The architecture of resilience in rural towns

Abstract

Purpose: Whilst resilience has been a critical academic topic and worldwide issue for many decades, not all territories have been equally investigated. In addition, the role of architecture in contributing to community resilience against climate change has been overlooked. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to shed light on what is the current state of the art of community resilience in rural towns and what type of architectural strategies has been recognised for facilitating resilience. Design/methodology/approach: The study has combined literature review and architectural project review. Findings: There are four major findings to this research that could impact policy making and decision making if implemented at different institutional levels. First, there is an evident increased academic interest on this topic. Second, there is a need for a greater consultation among the different stakeholders that participate in the planning and implementation of the future-focused adaptation strategies. Third, the potential for the architectural discipline to play an active role in facilitating and ameliorating community resilience has been identified. Fourth, there is a need to integrate placed-based and identity-related factors/components into a community’s framework for resilience amelioration. Research limitations/implications: One limitation is the fact that the literature review investigated only English literature. Also, the review relied mostly on online findings and, for the good-practice review, did not take into consideration direct local knowledge, which would have required travelling the globe and all of Australia in order to collect feedback. Thus, some projects and literature might have been missed. Originality/value: The value of this research is to compare findings from literature review (scholar activities) and best practices (architectural activities). In combining the two aspects, it merges a gap in research.