HUMSS - Hartmut Fünfgeld

From ‘sustainable’ to ‘resilient’? The reframing of urban policy and planning in the Anthropocene

In the last two decades, sustainable urban development has become a policy paradigm that is recognized in international policy frameworks, while also constituting a key driver of urban policy and planning in cities in the Global North and South. In recent years, however, a new policy frame has firmly arrived in urban administrations and political fora: ‘Resilience’ has enticed policy makers while raising concern and fierce criticism in scholarly circles. In light of climate change, global financial crises and rapid socio-cultural transformation, resilience initiatives are rapidly reframing urban sustainability approaches. In this talk, I provide an overview of the emergence of urban resilience, its drivers and key lines of critique in the context of urban policy and planning, thus introducing and contextualizing my research project within the FRIAS Research Focus ‘Building and Researching Resilience in the Environmental Humanities’.