Resilience: Is It the Most Adequate Tool to Fill in the System Blanks?

Antonieta Castro-Cosio (The New School)

In view of the current widespread call for resilience to be the goal for policies in a variety of sectors, this essay critically assesses its different definitions and applications in different policy circles where it is discussed. To do this, the types of market and state failures involved in two cases of community resilience in New York City are identified, and then evaluated against resilience standards. This is done from both from a theoretical and empirical standpoint, by conducting a literature review about resilience and its references to the fields of policy that are related to the research, as well as by drawing from the data derived from field work carried out for case studies that examine resilience practices in two urban communities in New York City.