertainty and constant reminders of the unpredictability of what might be lurking around the corner; be it catastrophic climate events, terrorist attacks, credit crunch, youth riots, or mass redundancies. For planners in the U.K, this wider sense of unease is exacerbated by a decade of constant change and perennial attacks on the value of their professional contributions to society. Among the prescribed remedies for dealing with such a state of flux, the one that is rapidly gaining currency is “resilience”. It appears that resilience is replacing sustainability in everyday discourses in much the same way as the environment has been subsumed in the hegemonic imperatives of climate change (Davoudi, 2012). Yet, it is not quite clear what resilience means, beyond the simple assumption that it is good to be resilient. Despite this lack of clarity, there is a growing number of governmental and non-governmental reports which aim to develop ready-made, off-the-shelf toolkits for resilience-building (see for example: Edwards, 2009; Young Foundation, 2010; Cabinet Office, 2011). One such report, supported by the Department of Business and Innovation and Skills (B.I.S) considers “cross- dressing” as a way of building community resilience (R.R.A.C, 2009, p. 10). These beg the following questions: Is resilience in danger of becoming just another buzzword? Does its malleability mean that many divergent measures, including those that might otherwise appear indefensible, can be justified in the name of resilience? Or, is it a promising concept for planning theory and practice?

And if so, what are the opportunities and limitations of translating resilience from the field of ecology into planning? As the opening essay for this Interface, this paper aims to shed light on these questions in order to stimulate debate on this slippery concept and its utility. The paper will, firstly, trace the origin of resilience and unpack its three fundamentally different meanings; secondly, present a number of emerging parallels between resilience thinking and what I call the Correspondence Address: Libby Porter, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Melbourne Vic 3800, Australia. Email: Libby.Porter@glasgow.ac.uk 1464 to 9357 Print/1470-000X On-line/12/020299 to 35 q 2012 Taylor & Francis http:/dx.doi dot org U.R.L 300 Interface interpretive approach to planning (Davoudi, 2011); thirdly, raise some critical issues to be considered when translating resilience from the natural to the social world, and finally, outline some concluding remarks.

This Interface includes five contributions, the authors of which are all responding, in different ways, to this paper. Keith Shaw's contribution provides additional insights into the concept of resilience and raises a number of questions about the politics of resilience. Two papers, one by Jamila Haider, Allyson Quinlan and Garry Peterson, and another by Cathy Wilkinson each present experiences of the deployment of resilience in planning practice. Each focuses on the use of the resilience assessment workbook method in two very different contexts: rural northern Afghanistan (Haider et al.) and urban northern Sweden (Wilkinson). These papers both show how the Resilience Assessment method brings together a number of interconnected drivers of change that rarely feature in conventional planning practices.

The fourth paper, by Hartmut Fu ̈nfgeld and Darryn McEvoy, explores the dominant disaster management approaches in climate change adaptation strategies and how a resilience approach might shift this. A concluding commentary by Libby Porter and Simin Davoudi, draws the Interface together and asks some critical questions about a resilience approach for planning. What is Resilience? Although resilience is a recent addition to planners' discursive repertoire, it is by no means a new concept.

Coming from the Latin root resi-lire, meaning to spring back, resilience was first used by physical scientists to denote the characteristics of a spring and describe the stability of materials and their resistance to external shocks. In the 1960s, along with the rise of systems thinking, resilience entered the field of ecology where multiple meanings of the concept have since emerged, with each being rooted in different world views and scientific traditions. What set this development in motion was a seminal article published in 1973 by a Canadian theoretical ecologist, Crawford Stanley Holling. In that article, he made a distinction between engineering and ecological resilience.

