On the notion of regional economic resilience: conceptualization and explanation

Over the past few years a new buzzword has entered academic, political and public<br/>discourse: the notion of resilience, a term invoked to describe how an entity or system<br/>responds to shocks and disturbances. Although the concept has been used for some<br/>time in ecology and psychology, it is now invoked in diverse contexts, both as a<br/>perceived (and typically positive) attribute of an object, entity or system and, more<br/>normatively, as a desired feature that should somehow be promoted or fostered. As<br/>part of this development, the notion of resilience is rapidly becoming part of the<br/>conceptual and analytical lexicon of regional and local economic studies: there is<br/>increasing interest in the resilience of regional, local and urban economies. Further,<br/>resilience is rapidly emerging as an idea ‘whose time has come’ in policy debates: a<br/>new imperative of ‘constructing’ or ‘building’ regional and urban economic resilience is<br/>gaining currency. However, this rush to use the idea of regional and local economic<br/>resilience in policy circles has arguably run somewhat ahead of our understanding of<br/>the concept. There is still considerable ambiguity about what, precisely, is meant by<br/>the notion of regional economic resilience, about how it should be conceptualized and<br/>measured, what its determinants are, and how it links to patterns of long-run regional<br/>growth. The aim of this article is to address these and related questions on the<br/>meaning and explanation of regional economic resilience and thereby to outline the<br/>directions of a research agenda.