Strengthening community resilience through participation – a conceptual exploration

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Environmental Sociology
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Strengthening community resilience through
participation – a conceptual exploration
Nicolina Kirby
To cite this article: Nicolina Kirby (07 Apr 2025): Strengthening community resilience
through participation – a conceptual exploration, Environmental Sociology, DOI:
10.1080/23251042.2025.2479666
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2025.2479666
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Group.
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Strengthening community resilience through participation – a conceptual
exploration
Nicolina Kirby
a,b
a
Co-creation in Democratic Practice, Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS), Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany;
b
Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum (HLRS), University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
ABSTRACT
Through its increasing use, community resilience as a concept is interpreted dierently across
disciplines. In this paper, an indicator-based assessment framework is developed, to nd an
understanding of community resilience as a social dynamic that is informed by multiple
theoretical approaches. It breaks community resilience down into manageable components.
Understood proactively, it enables communities to tap into diverse resource pools in times of
change and uncertainty. Its individual, social, governance and economic dimensions are
interdependent upon each other and present community as a dynamic process. This process
is impacted by drivers such as the polycrisis, which society needs to be resilient against.
Participation is discussed as a potentially enabling factor to strengthen community resilience.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 19 July 2024
Accepted 11 March 2025
KEYWORDS
Community resilience;
participation; assessment
framework; polycrisis
Introduction
Community resilience as a concept has gained signicant
attention in recent years, also in the eld of environmental
sociology. While a vast amount of the literature on com-
munity resilience has made important contributions to
the debate, especially in the elds of climate change and
natural hazard research, the sociological community has
been quite critical of it. So why develop another frame-
work of community resilience and position it within
a sociological debate? I would like to explore this route
for three reasons: To conceptualise community resilience
as a social dynamic, to examine the potential role of
community resilience as an enabler of transformation,
and to discuss participation as a facilitator of community
resilience’s transformative potential. The goal is to evalu-
ate the explanatory power of community resilience within
sociology when addressing social dynamics, the polycrisis
and the need for a socio-ecological transformation.
Traditionally, community resilience assessments have
often focused on disaster response and recovery.
However, recent research approaches community resili-
ence from a dierent angle (Adger et al. 2021; Barr and
Devine-Wright 2012; Callaghan and Colton 2008; Carmen
et al. 2022). They emphasize a dynamic understanding of
resilience, focusing on its role for transformation in the
context of climate change, social dynamics and resources.
For practical application, resilience thinking should
extend beyond disaster response to encompass everyday
community dynamics to proactively strengthen resilience
(Okada 2018). While disaster resilience research informs
transformation through research on community coping
and adaptive capacities, research on community
resilience and transformative resilience may enhance it
by focusing on proactive capacities. The proposed frame-
work aims to enable these capacities through participa-
tion while considering structural conditions. By
integrating dierent community resilience dimensions,
this framework strengthens the connection between the
resilience concept and its practical application, emphasis-
ing its proactive and dynamic qualities to contribute to
the development of resilient communities.
I will proceed by reviewing existing community resi-
lience conceptualisations and examining previously
developed assessment frameworks. Then, I will propose
an assessment framework for community resilience,
focusing on dierent forms of participation as
a potential driver. A vignette case will demonstrate the
framework’s practical applications.
How is community resilience currently
conceptualised and assessed?
A review of (community) resilience was conducted to
understand how conceptualisations of community resili-
ence have developed and which dierences in under-
standing resilience exist. The review is not exhaustive
but focuses on dynamic, proactive and transformative
understandings of community resilience. An overview of
resilience assessment literature evaluates what role parti-
cipation has played in resilience assessment. Based on the
assumption that participation may positively impact com-
munity resilience, a conceptual framework of community
resilience where participation constitutes a driving force is
developed.
CONTACT Nicolina Kirby Nicolina.kirby@rifs-potsdam.de
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY
https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2025.2479666
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting
of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

Two main research questions guided this paper:
●How can we conceptualise and assess community
resilience as a social dynamic within a context of
change and uncertainty?
●What role can participation play as an enabling
factor in this understanding?
Literature was collected in three stages. Using
Google Scholar and Scopus, I searched for the lit-
erature using the keywords ‘community resilience’,
‘participation’, ‘engagement’, ‘assessment frame-
work’, ‘resilience assessment’ and ‘indicators’ and
combinations of these. In the second step, searches
were conducted for ‘resilient community’ and ‘resi-
lient communities’. In each case, up to 50 of the
most relevant articles were checked. Articles were
examined further to see if the keywords were found
in their titles or abstracts and if they dealt with the
concept of social resilience or community resilience
specically. Articles only mentioning community
resilience were casually excluded. Afterward, the
snowballing technique was applied by searching
the reference lists of selected articles to expand
the body of the literature. This resulted in a total
of 85 examined articles on resilience, out of which
64 inform the review and framework.
Regarding resilience conceptualisations I focused
on articles discussing the term’s origins and histor-
ical development through dierent schools of
thought, including some case studies but mostly
reviews and meta-analyses. The case studies were
selected to determine if they focused on resilience-
building programs or assessed community resili-
ence. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the litera-
ture from a wide array of disciplines was included,
ranging from sociology and community develop-
ment to psychology. Sociological articles were cho-
sen, especially for critical contextualisation of
resilience concepts. Regarding the frameworks for
resilience assessment, mostly review literature, arti-
cles that developed indicator-based assessment fra-
meworks or assessed community resilience were
chosen. Articles developing assessment categories
and indicators were selected, rather than those
working with existing indexes. I consider their the-
oretical conceptualisation of social or community
resilience, the structural logic of the framework,
the specic dimensions/categories and indicators,
and the role of participation.
