Rethinking regional economic resilience

Autor(en)
Michaela Trippl, Sebastian Fastenrath, Arne Isaksen
Abstrakt

The unpredictable impacts of sudden shocks such as the current COVID-19 pandemic or the current energy crisis accelerated by the Russia-Ukraine war have led to a renewed interest in regional economic resilience. Much of the literature focuses attention on how regional economies and industries could bounce back, that is, how they could return to their pre-shock conditions. Other scholars have proposed to construe resilience as bouncing forward to capture the mechanisms and processes that underpin positive adaptation and structural change in response to an acute crisis. In this article, we argue that both conceptualisations do not consider shocks and crises as a window of opportunity for regional economies to transform into a radically different and more desirable trajectory. We bring a new perspective into play, that is, transformative resilience which places shifts towards more sustainable pathways centre stage. This understanding of regional economic resilience acknowledges that a crisis may bring about permanent structural change and considers to what extent these transformations are to the benefit of society and the environment. This article seeks to identify in a conceptual way what factors and dynamics are vital for enhancing the transformative resilience of regions. To this end, we draw on recent insights from the debate on challenge-oriented regional innovation systems and elaborate on the role of pre-shock conditions and various core processes in building up regional transformative resilience.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Geographie und Regionalforschung
Externe Organisation(en)
University of Agder
Journal
European Urban and Regional Studies
Band
31
Seiten
101-115
Anzahl der Seiten
15
ISSN
0969-7764
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/09697764231172326
Publikationsdatum
05-2023
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
507026 Wirtschaftsgeographie, 507015 Regionalforschung
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Geography, Planning and Development
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/06b1b9e2-3321-4fa9-913e-781743627b4e