Regional resilience through the lenses of the capability approach

Regional resilience has been widely studied in economics and economic geography. The extant literature proposes different measures and definitions, without achieving a unitary view of the concept. In this paper, an interpretation of regional resilience thorough Sen’s capability approach is proposed. In particular, resilience emerges as a collective capability and “being resilient” as a collective functioning. Individual characteristics of the agents operating in a region and the interaction between them lead to this interpretation. The definitions adopted by the extant literature appear to be parts of a whole, which is difficult to capture in a single analysis.