Resilience as a boundary concept
From persistence to transformability
The resilience concept has evolved from its origins in
material science, where it denes a material’s elastic
properties (McAslan 2010, 2), to ecology where Holling
(1973) dened it as ‘the ability [. . .] to absorb changes
of state variables, driving variables, and parameters,
and still persist’ (Holling 1973, 17). Analysing the
responses of animal populations subject to environ-
mental change, he nds populations never subject to
environmental change and hazards may be stable in
their existence, but lack resilience once hazard occurs
because they never learn how to exibly adapt to
persist (Holling 1973).
Social-ecological resilience integrates the role of
human societies into ecological systems, believing
that humans and nature are strongly interlinked and
should be conceived as one social-ecological system
where ecological and social dynamics interdepen-
dently interact (SES) (Stockholm Resilience Centre
2015). Focusing on stresses caused by environmental
change, resilience thinking is about nding ways to
deal with crises while living within planetary bound-
aries (Stockholm Resilience Centre 2015). In this con-
text, resilience is understood as the ‘capacity of an SES
to continually change and adapt yet remain within
critical thresholds’ (Folke et al. 2010, 1). Continuous
adaptability and transformability at the small scale
are prerequisites for SES resilience, based on the idea
of ‘adaptive cycles’ (Holling and Gunderson 2002;
Salomon et al. 2019). This understanding is rooted in
the natural sciences and hence has been criticised for
having several blind spots when translated into the
social realm (Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013).
Alongside adaptability, transformability has become
an increasingly important for resilience (Brown 2014;
Folke et al. 2010). While some authors argue that the
concept is inherently conservative, understanding resili-
ence as the capacity to transform in periods of change is
becoming more widely accepted (Bahadur and Tanner
2014; Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013). Transformability
describes broader shifts than adaptation, aecting cur-
rent paradigms, not only responding to changes but also
anticipating these (e.g. Bahadur and Tanner 2014; Barr
and Devine-Wright 2012; Brown 2014; Carmen et al. 2022;
Edwards and John 2011). The notion of paradigm shifts is
not only a result but also an aim of these processes:
transformational resilience puts politics and power at its
heart to foster changes towards new stability basins
when old structures become untenable (Bahadur and
Tanner 2014; Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013). Many articles
have already been written on how resilience understand-
ings have evolved and are understood in dierent dis-
ciplines (e.g. Bahadur and Tanner 2014; Berkes and Ross
2013; Brown 2014; Chuang et al. 2018; Coaee 2013; Keck
and Sakdapolrak 2013; Obrist, Pfeier, and Henley 2010;
Saja et al. 2021). Employing a proactive and transforma-
tive understanding of resilience, this article aims to add
onto this strand of the literature focusing on how com-
munity resilience can be conceptualised beyond the
paradigm of disaster and reactiveness (Bahadur and
Tanner 2014; Brown 2014; Carmen et al. 2022; Edwards
2N. KIRBY

and John 2011; Moghadas et al. 2022; Revell and Dinnie
2020; Vogt and Schneider 2016).
Social approaches towards resilience
Since SES conceptualisations stem from natural
science-based approaches, they are not always applic-
able to the social realm, often paying little attention to
individuals, politics, power or inequalities (Bahadur
and Tanner 2014). Therefore, aspects of resilience
from other disciplines are included in conceptualisa-
tions of community and social resilience.
In psychology, research on resilience has received
wide attention, especially in mental health and devel-
opment psychology. Scholars have been interested in
the factors causing certain people to handle chal-
lenges in their lives better than others (Berkes and
Ross 2013), studying how people deal with the nega-
tive eects of crisis, disaster, or trauma. The possible
positive eects of (overcoming) trauma receives
increasing attention (Eachus 2014). By departing from
a decit-based orientation and increasingly focusing
on models considering strengths and competencies,
more attention is paid to developing resilience
(Southwick et al. 2014).
Psychological research looks at individuals, families
or communities and can contribute to research on
social resilience. However, these approaches have
been criticised by sociologists, especially on two
accounts: their neoliberal implications and the ignor-
ance of social structures (Cretney 2014; Estêvão,
Calado, and Capucha 2017; Finkenbusch 2023; Mu
2021). The neoliberal critique states that by focusing
on individual capabilities and responsibilities to
increase resilience, the state frees itself from its respon-
sibility to provide care and social security (Mu 2021). By
enabling communities to become increasingly adapta-
ble and exible, they can become better assets of
a capitalist economy. By empowering communities to
create volunteer-based local structures, they are given
‘responsibility without power’ (Cretney 2014). This cri-
tique also dominates discourses where resilience is
understood as ‘thriving against the odds’, e.g. when
looking at childhood development in challenging con-
texts as structural constraints are made the responsi-
bility of individuals (Estêvão, Calado, and Capucha
2017). Disregarding social structures enables these
implications. By focusing on individual capabilities
and resources, structural enablers and constraints like
socio-economic well-being and inequalities are
neglected regarding their impact on resilience (King,
Crossley, and Smith 2021). The relationships between
institutions, individuals and social groups impact resi-
lience beyond individual capacities, sociologists argue
(Estêvão, Calado, and Capucha 2017).
