Acting local, thinking global: Globalizing resilience through 100 Resilient Cities

Abstract

This article investigates the globalization of resilience by examining a particular and prominent vehicle for the dissemination of resilience ideas: the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) initiative. As a philanthropic initiative organized through a network of international cities, 100RC demonstrates how the spread of resilience thinking has been facilitated by exploiting changes in the structures and processes of global governance afforded by neoliberal globalization. The analysis focuses on explicating100RC’s animating logic of governance, which is committed to the cultivation of network connectivity. Rather than directly fostering resilience, connectivity is established as a condition under which resilience solutions can be immanently surfaced from the interactions of a diverse selection of stakeholders brought together through these networks. The article situates this governmental logic within broader changes associated with neoliberal globalization, namely the emergence of multi-scalar governance networks, the rise of philanthrocapitalism and the inception of platform capitalism. The conclusion discusses the implications of this analysis for further study of the relation between connectivity, danger, knowledge and value contained within resilience discourses.