We live in exceptionally challenging times, facing uncertainty and unpredictability. Within the island of Ireland there are a diverse range of complexities in the future planning of terrestrial, urban-rural and natural-coastal and marine environments; locally, regionally, nationally and in a transboundary context. For planners, this sense of unease is exacerbated by a period of constant change in planning governance and legislative reforms. With the climate emergency and recent pandemic, the list of potential disturbances, shocks and scale of hazardous events is ever increasing and has led to infrastructure, property and other economic losses across the island of Ireland.
Resilience is in our everyday discourse, and there are many forms of resilience emerging - urban resilience, engineering resilience, physical resilience, etc. - vying for adoption. Yet, as Mulligan, et al. (2016) explain socio-ecological understandings of resilience have emerged with the assumption that social and ecological systems are interconnected and that local community could be more resilient to these expected shocks, if efforts were made to increase their adaptive capacity. Now is the time for communities, in whatever environment – terrestrial, coastal or marine – to prepare for these future shocks and accumulating stresses. Resilience strategies and planning policy responses need to become more nuanced towards ‘community resilience’.
This research seeks to explore a more nuanced understanding of the concept of ‘community resilience’, by developing a community resilience discourse as a transformative experience, rather than a static planning agenda aimed at satisfying public appeal. As Davoudi and Porter (2012) contend in reframing resilience, it needs to be more than a bridging concept, rather than being a term that replaces sustainability. Using McElduff, et al.’s (2016) ‘Octagon-values model’ as a starting point from which to conceptualise community resilience, the research will comprise of a critical review of community resilience practices that are embracing new planning paradigms founded on flexibility and adaptability. Finally the research is expected to shape planning policy outcomes to help the terrestrial and/ or coastal-marine environments to be adaptable, capable and dynamic in the face of adversity.
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