Approaches towards social resilience integrate
these tensions to varying degrees. The concept of
social resilience considers capacities of human actors
within a social system, dened by their ability to cope,
learn, adapt, and self-organise (Obrist, Pfeier, and
Henley 2010). These capacities depend on social fac-
tors that can facilitate or hinder their development
(Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013). Community resilience
can be understood as a subeld of social resilience,
focusing on community development and empower-
ment (Matarrita-Cascante et al. 2017) or as a broader
concept, including individual, economic and govern-
ance dimensions, beyond the social (Saja et al. 2021). In
some cases, the physical dimension including natural
and built infrastructure, and their interaction with the
other dimensions in a complex system are emphasised
(Koliou et al. 2020; Nguyen and Akerkar 2020). While
the ‘social’ generally describes a broader concept of
human relations than ‘community’, which focuses on
closer connections (Calhoun 1980), many denitions of
social resilience describe the resilience of commu-
nities – a distinction between the two is therefore
often fuzzy.
If we have these dierent understandings of com-
munity resilience, what does community as a concept
itself mean? Traditionally, communities have largely
been understood in spatial terms, placing emphasis
on the proximity of blood, mind or place (Tönnies
1887). While for Tönnies (1887) geographical proximity
was a foundation for community formation, this has
changed in more recent conceptualisations. While
acknowledging that spatial proximity can facilitate
community building, Putnam (2000) emphasised
emphasized the role of social capital and connections
as the foundation of a community, built through civic
engagement and social networks, which can exist
beyond spatial boundaries. For Cohen (1995) geogra-
phical boundaries are less relevant than community
identity, a mental construct that gives people meaning
and creates identity through shared meanings, rituals
or cultural practices. Going further, other authors chal-
lenge the notion of spatial bounds of communities,
describing them rather as networks that can provide
sociability, support and identity and can form in digital
spaces, around certain events and through shared
interests and identities, often characterised by the
digital age and globalisation (Bauman 2000; Castells
2000; Wellman 2001). Once again, other authors
increasingly focus on the importance of place-based
social connections to form communities – by regarding
the importance of social cohesion among neighbours
or by emphasising the role of local institutions in bro-
kering such connections (Sampson 2012; Small 2006).
These conceptualisations do not dismiss other forms of
community but stress the importance of neighbour-
hoods as spatial communities since these social-
organisational units shape life trajectories (Sampson
2012). Anderson (2004) stresses the importance of
physical spaces in the urban realm to provide oppor-
tunities for community building and civic engagement
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 3

to navigate diversity and increase social cohesion in
contemporary societies. Hence, the community in the
context of this article is understood an entity that is
spatially as well as socially bound, especially as many
forms of participation and participatory spaces exist
within certain spatial realms. The community itself
exists within a broader dimension of social interactions
but also consists of an internal social dimension bind-
ing it together.
Resilient communities are able to utilise their
resources, adapt to challenges, and thrive during con-
tinuous change and crises (Revell and Dinnie 2020;
Steiner, Woolvin, and Skerratt 2016). As a framework,
the concept is explored to understand how commu-
nities can respond to and transform when facing social,
environmental and economic changes. Drawing on
numerous theoretical perspectives, researchers have
sought to elucidate key characteristics and processes
that enable communities to not only bounce back but
also actively build their capacity to thrive amidst
disruption.
Berkes and Ross (2013) propose an integrated view
of community resilience, highlighting how commu-
nities can develop resilience through both responsive
and proactive measures. They emphasize the impor-
tance of social networks, positive outlook, leadership
and self-organization – factors that contribute to
a community’s agency and ability to adapt. This aligns
with conceptualisations of community resilience as the
community’s collective capacity to thrive in an envir-
onment characterised by change and crises (Adger
et al. 2021, 4; Magis 2010, 401).
Several scholars have argued for a greater focus on
the transformative capacity of community resilience
(Brown 2014; Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013; Saja et al.
2021). They state community resilience should be not
only about coping with and adapting to change but
also about a community’s ability to self-organise and
fundamentally alter its structures in response to and
anticipation of disruptions. This transformative capa-
city is particularly relevant in the context of climate
change, requiring proactive and anticipatory
approaches (Carmen et al. 2022; Edwards and John
2011). Concerning the understanding of community
resilience related to climate change, distinctions are
often fuzzy, mingling the concepts of resilience, sus-
tainability, adaptation and transformation (Zanotti
et al. 2020). Callaghan and Colton (2008) propose
a theoretical framework focusing on enhancing com-
munity capital to promote long-term community resi-
lience and sustainable development. They argue
sustainable development should seek to balance
immediate needs with a vision for the future, with
community resilience being crucial in moving towards
sustainability. To transition into a more sustainable
future, the resilience of communities is necessary for
dealing with shocks due to climate change (Coaee
2013; Elmqvist et al. 2019; Folke et al. 2010). Further,
community resilience should foster local sustainability
practices (e.g. the transition town movement), by
empowering local communities to collectively respond
to and inuence changes and by strengthening social
systems (Barr and Devine-Wright 2012; Brown 2014;
Cinderby et al. 2016; Cretney 2014). Literature on com-
munity resilience underlines the concept’s dynamic
and relational nature, with communities constantly
adapting and transforming in response to internal
and external changes (Barr and Devine-Wright 2012;
Vogt and Schneider 2016). This view challenges the
notion of resilience as simply ‘bouncing back’ and
emphasizes the importance of communities actively
shaping their own futures through consensus-
building, community-based planning and social learn-
ing (Ross and Berkes 2014).
The role of social capital has been widely recog-
nized as a core component of community resilience,
facilitating collective action, self-organisation, learning
and the development of adaptive capacities (Bhandari
et al. 2010; Callaghan and Colton 2008; Carmen et al.
