Abstract
Resilience theory has received increased attention from researchers across a range of disciplines who have developed frameworks and articulated categories of indicators; however, there has been less discussion of how to recognize, and therefore support, social resilience at the community level, especially in urban areas. The value of urban environmental stewardship for supporting social-ecological functioning and improving quality of life in cities has been documented, but recognizing it as a strategy for strengthening social resilience to respond to future disturbances has not been fully explored. Here we address the question: How can social resilience indicators be operationalized as stewardship practices in an urban context? Using a deductive coding approach drawing upon existing resilience frameworks we analyze qualitative data from community managed-open spaces in the New York City area that have responded to various chronic presses and acute disturbances including a hurricane and a terrorist attack. In each case we identify and characterize the type of grounded, empirically observable stewardship practices that demonstrate the following indicators of social resilience at the community level: place attachment, social cohesion, social networks, and knowledge exchange and diversification. The process of operationalizing abstract indicators of social resilience has important implications for managers to support social (and ecological) resilience in the specific areas where stewardship takes place, as well as potentially having greater effects that bridge beyond the spatial and temporal boundaries of the site. We conclude by suggesting how researchers and practitioners might learn from our examples so they can recognize resilience in other sites in order to both inform research frameworks and strengthen practice and programming, while keeping larger institutional structures and context in mind.
Highlights
Weeding a community garden, planting a memorial tree, and collecting rubbish from a neighborhood park are examples of urban environmental stewardship (UES)
We contend that supporting social resilience at the community level is especially important in dense, urban areas [22] and so it is our focus in the community managed, green spaces we describe here
Our overarching objective is to use urban, place-based examples— communitybased living memorials and a community garden in the New York City (NYC) metropolitan area—to operationalize social resilience indicators as reported in the literature [23,46,47] as a means to inform research frameworks and strengthen practice. Because they emerged as the most salient in our work and we believe have great potential to contribute to general social resilience, the specific characteristics and indicators of social resilience we focus on are: place attachment, collective identity, social cohesion, social networks, knowledge exchange and diversity
Summary
Weeding a community garden, planting a memorial tree, and collecting rubbish from a neighborhood park are examples of urban environmental stewardship (UES). While stewardship occurs within interactive and overlapping networks of civic, government, and private actors, here we focus on community-based UES. As part of the US Forest Service, we consider ourselves embedded in these stewardship networks, in our role as researchers who work with private residents, civic organizations, and government agencies in “caring for the land and serving people” as stated by our motto. UES is a type of urban innovation that can promote sustainability [5], ecosystem services [6], social networks [7], collective identity, and sense of place [8]. Stewardship activities can contribute to social dimensions of sustainability including: well-being; power and agency; and equity and justice [10]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
