Resilience Thinking in Urban Planning

摘要

This book deals with a scientific concept that has become rather popular recently: resilience. First developed in the natural sciences in the early 1970s, particularly in the, then, young sub-disciplinary field of ecology, it has rapidly gained the interest of social scientists and planners over the last decade. Resilience is about the ability of (eco-)systems to adapt to change, to absorb external shocks and to recover by, for example, returning to a sort of equilibrium or steady-state condition. In the social sciences and planning realm, climate change, natural hazards, and flood events - such as the 2005 Hurricane Katrina that hit the Gulf coast of the United States severely - have triggered a recognition for the need of resilience with respect to humans as well. Also, since spatial planning seems to continually lag behind societal and developmental dynamics, having difficulties to deploy a significant steering impact, the rise of a new term and concept was highly welcomed. It simply promised to provide better and more appropriate terms of conduct and delivery.