2022; Murphy 2007; Yang and Shu-Hsien Wu 2020). As
Li et al. (2024) emphasized in their review on social
capital and risk preparedness, social capital describes
both the assets of a community for dealing with stress
but also the governance and management structure
for building a coherent community response and for
developing a system of mutual learning. Researchers
have emphasized the need to consider both bonding
and bridging forms of social capital, as well as the
importance of trust, cooperation and communication
within communities (Bhandari et al. 2010; Yang and
Shu-Hsien Wu 2020). This social infrastructure is some-
times deemed more important for resilience than phy-
sical infrastructure (Aldrich and Meyer 2015). The
evolving understanding of community resilience high-
lights the need to integrate social dynamics, transfor-
mation and multi-level governance into a conceptual
framework.
Three dominant distinctions
Three distinctions dividing resilience conceptualisa-
tions in the literature are important when discussing
community resilience, guiding my understanding in
this paper. As elaborated on, we can understand
resilience as a way of ‘bouncing back’ or ‘bouncing
forward’. Conceptualisations focusing on disaster
recovery and persistence perceive resilience as
a means to bounce back into a stable state, as
a way for a system to absorb disturbance and
recover from shock (Adger 2000; Elmqvist et al.
2019). However, as understanding resilience as
adaptability and transformability shows, it is increas-
ingly also understood as a way of anticipating
changes by adapting, innovating and transforming
accordingly (Revell and Dinnie 2020; Saja et al. 2021;
4N. KIRBY

Wilson 2012). Faced with constant uncertainty, espe-
cially in the context of the polycrisis, communities
require resilience to deal with these (Beilin and
Wilkinson 2015). The polycrisis describes interrelated
threats such as climate change, ecological disasters,
economic inequality, conicts and polarisation
(Hoyer et al. 2023; Lawrence et al. 2024). In this
context, preparing for and recovering from indivi-
dual disasters should not be the focus of resilience
thinking but needs to be addressed on a broader
level (Cretney 2014). While this proactive approach
towards resilience seems most applicable to the
polycrisis context, more studies in the literature
focus on reactive and responsive approaches
(Carmen et al. 2022).
This leads to a second distinction within resilience
literature when looking at what to be resilient against.
Community resilience can either focus on a specic
threat or be more general. Much of the literature
usually focuses on resilience against specic threats
or disasters (e.g. Khalili, Harre, and Morley 2018;
Norris et al. 2008; Saja et al. 2018). However, by describ-
ing resilience as the ability to thrive in an environment
characterised by change and uncertainty, resilience is
also understood in more general terms (Berkes and
Ross 2013; Magis 2010; Steiner, Woolvin, and Skerratt
2016). Social resilience, especially adaptive and trans-
formative capacities, are necessary for societies to deal
with the implications of the polycrisis because it
requires broad-scale transformations of societies and
communities. However, general resilience should not
be confused with securitisation (Van Der Merwe, Biggs,
and Preiser 2018).
A third distinction is the system- vs. actor-centred
approach to resilience. In the SES literature, the con-
cept of resilience has been applied to systems (Adger
2000; Elmqvist et al. 2019), while psychological
approaches look at the individuals. Increasingly, the
focus has now shifted towards individual actors within
these systems (Bahadur and Tanner 2014; Berkes and
Ross 2013; Brown 2014; Matarrita-Cascante et al. 2017;
Meerow and Newell 2019; Obrist, Pfeier, and Henley
2010; Steiner, Woolvin, and Skerratt 2016). Critics of
system-centred approaches often question the distri-
bution of power and resources, asking for whom,
when, where and why resilience is necessary because
interactions between components within the system
have often been neglected in the past (Bahadur and
Tanner 2014; Meerow and Newell 2019). Social and
community resilience conceptualisations often try to
focus on individual actors and their agency,
approaches that are often inuenced by psychological
understandings (Berkes and Ross 2013). Inherent to an
actor-centred understanding of resilience is a focus on
capacities and agency as an enabler of resilience which
should not, however, neglect the role of systemic
structures.
Based on these distinctions, I conceptualise CR as
a social dynamic that is continuously shaped by struc-
tural conditions and process communities are facing
(Obrist, Pfeier, and Henley 2010; Quinlan, Marta
Berbés-Blázquez, and Peterson 2016). Understood
proactively, resilience is about developing and
enabling capacities for communities to tap into
diverse resource pools to thrive in an environment
characterised by change and uncertainty (Magis 2010).
Strengthening community resilience
Increasingly, approaches are made towards understand-
ing what might reinforce and strengthen resilience. One
factor often mentioned with regard to transformational
or community resilience is participation (e.g. Arvanitis,
Holenstein, and Schriber 2023; Bahadur, Ibrahim, and
Tanner 2013; Carabine and Wilkinson 2016; Cinderby
et al. 2016; Copeland et al. 2020; Mahajan et al. 2022;
Rahman and Ghosh 2016; Schauppenlehner-Kloyber and
Penker 2016; Steiner, Woolvin, and Skerratt 2016). While
Carabine and Wilkinson (2016) identify community
engagement as one of the ve governance characteristics
important to foster resilience, few studies focus solely on
participation as an enhancing factor. Rahman and Ghosh
(2016) develop an approach for enhancing resilience
through participatory planning in the context of very
specic threats. In a technical approach, they focus on
a system-centred understanding of resilience. While no
extensive analysis is made in their case study, it is inter-
esting to see that the positive impact of participatory top-
down measures is assumed to be given (Rahman and
Ghosh 2016), although extensive literature on this impact
is still missing. In an extensive review, Mahajan et al.
(2022) evaluate the use of the concept of ‘participatory
resilience’ in the resilience literature, focusing on resili-
ence establishment through participation. They nd that
‘concepts of “resilience” and “community participation”
are not particularly well connected’ (Mahajan et al.
