Regional resilience: An urban systems approach

Abstract

The current thinking of regional resilience is dominated by a nodal approach, i.e. based on resilience being primarily focused on isolated individual cities or regions, therefore, neglecting critical influences of regional urban systems. Although the evolutionary approach (multi- or non-equilibrium conceptualizations) places greater emphasis on regional interactions, the urban system and its linkages are not as prevalent as it could be. The approach presented in this paper is of a spatial nature, referring to a macro-view regarding rural–urban linkages and hierarchical interconnectedness. The paper specifically refers to the emerging South African space-economy with a characteristic dispersed settlement pattern exhibiting a strong dependence on a few primate cities. The paper illustrates that when resilience is approached by means of a targeted bottom-up approach on smaller settlements within the regional urban system, an improved settlement distribution is developed in which a higher buffering capacity is established with respect to economic volatility of the national urban system.