Engineering Resilience Holling defined engineering resilience as the ability of a system to return to an equilibrium or steady-state after a disturbance (Holling, 1973, 1986), which could be either a natural disaster, such as flooding or earthquakes, or a social upheaval, such as banking crises, wars or revolutions. In this perspective, the resistance to disturbance and the speed by which the system returns to equilibrium is the measure of resilience. The faster the system bounces back, the more resilient it is. The emphasis is on return time, “efficiency, constancy and predictability”, all of which are sought-after qualities for a “fail-safe” engineering design (Holling, 1996, p. 31). Ecological Resilience Ecological resilience, however, was defined as “the magnitude of the disturbance that can be absorbed before the system changes its structure” (Holling, 1996, p. 33, emphasis added). Here, resilience is defined not just according to how long it takes for the system to bounce back after a shock, but also how much disturbance it can take and remain within critical thresholds. Ecological resilience focuses on “the ability to persist and the ability to adapt” (Adger, 2003, p. 1). The main difference between the two types is that ecological resilience rejects the existence of a single, stable equilibrium, and instead acknowledges the existence of multiple equilibria, and the possibility of systems to flip into alternative stability domains.

Despite this difference and the fact that they are rooted in different disciplinary traditions, what underpins both perspectives is the belief in the existence of equilibrium in systems, be it a pre-existing one to which a resilient system bounces back (engineering) or a new one to which it bounces forth (ecological). Similar ideas about the existence of some illusive systems' equilibrium underpin mainstream economics and its holy grail of achieving Pareto efficiency.1 In planning, too, the quest for spatial equilibrium has a long and enduring legacy going back to the modernist visions of a “good city”. A classic example of this is the Charter of Athens which portrayed a good city as one which was in “a state of equilibrium among all its respective functions” (C.I.A.M, 1933, no pages). It then advocated that such a steady state was to be achieved by the power of plan. The equilibrium-based resilience is rooted in a Newtonian world view which considers the universe as an orderly mechanical device; a giant clock whose behaviour could be explained and predicted by mathematical rules and monitored by command and control systems.

These assumptions are not dissimilar to the positivist approach to planning and its quest to order space and time (Davoudi, 2011). In this clockwork universe, a resilient system is one which may undergo significant fluctuation but still return to either the old or a new stable state. The Discourse of Bounce-Back-Ability The equilibristic view of resilience has been highly influential in a range of social science disciplines such as psychology, disaster studies, economic geography and environmental planning. For example, economic geographers often draw on these interpretations of resilience to explain the trajectory of regional economic change as “a process of punctuated equilibrium” in which outmoded institutional structures are seen as creating “path- dependent lock-in” and preventing economic resilience (for a critique of this approach, see Simmie & Martin, 2010). Similarly, in disaster studies, urban resilience is often defined as “the capacity of a city to rebound from destruction” (Vale & Campanella, 2005), with the focus often being on whether the city has recovered, in quantitative terms, its economy, population or built form.

In psychology, where resilience thinking has made major inroads, the equilibrium model of resilience to trauma is defined as “the ability of adults . . . who are exposed to an isolated and potentially highly disruptive event ... to maintain relatively stable, healthy levels of psychological and physical functioning” (Bonanno, 2004, p. 20). Analyses of climate change adaptation plans in England have also shown that their interpretation of resilience is at best ecological and at worst engineering (Fu ̈nfgeld & McEvoy, this issue; Davoudi et al., forthcoming). Furthermore, many of the references in governmental statements or everyday discourses are also implicitly, or explicitly, based on the engineering view of resilience, with an emphasis on bounce-back-ability. For example, in a 2005 article, the former government's first Intelligence and Security Coordinator described resilience as the “capacity to absorb shocks and to bounce back into functioning shape, or at the least, sufficient resilience to prevent ... system collapse” (D. Omand, quoted in Edwards, 2009, p. 18, emphasis added). Similarly, when launching Scottish Resilience, the former Cabinet Secretary suggested that the reorganisation was to “take all practicable steps to . . . respond and cope with major shocks so we can bounce back quickly” (J.K. MacAskill, quoted in Edwards, 2009, p. 18 emphasis added).

In his review of the 2007 U.K floods, Sir Michael Pitt defined resilience as: “The ability of a system or organisation to withstand and recover from adversity” (quoted in Cabinet Office, 2011, p. 10). What all these have in common is an Interface 301 302 Interface understanding of resilience as a buffer capacity for preserving what we have and recovering to where we were (Folke et al., 2010). The emphasis is on the return to “normal” without questioning what normality entails (Pendall et al., 2010). A striking example of the potential undesirability of the “normal” is the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. It not only destroyed the physical fabric of New Orleans, but also revealed social processes which many people did not find as the acceptable, pre-disaster normal to which they wanted to return. On the contrary, what was aspired to was a “new normal” in social, economic and political terms (Pendall et al., 2010). The emphasis on bouncing back to where we were raises a number of normative issues which I will discuss later in the paper. Meanwhile, it is worth mentioning that such an emphasis also shapes the type of responses that are planned by the relevant institutions. That is why much of the resilience-building literature is dominated by post-disaster emergency planning, where the focus is on sudden, large and turbulent events, at the expense of gradual, small and cumulative changes.