2022, 4). While they are able to derive some general
recommendations for eective engagement to promote
resilience, like inclusive information management,
enhanced social innovations embedded in local contexts
and creating supportive digital ecosystems, they also
conclude that participatory resilience needs to be inves-
tigated further (Mahajan et al. 2022). A study conducted
by Arvanitis, Holenstein, and Schriber (2023) studies the
impact of bottom-up participation through civil society
initiatives on community resilience. They conclude that
community involvement is essential for community resi-
lience, that bottom-up initiatives can positively impact
community resilience and that bottom-up initiatives also
indicate an already resilient community (Arvanitis,
Holenstein, and Schriber 2023). Addressing potential
further research, they point to the need for assessing
resilience in terms of societal transformations beyond
individual specic threats or disasters. Looking at urban
resilience, Schauppenlehner-Kloyber and Penker (2016)
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 5

evaluate the inuence of participation and self-organised
collective action on urban resilience. Collective action,
self-organisation and creativity are deemed crucial for
building urban resilience, realised through urban co-
management in their case study.
Building on this vast area of research, this brief
review gives us a glimpse at some of the challenges
in community resilience research. First, in the past,
a lot of research has focused on resilience to specic
(natural) disasters. Increasingly, communities need to
be resilient against, and able to work with, a complex
set of threats and changes (Lawrence et al. 2024).
Therefore, we need a general approach to assess
and enhance resilience of communities. Second,
while the literature often assumes the positive impact
of participation on community resilience, it is hardly
extensively elaborated upon. Third, integrating capa-
city-focused actor-centred approaches with structural
system-centred approaches is necessary to acknowl-
edge the structural enablers and limitations of
resources.
Existing community resilience assessment
frameworks
While operationalising community resilience is challen-
ging, various authors have oered dierent indicator-
based frameworks to grasp its key elements. While
these often focus on resilience to disasters, they can
give us a rough idea of the landscape of assessment
frameworks.
The following overview (Table 1) does not cover all
studies that inuence the assessment framework but
gives a snapshot of the current state of research on this
matter and of the frameworks inuencing this paper
most strongly. Most of these and the other analysed
frameworks include similar indicators organised in dif-
ferent dimensions or categories. The dimensions and
organising structures are what mostly dierentiate the
frameworks from one another.
Participation is consistently deemed important for
resilience, whether as an indicator, characteristic, or
an enabler. However, except for the paper by
Cinderby et al., it is never the primary focus. The
framework by Saja et al. focuses on structural dimen-
sions, while Khalili et al. and Berkes and Ross focus on
capabilities. The other frameworks include both
approaches to varying degrees, often focusing on
economic and infrastructural indicators when it
comes to structural aspects. Generally, many indica-
tors of the dierent frameworks overlap but are
sorted according to dierent logics or might include
certain aspects other frameworks have excluded.
Furthermore, most frameworks focus on resilience to
disasters and natural hazards, and very few consider
other types of changes. Most of these frameworks do
not include examples of how resilience may be
impacted and fostered.
Creating a new approach
A new resilience assessment framework –
components and drivers
A new framework was developed with four main
goals in mind: to include participation not only as an
indicator but also as an enabler for resilience; to
include the most important categories according to
sociological, psychological and SES theory on com-
munity resilience; to visualise the interdependencies
of the framework’s dierent dimensions; and to be
able to derive policy recommendations for actors
involved in participatory processes based on analyses
made with this framework. The framework is also
informed by the literature on resilience conceptuali-
sations. The framework is an approach to assess the
resilience of socially and spatially bounded commu-
nities. As a whole, it describes the social structure or
system of the community and the context it is situ-
ated in. Similar to Giddens’ understanding of how
individual actors act and evolve within a given sys-
tem, the framework understands people as knowl-
edgeable actors who are constrained or enabled by
certain structures, but can also transform these (see
Giddens 1984).
The developed assessment framework (Figure 1) for
community resilience consists of four interdependent
dimensions: individual, social, governance and eco-
nomic. These dimensions are impacted by the polycrisis.
Participation may strengthen them. The framework’s
dimensions may aect how a community reacts and
adapts to changes that occur. Further, they also deter-
mine the extent to which communities are able to
enable and foster transformation processes. The frame-
work highlights the interdependencies of the dierent
dimensions and how they relate to participation and
potential transformation processes. With the individual
dimension situated within the social dimension, it aims
to show that individual capacities are dependent on
and lie within social structural conditions that shape to
what extent these capacities can be developed. These
two dimensions relate mostly to the social bounded-
ness of communities.
The proposed framework draws especially on
Jacinto, Reis, and Ferrão (2020) work regarding the
individual, social and governance dimensions. Based
on a systematic review, they developed a framework
whose logic the proposed framework here is built on
understanding community resilience through dimen-
sions and categories. However, some of the dimen-
sions and especially the categories and indicators
dier. Since the built and natural dimensions of the
framework by Jacinto et al. are not part of a social
6N. KIRBY

Table 1. Exemplary overview of existing assessment frameworks informing this study.
