Resilience has become increasingly common in our vocabulary when we talk about people, buildings, cities or even whole societies overcoming all kind of problems. In fact, Google searches related to resilience have continued to grow since 2004 in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
For psychologists, it is the process of adapting after faced adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress. For architects and urban planners, resilience prepares cities to face and recover from natural disasters. For engineers, "is the ability to respond, absorb, and adapt to, as well as recover in a disruptive event." But today, resilience is becoming a key concept when facing climate emergencies and the progressive loss of biodiversity — two planetary boundaries that allow humanity to continue developing.
As the climate crisis worsens, potentially becoming a "climate apartheid,” warned UN human rights expert Philip Alston in a report published by The Guardian, our cities should be resilient in an endless cycle of planning, mitigation, and reconstruction.
And this is why we have decided to dedicate this month to resilience, featuring everything from mitigation examples to adaptive materials for resilient architecture, to ignite a conversation about our future.
We are receiving submissions related to our Monthly Topics. For our next issue, in August, we will be focusing on Accessibility. If you’d like to submit ideas, projects, essays or articles, just send us a message.