For example, the London climate adaptation strategy makes it clear that it uses a “'prevent, prepare, response and recover' framework which is developed by emergency planners” (G.L.A, 2010, p. 19, emphasis added). The U.K Cabinet Office also focuses on emergency in defining resilient communities as: “Communities and individuals harnessing local resources and expertise to help themselves in an emergency, in a way that complements the response of the emergency services” (Cabinet Office, 2011, p. 11, emphasis added). Resilience is, therefore, often reduced to emergency responses and measured by indicators such as the length of time needed for the ambulance service to reach a given incident.

A key feature of emergency responses is the emphasis on short-term damage reduction which although necessary is not a substitute for long-term adaptive capacity building. The latter is at the heart of the third conception of resilience, to which I turn. Evolutionary Resilience Evolutionary resilience challenges the whole idea of equilibrium and advocates that the very nature of systems may change over time with or without an external disturbance (Scheffer, 2009). Some commentators call this socio-ecological resilience (Folke et al., 2010). Others highlight the similarities between this view of resilience and the evolutionary perspective (Simmie & Martin, 2010). I concur with the latter view and call it evolutionary resilience. In this perspective, resilience is not conceived of as a return to normality, but rather as the ability of complex socio-ecological systems to change, adapt, and, crucially, transform in response to stresses and strains (Carpenter et al., 2005). Systems are conceived as “complex, non-linear, and self-organising, permeated by uncertainty and disconti- nuities” (Berkes & Folke, 1998, p. 12). This view of resilience reflects a paradigm shift in how scientists think about the world.

Rather than seeing the world as orderly, mechanical and reasonably predictable, they see it as chaotic, complex, uncertain, and unpredictable. Evolutionary resilience is embedded in the recognition that the seemingly stable state that we see around us in nature or in society can suddenly change and becomes something radically new, with characteristics that are profoundly different from those of the original (Kinzig et al., 2006). It suggests that faced with adversities, we hardly ever return to where we were. This in itself is not such a ground- breaking idea. What is new is the acknowledgment that such regime shifts are not necessarily the outcome of an external disturbance and its linear and proportional cause and effects.

Instead, it sees that change can happen because of internal stresses with no proportional or linear relationship between the cause and the effects. This means that small-scale changes in systems can amplify and cascade into major shifts (reflecting Edward Lorenz's idea of “the butterfly effect”2) while large interventions may have little or no effects. It means that “past behaviour of the system is no longer a reliable predictor of future behaviour even when circumstances are similar” (Duit et al., 2010, p. 367). This perspective challenges the adequacy of planners' conventional “toolkits” such as extrapolation of past trends in forecasting and for reducing uncertainties. Does this mean that in a world defined by constant change and uncertainty “planning is condemned to solve yesterday's problems” (Taylor, 2005, p. 157)? The Panarchy Model of Adaptive Cycle The evolutionary understanding of resilience has been best articulated by the metaphor of the “adaptive cycle” and its graphical representation in Holling's famous model (see Figure 1). This refers to four distinct phases of change in the structures and function of a system: growth or exploitation, conservation, release or creative destruction, and reorganisation (Gunderson & Holling, 2002). The first loop of the cycle relates to emergence, development and stabilisation of systems' structure and functions, while the second loop relates to their eventual rigidification and decline, and at the same time the opening up of new and unpredictable possibilities (Simmie & Martin, 2010). It implies that as systems mature, their resilience reduces and they become “an accident waiting to happen” (Holling, 1986), and when systems collapse, “a window of opportunity” (Olsson et al., 2006) opens up for alternative systems configuration.