Authors Operationalised understanding of resilience Role of participation
Saja et al. (2018)Five social dimensions with corresponding characteristics and indicators:
●Social structure (e.g. social demography, family structures, and socio-economic stratification)
●Social capital: (e.g. social bonds, networking abilities, interaction between social groups or governing institutions
●Social mechanisms (e.g. developing community goals, engagement and competence, collective attitudes)
●Social equity (e.g. equal access to resources, skills and services, inclusive resilience initiatives, ensuring equity for people
with specific needs)
●Social beliefs (Social behaviours, local cultural beliefs and norms, faith-based values and practices)
Participation important factor for social mechanisms (community engagement,
political participation, community inclusiveness)
Norris et al. (2008)Four primary sets of networked resources and corresponding indicators:
●Information and communication (Narratives, responsible media, skills & infrastructure, trusted sources of information)
●Community competence (Community action, critical reflection, flexibility and creativity, collective efficacy empowerment,
political partnerships)
●Social capital (e.g. received social support, social embeddedness, attachment to place, sense of community, and citizen
participation)
●Economic development (Fairness of risk & vulnerability, level and diversity of economic resources, equity of resource
distribution)
Community bonds are defined as an indicator of social capital which is dependent
on participation
Khalili, Harre, and
Morley (2018)
14 indicators in matrix organised form pre- to post-disaster and according to their influence (high – low)
Pre-disaster
●High: e.g. community participation or shared support; Medium: demographic information; Low: e.g. improvisation
inventiveness or leadershipResponse
●High: e.g. community participation or sense of community; Medium: coordination; Low: coping style, leadershipRecovery
●High: e.g. community participation, exchange information, learning, shared information, social support; Medium: com-
munity efficacy; Low: improvisation inventiveness, coping style, leadership
Community participation defined as an important indicator for social resilience in
all three phases from pre- to post-disaster
Steiner, Woolvin,
and Skerratt
(2016)
No indicators, four components of social resilience
●social individual resilience
●social CR
●economic individual resilience
●economic CRAssessed through 20 quantitative and 12 qualitative questions
Community participation as means for empowerment mentioned but not
elaborated
Berkes and Ross
(2013)
Integration of SES and psychological resilience approaches.
Two main components:
●agency
●self-organising;enabled through: positive outlook, community infrastructure, diverse and innovative economy, people-
place relationships, leadership, learning, values & beliefs, social networks, engaged governance
Participatory approaches briefly mentioned as enhancing factor, engaged
governance also includes collaborative institutions, participation as an indicator
Bahadur, Ibrahim,
and Tanner
(2013)
Ten characteristics of resilience:
●high diversity; effective governance and institutions; acceptance of change and uncertainty; non-equilibrium system
dynamics; community involvement & inclusion of local knowledge; preparedness & planning; high degree of equity; social
capital, values & structures; learning: adoption of cross-scalar perspective
Participation is a characteristic of resilience
Jacinto, Reis, and
Ferrão (2020)
Six dimensions with associated categories, each category is comprised of several indicators
●Individuals: Adaptive capacity, health, demography, migration
●Society: Associativism, social networking, institutions, livelihood conditions, insurance
●Governance: Planning & governance
●Built environment: Infrastructures, building resistance
●Natural environment: Hazard susceptibility, natural environment
●Disaster: Learning from the past, disasters and recovery
Included as a governance indicator → community involvement
Cinderby et al.
(2016)
Asset-based approach, characterises interacting capitals/resources:
●Natural capital (e.g. access to green space)
●Human capital (e.g. skills and education)
●Social capital (e.g. social networks)
●Cultural capital (e.g. heritage and festivals)
●Built/infrastructural capital (e.g. access to amenities)
●Economic capital (e.g. income and savings)
Transformative interventions are suggested for each type of capital to increase CR
Forms of empowerment and engagement deemed crucial transformative
interventions to increase CR, they are a focus of the paper
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 7

dynamic, they are situated outside of this proposed
framework for community resilience – however, this
dimension does play a crucial role in the polycrisis and
for transformation and is interdependent with the
social dynamic. Furthermore, the disaster dimension
is excluded since the specic aim of this framework is
to enable general resilience and not focus on indivi-
dual disasters. The economic dimension is included as
it consists of social interactions and is relevant in var-
ious frameworks (Berkes and Ross 2013; Cinderby et al.
2016; Norris et al. 2008; Ribeiro and António Pena
Jardim Gonçalves 2019; Saja et al. 2018; Steiner,
Woolvin, and Skerratt 2016). The governance, eco-
nomic and external dimensions relate to the social
and spatial boundedness of communities. The cate-
gories and indicators were compiled based on qualita-
tive content analyses of existing frameworks and
community resilience conceptualisations, structuring
the ndings into the inductively developed dimen-
sions. Some of these categories intersect, creating
redundancies that can foster enabling community resi-
lience (Bahadur, Ibrahim, and Tanner 2013; Quinlan,
Marta Berbés-Blázquez, and Peterson 2016; Ribeiro
and António Pena Jardim Gonçalves 2019).
Individual dimension
The individual dimension constitutes the basis for
community resilience and captures human capital
and agency of actors within the community
(Cinderby et al. 2016). It is characterised by coping,
adaptive and transformative (CAT) capacities. Coping
capacities concise of multiple indicators. Firstly, a sense
of security (Cinderby et al. 2016; Norris et al. 2008;
Obrist, Pfeier, and Henley 2010; Ribeiro and António
Pena Jardim Gonçalves 2019), a sense of belonging
(Berkes and Ross 2013; Steiner, Woolvin, and Skerratt
2016) and general health and well-being (Cutter et al.
