Reciprocal Impacts: Human Behavior and Urban Resilience

Urban resilience, the ability of city systems and stakeholders to flourish in the face of chronic and acute stress, is emerging as a unifying construct for researchers and practitioners. It has become a rallying cry for cities across the globe (e.g., 100 Resilient Cities) as context becomes constrained by new ecological realities. Rapid urbanization has led to over half of the world’s population living in cities of over 50,000 residents. While concentrated populations in cities do not occupy a lot of territory, they account for the vast majority of consumption and, as a consequence, the related production of greenhouse gasses. Despite the long history of social scientists examining human experience in cities, the topic of coupled systems of ecological and social resilience in the face of a changing climate remains an under-studied area of importance for global stability.

This research topic in Frontiers in Sustainable Cities welcomes interdisciplinary research at the intersection of human behaviour and the urban environment. Human behaviour in the urban setting produces complex interdependencies among environmental (e.g., water, natural resources), built (e.g., energy, waste, economic), and social systems that operate at a civic and cultural level. In turn, each of these systems impact urban resilience and the possibility of sustainable human flourishing in urban settings. This special topic welcomes both theoretical and empirical work to build a broad understanding of the various processes and factors supporting resilience in cities.

We are calling for submissions that address transformation and urban resilience with a focus on the relationship between human behaviour, group behavior, and the resources and systems that support human well-being in urban settings. Examples include psychological, behavioural, and social factors in innovative resilience planning and design; mental processes related to risk management, conflict management, and resource use; or how decision making, leadership, worldviews, and attitudes affect the development, maintenance, and transformation of resilient cities.