Holling uses the “omega” symbol for the creative destruction phase to denote the end phase, but one which is rapidly followed by an alpha phase of reorganisation and renewal. The omega phase is, therefore, the time of greatest uncertainty yet high resilience; a time for innovation and transformation; a time when a crisis can be turned into an opportunity (Gunderson & Holling, 2002). Turning a crisis into an opportunity requires a great deal of preparedness which in turn depends on the capacity to imagine alternative futures: just such a capacity which does, or Figure 1. The panarchy model of adaptive cycle. Source: Davoudi, et al (forthcoming) adapted from Holling and Gunderson (2002, pages 34 to 41) and Pendall et al (2010, p. 76). Interface 303 304 Interface ought to, define planning in broad terms.

Planning is thus about being prepared for innovative transformation at times of change and in the face of inherent uncertainties. I will come back to the parallels between evolutionary resilience and planning later in the paper. The adaptive cycle presents a number of paradoxes, such as persistence versus change, flexible versus efficient, resilient versus transformational, and connected versus adaptable (Gunderson, 2000). To resolve these contradictions, Gunderson and Holling (2002) have developed the idea of “panarchy”, as opposed to hierarchy, which suggests that, firstly, the phases are not necessarily sequential or fixed, and secondly, systems function not in a single cycle, but rather in a series of nested adaptive cycles that operate and interact.

They do so at multiple scales from small to large, at different speeds from slow to fast, and in various timeframes from short to long. This allows systems to be both efficient and innovative; they are highly connected yet also free to experiment because these properties manifest themselves at different times and scales. It is this panarchy model of adaptive cycle that underpins the evolutionary meaning of resilience. Resilience in this perspective is understood not as a fixed asset, but as a continually changing process; not as a being but as a becoming. Furthermore, resilience is performed when systems are confronted with disturbance and stress. This means that, for example, people might become resilient not in spite of adversities but because of them. Disturbance can be understood not just as acute shocks, but also as chronic slow burns.

The evolutionary perspective broadens the engineering and ecological description of resilience to incorporate the dynamic interplay of persistence, adaptability and transformability across multiple scales and timeframes (Holling & Gunderson, 2002; Walker et al., 2004; Folke et al., 2010). This has brought the role of institutions, leadership, social capital and social learning into the scope of resilience (Olsson et al., 2006). Advances on this type of conceptualisation have been made largely by scholars working at the interface of social and ecological systems and their responses to change. As I mentioned earlier, resilience has also gained considerable prominence in social sciences. In the Social Science Citation Index, the annual references to resilience as a topic, although not necessarily the evolutionary perspective, increased by 400% between 1997 and 2007 (Swanstrom, 2008, p. 4). Scholars have begun to focus on synergies between evolutionary resilience and similar approaches used in disciplines other than ecology, such as regional economic theories (Simmie & Martin, 2010) and socio-technical studies (Janssen et al., 2006). Evolutionary Resilience and Interpretive Planning In planning, although resilience is a relatively new concept it is rapidly gaining salience. Indeed, there are some promising parallels between evolutionary resilience and the interpretive approach to planning because both put the emphasis on “fluidity, reflexivity, contingency, connectivity, multiplicity and polyvocality” (Davoudi & Strange, 2009, p. 37). Evolutionary resilience promotes the understanding of places not as units of analysis or neutral containers, but as complex, interconnected socio-spatial systems with extensive and unpredictable feedback processes which operate at multiple scales and timeframes.

This resonates strongly with the relational understanding of spatiality which, according to Massey, is defined by “simultaneity of multiple trajectories” (Massey, 2005, p. 61). Evolutionary resilience discourages fixity and rigidity in the same way as interpretive planning discourages the modernist “will to order” (Davoudi, 2011). Both recognise the ubiquity of change, inherent uncertainties, and the potential for novelty and surprise. Both advocate the exploration of the unknown and the search for transformation. In my view evolutionary resilience offers a useful framework which allows us to think in new ways about planning; ways that have a lot in common with interpretive planning and the relational understanding of space and time.

Translating Resilience From the Natural to the Social World Notwithstanding these parallels, we need to tread carefully when translating resilience thinking from the natural to the social world. There are at least four critical issues which deserve particular attention. The first one relates to the intentionality of human actions.

