Towards Sustainable Cities: Extending Resilience with Insights from Vulnerability and Transition Theory

Leanne Seeliger and Ivan Turok
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Leanne Seeliger: Human Sciences Research Council, Economic Performance and Development; Private Bag X9182, Cape Town 8000, South Africa

Sustainability, 2013, vol. 5, issue 5, 1-21

Abstract: Cities at all stages of development need to provide jobs, food and services for their people. There is no formula that can unilaterally be applied in all urban environments to achieve this. The complex interaction of social, economic and ecological cycles within cities makes it impossible to predict outcomes. Resilience theory, with its engineering, multi-equilibria and socio-ecological approaches, provides some of the foundations for understanding the full range of the complex social and ecological interactions that underpin sustainable cities. It is proposed that these insights could be extended by a sharper focus on the social and technological innovation that has traditionally been the emphasis of vulnerability and transition theories respectively.

Keywords: resilience; vulnerability; transition; socio-ecological system; adaptability; transformation; sustainable cities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

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