Civic Resilience Laboratory

Presentation: Panarchic Planning: How Place-based Communities Contribute to Social-Ecological Resilience Across Scales

The concept of Panarchy (Gunderson and Holling 2002) describes resilience in complex social-ecological systems as a non-linear, cyclical, and continuous process of adaptation and transformation that operates at, and across, different spatial, temporal, and social-organizational scales. Panarchy may help explain how bottom-up, self-organized initiatives at the local scale interact with larger institutional and territorial structures to enhance systemic adaptive capacity. This paper draws on case studies of place-based communities coping with rapid environmental change in different national and regional contexts – cities and neighborhoods adjusting to urban redevelopment; rural villages rebuilding after earthquakes or facing displacement and consolidation to accommodate expanding cities and industry; coastal towns anticipating the future impacts of sea level rise and tsunamis – that in the short term emphasize the loss of local agency and the reactive aspects of local action. However, following these cases over a longer period reveals dynamism at both the local and regional/national levels of decision making, which in some cases affords opportunity for local communities not only to maintain agency but to affect larger-scale policy, while in other cases suggests conditions for more maladaptive outcomes. In planning and design at the community level, and in policy making at higher levels, we can attend to these different opportunities and conditions, to better understand where and when resistance and vision each can enhance adaptive capacity and achieve desired transformation.

Keywords: Panarchy, adaptation, scale, community planning

Bio: Daniel Abramson is Associate Professor of Urban Design & Planning at the University of Washington, Seattle. He has applied community engagement and design to the practice and scholarship of urban-rural development, historic-cultural preservation, and social-ecological resilience in Beijing, Fujian and Sichuan, China; Kobe, Japan; and the Pacific Northwest of Canada and the United States; and published in Cities; Environment and Planning D: Society and Space; Journal of the American Planning Association; Journal of Asian Studies; Journal of Urban Affairs; Pacific Affairs; The Routledge New Companion to Urban Design; The Routledge Handbook of Planning History; and Urban Studies among others.