2008; Jacinto, Reis, and Ferrão 2020; Khalili, Harre, and
Morley 2018; Revell and Dinnie 2020) are often dened
as base indicators for individual resilience. They can
positively impact the ability to deal with external
stress, derived especially but not only from psycholo-
gical theories (Berkes and Ross 2013). A perceived high
quality of life (Cutter et al. 2008) and a positive and
open outlook (Berkes and Ross 2013; Steiner, Woolvin,
and Skerratt 2016) are also important indicators for an
individual’s coping capacities. Furthermore, knowl-
edge (Berkes and Ross 2013; Maclean, Cuthill, and
Ross 2014) and access to community resources
(Magis 2010; Obrist, Pfeier, and Henley 2010) are
dened as important components when dealing with
stress and disturbance.
Adaptive capacities support resilience in the face of
external stresses but also in times of change. Flexibility
and accepting change and uncertainty (Bahadur,
Ibrahim, and Tanner 2013; Berkes and Ross 2013) as
well as being able to adapt (Ribeiro and António Pena
Jardim Gonçalves 2019) are therefore apparent
indicators.
Transformative capacities go beyond adaptation. They
are about enabling transformation and thriving through
change and are essential in each dimension of commu-
nity resilience. Empowerment, learning and experimenta-
tion can enable transformative capacities (Bahadur,
Ibrahim, and Tanner 2013; Berkes and Ross 2013;
Hölscher, Frantzeskaki, and Loorbach 2019; Maclean,
Cuthill, and Ross 2014; Quinlan, Marta Berbés-Blázquez,
and Peterson 2016; Wolfram 2016). Reexivity and an
awareness of system dynamics (Hölscher, Frantzeskaki,
and Loorbach 2019; Wolfram 2016), coupled with
a sense for sustainability (Hölscher, Frantzeskaki, and
Loorbach 2019; Quinlan, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, and
Peterson 2016; Revell and Dinnie 2020; Wolfram 2016)
characterise transformative capacity to bring about
Figure 1. Interdependencies of the dimensions and the influence of participation.
8N. KIRBY

change. If the goal is to transform a system, actors need
to be able to understand and reect upon the system in
question, which is also described through agency.
Agency describes abilities like knowledgeability or reex-
ive abilities and exists in a recursive relationship with the
general social structure of a community (Giddens 1984).
In addition to these mental abilities, self-organisation and
self-ecacy (Berkes and Ross 2013; Revell and Dinnie
2020) are essential to empower and foster
transformations.
Social dimension
The social dimension describes the social connections
within a community. It is divided into basic social
structure, social capital and social mechanisms (Saja
et al. 2018). The concept of social structure generally
includes characteristics like social relations and inter-
actions to describe dierentiation or similarities
among people in a society, which would be equivalent
to the social dimension, or even the whole framework
in this context (Blau 1977). However, in its most basic
sense, it can also be understood quantitatively through
population composition to describe the heterogeneity
of a group (Blau 1977). Since the social dimension as
a whole describes social relations and the community
resilience framework in total aims to assess institu-
tional arrangements, this basic understanding of social
structure is applied as part of the social dimension. This
should not be confused with the overall social struc-
ture the community is embedded in. Social capital
describes the networks creating a community (Aldrich
and Meyer 2015; Li et al. 2024; Magis 2010). Social
capital can represent close bonds between similar
people (bonding social capital) or connections across
a more diverse group of people (bridging social capi-
tal). Social capital as well as formal and informal net-
works can create collective benets for communities
and foster civic engagement (Putnam 2000). Social
mechanisms describe how a community functions.
Social structure here is described by the commu-
nity’s population composition (Bahadur, Ibrahim, and
Tanner 2013; Jacinto, Reis, and Ferrão 2020; Quinlan,
Marta Berbés-Blázquez, and Peterson 2016; Ribeiro and
António Pena Jardim Gonçalves 2019; Saja et al. 2018).
Additional attributes such as the degree of social
equity and the access to basic needs and services or
other infrastructure within the community further
dene this composition (Bahadur, Ibrahim, and
Tanner 2013; Maclean, Cuthill, and Ross 2014; Saja
et al. 2018).
Social capital is an essential feature of community
resilience, and various authors describe it as the most
relevant component (Aldrich and Meyer 2015). Informal
safety nets and support (Berkes and Ross 2013; Jacinto,
Reis, and Ferrão 2020), close relationships with others
(Aldrich and Meyer 2015; Copeland et al. 2020; Revell
and Dinnie 2020) and a sense of community (Cutter
et al. 2008; Steiner, Woolvin, and Skerratt 2016) describe
connections between people who are close to one
another, like friends or family who enhance bonding
social capital (Aldrich and Meyer 2015). Social networks
and volunteerism (Berkes and Ross 2013; Cinderby et al.
2016; Cutter et al. 2008; Maclean, Cuthill, and Ross 2014)
and interconnectedness between social groups (Aldrich
and Meyer 2015; Berkes and Ross 2013; Copeland et al.
2020; Quinlan, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, and Peterson
2016; Revell and Dinnie 2020; Ribeiro and António
Pena Jardim Gonçalves 2019) represent bridging social
capital that stretches beyond close contacts and
enables broader and diverse networks. Trust in commu-
nity leadership organises relationships between people
across power gradients in a community, representing
linking social capital (Aldrich and Meyer 2015).
Social mechanisms describe more specically how
a community functions. As a category, this includes
a broad set of indicators such as collaboration and
experimentation within the community (Quinlan,
Marta Berbés-Blázquez, and Peterson 2016; Saja
et al. 2018), but also engagement and the inclusion
of local knowledge in decision making processes
aecting the community (Bahadur, Ibrahim, and
Tanner 2013; Quinlan, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, and
Peterson 2016; Saja et al. 2018). These mechanisms
are also described by the community’s inclusiveness
towards others (Berkes and Ross 2013; Revell and
Dinnie 2020; Ribeiro and António Pena Jardim
Gonçalves 2019; Saja et al. 2018) since
a community does not exist in a vacuum but people
within it are always interacting with others.
