What is Community Resilience?

November 4, 2009 – 12:20 am

How will our communities adapt to global warming, peak oil and the confounding influence of global-scale resource depletion, pollution and continued economic upheavals? It will be different everywhere but the successful communities will share one thing in common: they will be resilient. What exactly is community resilience? Glad you asked. The Oxford Concise English Dictionary defines resilience as:

readily recovering from shock, depression, etc

When considered in the context of community, the definition becomes more specific. The Canadian Centre for Community Renewal (CCCR) defines community resilience as: [an] intentional action to enhance the personal and collective capacity of its citizens and institutions to respond to and influence the course of social and economic change. I would also add environmental change to the mix as well.

According to CCCR, resilience can be understood through four dimensions, each with their own unique characteristics:

  1. People
  2. Organizations
  3. Resources
  4. Community Process

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By justintilson | Posted in Regenerative Communities, Social Web - BGI Guide | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Community Resilience

October 10, 2009 – 10:32 pm

As part of my social web for social change class at BGI I get to choose a topic and research it during the semester using the tools we are learning about in class. Since my team marketing plan this term is looking at becoming a developer of resilient, sustainable, living communities I want to use this opportunity to “feed two birds with one seed” thereby enriching the plan and meeting the requirements for this course. I’m going to start down the path of defining resilience in the context of community development as well as look for strategies to increase community resilience.

I’m particularly interested in how changing patterns of community and evolving our construction techniques can create true resilience through:

  • increasing community-scale self-reliance for food and energy
  • uncoupling from the fossil-fuel economy
  • downplaying the importance of money in peoples’ lives

My hunch is that such an arrangement will also provide regular opportunities for growth, self-actualization and connectedness with others and nature.

It’s going to be a rich semester!

By justintilson | Posted in Social Web - BGI Guide | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)