Resilience for All or for Some? Reflections Through the Lens of Urban Political Ecology

Abstract

In this first chapter of the book, we develop a critical perspective of urban resilience through the lens of urban political ecology, with an eye towards charting a trajectory that may open new political possibilities. The chapter is divided into five parts. The first part demonstrates how the urban and the urbanisation process implies an uneven distribution of risks and vulnerabilities. In the second part, we shall explore how the notion of resilience should be understood as a scientific concept dressed in an ideological mask that has begun to be problematised by critical scholars. In the third part, we discuss how political ecology may contribute to the emerging critique of urban resilience, and in the fourth part, we develop how urban resilience operates as an immuno-biopolitical fantasy. The final section explores ways through which the urban socio-ecological condition can be repoliticised, opening new possibilities for a more democratic and progressive urban resilience decision-making. By doing so, we suggest a research agenda for transformative, more democratic, emancipatory, and socially grounded forms of urban resilience.