Resilient Infrastructure ≠ Thermoplastic Conduit
The term resilience, used in the context of urban infrastructure, is rooted in ‘resilience theory’ that was coined in the early 1970s by the Canadian ecologist C. S. ‘Buzz’ Holling (Emeritus Eminent Scholar and Professor in Ecological Sciences at the University of Florida). “He hoped to find the hidden laws that underpin disturbance – whether out of the blue, like fires or explosions, or occurring more slowly, while being similarly transformative. The use of resilience in terms of the urban environment has evolved to take prominence over the discussion of sustainability. This could be partly due to the sense within the word (resilience) that ‘jeopardy’ is increasingly more likely than not. Sustainability suggests that ‘if we do this we might avoid disaster.’ Resilience is more realistic and says, if and when disaster occurs, how well will we bounce back.
