Is urban resilience a phenomenon on the rise? A systematic literature review for the years 2019 and 2020 using textometry

Abstract

There is growing interest in understanding and addressing studies about the capacity of cities to resist, absorb, adapt, and recover from a wide variety of different threats, such as terrorism, hazards, climate change, economic crisis, and pandemics, among others. This phenomenon, called urban resilience, emerged in the early 70s. Since then, investigations have contributed to increasing its conceptual framework. Nevertheless, there are still some weaknesses and gaps in the demarcation of its foundations, topics, and peculiarities. The present article is an attempt to fill this gap. Specifically, this study aims to carry out a systematic literature review for the years 2019 and 2020 to fulfil two objectives: (i) to categorize recent topics in the field of urban resilience; and (ii) to determine whether the topic of urban resilience continues to offer new research opportunities. Thus, a firm understanding of the principles of urban resilience and main concerns will allow us to address disaster risk in urban areas in a more effective way. With that in mind, PRISMA methodology was applied, through which a total of 2921 publications about urban resilience were identified. After implementing the method, 251 scientific documents were finally included. Later, a textometric analysis was carried out using IRAMUTEQ software. The findings show that there are four clusters of urban resilience studies: (1) Socio-economic and cultural studies, (2) Local governance resilience initiatives, (3) Research framework and review studies, and (4) Disasters studies. These results confirm that urban resilience is a growing phenomenon that contributes relevant advantages for citizens’ well-being.