The adaptive cycle seems overly deterministic, not allowing for human intervention to break cycles through their ingenuity, technology and foresight. Ecologists recognise this limitation and have, hence, suggested that in the social context adaptive cycles and their outcomes should be considered as tendencies rather than inevitabilities. This means that interventions in processes can indeed diminish, sustain, or enhance resilience.

Intervention, in turn, raises a number of normative and political questions. The first one relates to the idea of self-organisation which is inherent in resilience thinking. When this is translated into the social context, it becomes highly charged with ideological overtones as it refers to self-reliance. It is argued that the emphasis on self-reliance in resilience thinking is a quintessentially American idea, referring to the ability of people and places to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps and reinvent themselves in the face of external challenges” (Swanstrom, 2008, p. 10). A close look at the resilience-building literature in the U.K shows that a subtle version of “self-reliance” is repeatedly advocated.

For example, the B.I.S-supported report on community resilience (mentioned above) argues that their “system dynamic diagram shows that if the Government takes greater responsibility for risks in the community, it may feel under pressure to take increasingly more responsibility, thereby eroding community resilience” (R.R.A.C, 2009, p. 6). This seems to suggest that the government should retreat from its responsibilities; a favourable conclusion in the current neoliberal climate in the U.K. Similarly, in their “Resilient Nation” report, dem-ohs advocate that British society is increasingly “brittle” but resilience is built not by government and the institutions of the state, but by individuals and communities (Edwards, 2009). While the existence of engaged social networks help foster adaptive capacity and enhance transformative resilience, it is not a substitute for responsive and accountable governance. Advocating the rolling back of the state's support for vulnerable communities in the name of resilience is a misguided translation of self-organisation in ecological systems into self-reliance in social systems: it advocates a kind of social Darwinism. The second critical issue relates to the outcome or purpose of resilience: resilience to what ends? In ecological literature, the desirable outcome of resilience is sustainability, which is often defined uncritically.

In the social context, defining what is desirable is always tied to normative judgements. Quite often, particular outcomes are perceived as “natural” or desirable, while others are dismissed as a lack of resilience. For example, in psychology, a return to social conformity may be considered as a desirable outcome of individuals' resilience in the face of adversity. If the outcomes depart from the perceived desirable, reaching an alternative outcome may not be seen as a sign of resilience. The third issue is the question of defining a system's boundary. In a particular ecosystem, the analysis of resilience has to determine the “resilience of what to what”. This means that analysts inevitably focus on some things and discount others.

In the social context, a bounded approach soon leads to exclusionary practices. Interface 305 306 Interface The fourth challenge of translating resilience from ecology to society relates to power and politics and the conflict over questions such as, what is a desired outcome, and resilience for whom? In the ecological literature, resilience is almost power-blind and a-political, partly because ecologists often subscribe to the idea that: “There are in nature no rewards or punishments, just consequences” (Westley et al., 2001, p. 103). This may be true, but in society there are always rewards and punishments: some people gain while others lose in the process of resilience-building. Resilience for some people or places may lead to the loss of resilience for others.

Therefore, in the social context we cannot consider resilience without paying attention to issues of justice and fairness in terms of both the procedures for decision-making and the distribution of burdens and benefits. Concluding Remarks Pitfalls such as those mentioned above have led Swanstrom (2008, p. 6) to argue that, “applying the framework of ecological resilience to human institutions and governance processes generates paths to greater understanding, as well as dead ends.” I am less pessimistic and believe that evolutionary resilience, with its rejection of equilibrium, emphasis on inherent uncertainty and discontinuities, and insight into the dynamic interplay of persistence, adaptability and transformability, provides a useful framework for understanding how complex socio-ecological interdependencies work. I also believe that it has the potential to become a bridging concept between the natural and the social sciences and stimulate interdisciplinary dialogues and collaborations.

As far as planning is concerned, I think it offers promising parallels with the interpretive approach to planning, which are worth exploring further. However, in applying an ecologically rooted concept to the social setting, we need to tread carefully and ensure that in trying to understand society through the lens of ecology, we do not lose the insights from critical social science. In the social world, resilience has as much to do with shaping the challenges we face as responding to them.