Regional sustainability and resilience: Recent progress and future directions

Abstract

Growing concerns over the vulnerabilities of cities and regions to climate change and other environmental, economic and social stressors underscore an increasing awareness of the interdependencies among the environment, economy and society. Sustainability—concerned with societal well-being and the maintenance of natural, manufactured, and human capital and other community assets over the long run—and resilience—focused on short-run recovery and adaptation to negative external shocks—have emerged as two key policy criteria. Although scholarship has lagged behind, the concepts of sustainability and resilience have been meaningfully defined in the literature and, in some cases, grounded in theory and empirically applied. We highlight these approaches and discuss future research needs and opportunities, including vastly more data and models that better account for open economies, integrate economic and environmental components, and provide a basis for welfare assessment. We conclude that regional scientists are well-positioned to take on these challenges.