Spaces of resilience: A typology of places and practices in two Dutch cities

'Resilience' is a ubiquitous term within policy and academic literature
tackling sustainable ways of living and adaptation to changing climates.
Aside from the broad and sometimes nebulous meanings of the term itself,
there is often a lack of connection between this higher-level resilience
discourse and the everyday practices of ordinary citizens that contribute to
more resilient communities and lifestyles. This paper proposes a typology of
everyday practices and spaces of resilience, based on an overview of case
studies in Rotterdam and Eindhoven, the Netherlands. We aim to establish
links between everyday practices, the spaces enabling their pursuit at
neighbourhood level, and longer-term community capacities to act and
transform. Central to this is a conception of 'resilience' as not merely the
ability to resist or adapt to change, but as agency to shape present and
future environments, processes and urban systems, thus contributing to
socio-ecological transition. We find that a notable element in resilience
practices is the re-use of vacant spaces, both built and open, as sites for
meeting, collaborating and building networks as communities strive to
facilitate change in their immediate environments. In the context of the
neoliberal city, vacancy and neglect represent both symptoms of structural
failures that residents seek to affect, as well as opportunities to do so in the
form of affordable space to house these activities. The proposed typology
serves as a framework to understand the range of existing practices of
resilience and aid their identification in other places, facilitating further
study and comparison across contexts.