Sebastian Fastenrath

The unpredictable impacts of sudden shocks such as the current COVID-19 pandemic or the current energy crisis accelerated by the Russia-Ukraine war have led to a renewed interest in regional economic resilience. Much of the literature focuses attention on how regional economies and industries could bounce back, that is, how they could return to their pre-shock conditions. Other scholars have proposed to construe resilience as bouncing forward to capture the mechanisms and processes that underpin positive adaptation and structural change in response to an acute crisis. In this article, we argue that both conceptualisations do not consider shocks and crises as a window of opportunity for regional economies to transform into a radically different and more desirable trajectory. We bring a new perspective into play, that is, transformative resilience which places shifts towards more sustainable pathways centre stage. This understanding of regional economic resilience acknowledges that a crisis may bring about permanent structural change and considers to what extent these transformations are to the benefit of society and the environment. This article seeks to identify in a conceptual way what factors and dynamics are vital for enhancing the transformative resilience of regions. To this end, we draw on recent insights from the debate on challenge-oriented regional innovation systems and elaborate on the role of pre-shock conditions and various core processes in building up regional transformative resilience.

Established urban policy and planning approaches are ill-equipped to deal with the wicked nature of urban resilience problems and challenges. To break down bureaucratic silos and foster transformative change, ‘governance experiments’ are heralded as promising platforms for testing new ways of collaboration and urban innovation. This paper introduces an analytical framework to unpack the organizational principles and institutional structures of governance experimentation. It applies this framework on urban resilience actions in Melbourne as part of the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities Network. The case studies illustrate that governance experimentation requires active stakeholder and boundary management and acceptance to learn from failure.

As Australian cities face challenges of increased size, density and a range of environmental issues, compounded by climate change impacts, integration of greening is receiving increased attention. Greening, in the form of parks, gardens, waterways, water-sensitive designs and green roofs, contributes to liveability, sustainability and resilience, and habitat for non-human species. Local governments are responsible for the day-to-day management of much of Australia’s urban public spaces and are developing strategies for these areas. However, local-scale planning risks piecemeal, uncoordinated and ineffective approaches, particularly for biophysical systems that have little relationship with municipal boundaries. How can a metropolitan-scale approach be applied to green space planning and governance? This paper presents a case study of Living Melbourne metropolitan urban forest strategy, developed by Nature Conservancy and Resilient Melbourne. Resilient Melbourne brings together Melbourne’s 32 local governments to plan and advocate at the metropolitan scale. While the Living Melbourne strategy provides a metropolitan-scale approach, questions of governance, including how the strategy will be implemented and how local context is understood, are highlighted. Further, in developing a metropolitan-scale approach, how are the voices of local communities included? The paper analyses who is governing Melbourne’s urban greening, and the benefits and risks of a metropolitan-scale approach.

More and more cities are developing strategies and implementing actions to increase their resilience to a diversity of environmental, social and economic challenges. International networks such as 100 Resilient Cities, established by the Rockefeller Foundation, are supporting cities to find and implement solutions to ‘shocks and stresses.’ This new approach to urban governance, often initiated by philanthropic organizations, is debated. On the one hand, these initiatives are celebrated as catalysts for transformational change through ‘collaboration’ and ‘co-design’ in contexts such as mobility, energy, green space or housing. On the other hand, urban resilience initiatives have been criticized for prioritizing private sector agendas and top-down approaches and hollowing out public sector tasks and democratic participation. However, little is known how urban resilience strategies are actually implemented in practice. Embedded action research on the implementation of the Resilient Melbourne strategy provides the opportunity to have a closer look at this highly contested topic. This paper provides first insights into the research project Urban Resilience in Action, using the Resilient Melbourne strategy to assess the implementation of selected actions. It shows that a reconceptualization and new analytical dimensions are needed to understand urban resilience as an urban innovation strategy.

Socio-technical transitions towards more sustainable modes of production and consumption are receiving increasing attention in the academic world and also from political and economic decision-makers. There is increasing demand for resource-efficient technologies and institutional innovations, particularly at the city level. However, it is widely unclear how processes of change evolve and develop and how they are embedded in different socio-spatial contexts. While numerous scholars have contributed to the vibrant research field around sustainability transitions, the geographical expertise largely has been ignored. The lack of knowledge about the role of spatial contexts, learning processes, and the co-evolution of technological, economical, and socio-political processes has been prominently addressed. Bridging approaches from Transition Studies and perspectives of Economic Geography, the paper presents conceptual ideas for an evolutionary and relational understanding of urban sustainability transitions. The paper introduces new perspectives on sustainability transitions towards a better understanding of socio-spatial contexts.