The resilient city: where do we go from here?

The world is becoming more urban but there is widespread concern over the nature and form of that process. Resilience offers the opportunity for a paradigm shift in how we think about the governance of an urban world, but it is fragmented by a number of competing narratives, pre-existing and emergent frameworks that all seek to deal with this complex problem in different ways. New global policy frameworks, such as the sustainable development goals and Habitat III, will play out in established national, regional and local contexts. This generates diverse possibilities for how resilience will be operationalised, implemented and mainstreamed in real action. The coalitions emerging from these negotiations will likely set the trajectory for what kind of resilience comes forth. But who is to be given access? Which coalitions will dominate? Global organisations, consultancies, non-government organisations, governments at different scales, individual citizens and more, all have an interest and the stakes are high. This chapter maps out ongoing changes, tensions and possibilities opened by a new urban agenda which draws resilience into the core business of governing the city, but as yet the agenda is an unfinished project with uncertain outcomes. By problematising the encounter with resilience within a strategic understanding of urban systems we gain a measure of the scale and the scope of future challenges in building more resilient cities.