Community is a complex term in itself, often overused. The concept is layered with social, spatial and emotional dimensions. Adding to it, “resilience”, it is another challenge to define. Community and resilience are both rich terms employed in many fields. “We all agree more or less on a definition of community, at the end of the day it is just a word, but we can agree that community is not for example a fruit!”. It was a playful, frustrating moment when we discussed the definition of the words, on the second day of the workshop on community resilience by the URLab Barcelona. In reality and a more scholarly approach, community is a complex, multiscale term, often used with a positive connotation. From the article shared with us by Mulligan,2016. We could define a community as a social formation multilayered and dynamic, sharing similar characteristics (whether place-based or virtual, identities,…etc) creating a network and relationships, a sense of belonging shaped by contexts and common goals. But then, where does the resilience fit? And how can we address its temporal, geographic, and transformative dimensions without getting lost in abstraction?
Organized by the URLab Barcelona, this event is the second of a series of international writing workshops connected to the topics “Barriers and Enablers to Effective Climate Governance in Cities”, which are raised by the issue of the Frontiers in Sustainable Cities journal. A first event happened at the end of October addressing the barriers and enablers to carbon neutrality. This February, the goal was to critically analyze the reasons for governance frameworks’ difficulties in supporting community resilience in the context of climate resilience.
We spent three full days immersed in the dynamics between communities in all their forms and their relationship with climate resilience. The focus was on the barriers and enablers to effective climate governance in cities. I listened to different lectures from diverse professionals in the field and participated in the site visit of the Sant Antoni superblocks. Here in this reflective essay, I aim to summarize the key notes of the workshop.
This event was a great closure for our module on community resilience. After spending the last weeks on site visits around Barcelona and even out of the city in Olot. We immersed ourselves in different community-led initiatives such as the cooperatives of Barcelona (La Bobilla, Sostre Civic, etc) centered around the community against the housing financial crisis. Through these visits, we interacted with different stakeholders of these projects about their history, their implementation, but also the obstacles and facilitators they met or are currently meeting. Concluding with the workshop allowed us to synthesize and have a more insightful view on communities’ role in climate resilience with the difficulties and enablers they have.
Barriers and Enablers: Two Sides of the Same Coin?
We had the opportunity to attend the presentations of scholars and their intake on the barriers and enablers of a successful resilient community. While semantically the two keywords—enablers and barriers—are supposed to be antonyms, Luis Berraquero-Díaz, an activist and researcher on social mobilization, highlighted their complementary nature. He argued that barriers are not insurmountable walls but can act as catalysts for enablers. In some cases, a single aspect can function as both a barrier and an enabler. We can mention for example the neglect of administration, which represents an obstacle to citizens who have to rely on them as essential resources, guidance, or support, but it gives them inadvertent opportunities to innovate and stand for themselves, encouraging solidarity and self-reliance with grass-roots initiatives.
Case Studies and Global Perspectives
We also learned about different cases in India, Germany and African countries. These examples pointed out a global issue touching most of these communities: bureaucracy hurdles, implementation hurdles and the scarcity of databases, mainly in the global south countries. The case that stood out to me was the presentation of Pushpa Arabindoo; the climate plan of Chennai, India for carbon neutrality by 2050. As it was a World Bank-funded consortium and the CMA plan provided structured frameworks and resources. The limited community involvement and the focus on a project-based approach instead of a holistic planning both hindered the ability to nurture community resilience and address the needs of the marginalized groups like fishers, slum-dwellers and vendors.
However, as Vangelis Pitidis showcased, the actions of residents were invaluable. Their in-site knowledge and insight served as fuel to overcome these challenges. Coupled with the use of tools like GIS software and participatory workshops, communities proved to be a great asset to gather valuable data for climate resilience.
While we were diving into the definitions of enablers and barriers, our group of students were tasked to make case studies on the successful type of community led initiatives in climate resilience. It was a great exercise for us to participate in on the second day. At the end of it, we presented our work; I appreciated the diversity of our cases in terms of scale, geospatial location and sector.
We were three groups, each had its particularity, as my group focused on geographical different cases in North Africa, Latin America and Southern-East Asia with deep local connection to their heritage. Another focused on renewable-energy production by communities and one final project in Rio de Janeiro on green rooftops as a spontaneous community action. It showed us that despite the geographical differences and scales, enablers like a strong community involvement and ownership with the participation of multiple stakeholders are key to the success of climate and community resilience.
We concluded with the many common facilitators and obstacles and how they have been considered in each. It was what led us to this discussion of what is community. It is no more about the word community in itself, but more of phrases that complete the meaning: community of scholars, community of immigrants, and community of capitalists, etc.
Just like the word Resilience, the context is important, we could always agree that a community is a group of individuals with common aspects and one shared goal and vision, while it is always prone to social struggles like fear of change, diversity in methodology and practice as well as responding to different needs of everyone.
On the other hand, the term community resilience could refer to the notion of collective actions of a group of individuals, fueled with social learning and the integration of local knowledge and resources to build adaptive capacities to prepare for, respond and recover from stresses while maintaining their identity and core function.
Rethinking Community Resilience as a Democratic Process
In conclusion, doesn’t make this a great field for a different vision we could have of democracy? Instead of top-down approaches, communities could foster open dialogue to address their challenges and potentials, prioritizing compromise over majority rule. This way and as seen in the examples we studied, people are empowered and encouraged to make choices for the general benefit. I have been grateful to have been part of this experience as I had the opportunity to exchange with scholars like Luis and Pushpa Arabindoo. My understanding of community resilience has been reinforced by the case studies and the connections we made between them. I plan to use this new insight in other questions of inclusion and collaboration in climate governance matters.
Nor Jihane Touati
Student at UIC Barcelona
Urban Resilience and Sustainability Transitions Master programme