We’re in this together: Capacities and relationships to enable community resilience

Abstract

This paper studies how residents in the neighbourhood Bospolder-Tussendijken (BoTu) have dealt with the COVID-19 restrictions. Prior to the pandemic, significant investments in community-building were made to increase resilience of individuals and communities in BoTu. This paper identifies the key assets BoTu residents had developed and actually during this ultimate challenge. Interviews with formal and informal actors in BoTu revealed that community leadership, engaged governance, problem-solving ability, and information sharing environment were essential to adequately respond to the crisis, and were successfully deployed. The paper concludes with five policy implications to help strengthen capacities and relationships needed for community resilience.