Planning for urban and territorial resilience

According to the “evolutionary” approach (Davoudi & al., 2012), our idea of urban resilience implies that urban systems have capacity to react to several external disturbances - economic, social, environmental - regarding all components of urban governance and transforming itself in a new development model. The inventive wave that has recently been displayed in contemporary cities has shown the limits of the traditional planning approach and revealed the need for urban policies that are more inclined to openness and adaptation, and are able to face the new demands of a more conscious and diversified society. This scenario has created the conditions for the spread of creative experiences oriented toward urban resilience, here intended as the innate capacity of an urban system to propose new approaches and practises that are understood and included within the consolidated institutional policies of spatial development. From this theoretical framework, this paper intends to investigate the space for experimental practices on resilience as a driver of urban and territorial policy, for ordinary communities and landscapes, where the relationship between the sustainable use of territorial resources could led to new territorial strategies, as well as “promote managements synergies” at different levels of regional and local planning.