“Resilience Thinking” for Planning

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, neoliberalisation and market-friendly policies have been affecting the way cities develop and function. Neoliberal principles based on market reliance seem to take over or manipulate the decision-making powers in urban development and create uncoordinated state interventions (Peck et al. 2009). Increasing neoliberalisation and entrepreneurialisation cause serious problems in the governance of cities, while the responsibilities, tasks and developments of the public sector are decentralised or privatised; economic activities are deregulated, and welfare services are replaced by workfarist social policies that favour innovative and competitive economic development (Purcell 2009; Leitner et al. 2007; Harvey 2005; Jessop 1993). In this new system of sensitive balances, entrepreneurialism, consumerism and property-led development have been accelerated, turning actors in the urban land and property market into key players in urban development.