In Search of Equitable Resilience: Unravelling the Links between Urban Resilience Planning and Social Equity

Abstract

Building resilient cities is becoming increasingly vital due to the rise in urban challenges such as climate change, socioeconomic disparities, and pandemics. While the concept of resilience is gaining popularity, many scholars argue that existing resilience plans do not adequately address social equity issues. Therefore, this study investigates the incorporation of equity into resilience planning by conducting a case study analysis of ten European resilience strategies. The employed methodology is summative content analysis, and the approach is inductive. For each resilience strategy, the incorporation of three equity dimensions—distributional, procedural, and recognitional—is examined. The results show significant variation in addressing equity dimensions across the case studies. Although some plans do not effectively address equity, others integrate it more comprehensively and successfully. Thus, we argue that resilience planning can potentially contribute to social equity issues, although currently, this contribution is not sufficient. We recommend a number of strategies by which future resilience planning can enhance its contribution. These are: promoting structural transformations, considering the political processes of resilience building, adopting participatory approaches to co-create resilience plans, fostering trust and accountability between citizens and governing bodies, favouring a systemic view, and prioritising the upstream inequality factors for building capacity.