Increasing community competence (Cutter et al.
2008; Jacinto, Reis, and Ferrão 2020; Maclean,
Cuthill, and Ross 2014; Norris et al. 2008) may enable
collective action towards common goals (Magis
2010; Saja et al. 2018) generating a sense of pride
in the community and general empowerment (Revell
and Dinnie 2020; Saja et al. 2018; Wolfram 2016).
Ideally, these collective actions also lead to innova-
tion creation in the community and transmission of
these innovations into other communities (Hölscher,
Frantzeskaki, and Loorbach 2019; Ribeiro and
António Pena Jardim Gonçalves 2019; Wolfram
2016). Collective action can happen at the commu-
nity level without governance involvement, but it
can also overlap with community inclusion in the
governance dimension.
Governance dimension
The governance dimension oers important insights
into the eects of participation on community resilience
on a broader scale, especially regarding interdependen-
cies. Resilience in this dimension is characterised by
community governance and the governing actors’
transformative capacity.
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 9

Indicators for resilient community governance
include engagement across multiple layers of the gov-
ernance system between political and administrative
actors as well as stakeholders from civil society (Berkes
and Ross 2013; Maclean, Cuthill, and Ross 2014).
Community inclusion and participation in decision
making processes indicate high levels of engaged gov-
ernance (Bahadur, Ibrahim, and Tanner 2013; Cinderby
et al. 2016). Community inclusion may overlap with
‘collective action’ from the social dimension, if bottom-
up action is included in governance processes.
Transformative capacity in governance requires
a commitment to systemic change for sustainability
among the governing actors (Wolfram 2016). This will-
ingness for systemic change may further be exempli-
ed by facilitating experimentation and innovation
processes within governance structures but also in
terms of new policies and concepts put forward
(Wolfram 2016).
Economic dimension
The economic dimension focuses on the local econ-
omy and its relationship with the community, as well
as the overall economic situation of community mem-
bers. Similar to the social and governance dimension, it
also describes the structural conditions for community
resilience. This includes categories such as economic
capital (Cinderby et al. 2016), a diverse local economy
(Steiner, Woolvin, and Skerratt 2016) and community
infrastructure (Berkes and Ross 2013; Cinderby et al.
2016; Steiner, Woolvin, and Skerratt 2016).
Economic capital is closely related to and intersect-
ing with social structure as it describes factors like
income, employment and wealth (Adger 2000;
Cinderby et al. 2016). A diverse local economy is char-
acterised by a local ecosystem of diverse and thriving
enterprises that foster innovation (Berkes and Ross
2013; Maclean, Cuthill, and Ross 2014; Norris et al.
2008; Revell and Dinnie 2020; Steiner, Woolvin, and
Skerratt 2016). Community infrastructure includes
facilities like medical services, community centres,
transport options or arts and food markets (Maclean,
Cuthill, and Ross 2014). They can span the bridge
between economic, social and cultural needs in
a community. The dimension includes market and non-
market-based arrangement, whereby the non-market-
based arrangements overlap with categories from the
social dimension.
The dierent dimensions of community resilience
are interdependent to one another, categories within
the dimensions may overlap. Rather than understand-
ing community resilience as a set state, our framework
aims at understanding it as a social dynamic of inter-
acting dimensions. Figure 2 gives an overview of the
framework's assessment categories.
Participation – a potential driver for community
resilience
Participation is brought into the equation as
a potential driver of community resilience. To
Figure 2. Assessment framework for community resilience, including assessment categories.
10 N. KIRBY

understand this potential impact, we will shed some
light on how participation may be conceptualised.
Participation can be viewed as a functional tool for
basing decisions on a wide range of diverse viewpoints
and interests as a means to include all relevant aspects
and to serve the needs for all people aected. Beyond,
this functional perspective participation has been pro-
posed as a normative goal for making the principles of
democracy work in practice (Lafont 2019). It may pro-
mote social justice by giving individuals from all social
backgrounds the opportunity to codetermine their
environments and their future. It can be an empower-
ment strategy for promoting democratic values and
social justice (Gaventa 2006). Through participation,
fair and socially balanced procedures could empower
all aected individuals to be part of the collective
solution. While participation is not sucient for reach-
ing equity, sustainability and resilience aims alone, it is
an important pillar.
Often, participation processes are understood as
top-down phenomena where ocial decision makers
invite citizens or stakeholders to give an input on
a particular issue. Agenda and boundaries of the pro-
cess such as who participates and in which aspect of
the decision-making process are determined by deci-
sion makers. In the past few years, formats like citizen
assemblies and other mini-publics have increasingly
been implemented by decision makers to enhance
this type of political participation. These dialogues
oriented participatory processes are usually employed
in a top-down manner and aim at being consultative,
consensus oriented and enhancing mutual under-
standing through deliberation (Dryzek et al. 2019).
These participation processes can be understood as
top-down processes, enabling invited spaces for parti-
cipation – spaces, wherein citizens have been invited
to participate (Gaventa 2006). Also described as gov-
ernance driven democratisation, these processes are
implemented in response to the seemingly increasing
incapacity of electoral democratic processes to capture
the needs of pluralist societies and deal with current
complex challenges (Warren 2009). These processes
can oer pragmatic, solution-oriented options for deal-
ing with political challenges (Bua and Bussu 2021) and
are usually of consultative nature. Deliberative pro-
cesses aim at fostering dialogue between citizens
with dierent opinions and at opening up avenues of
intersubjective reasoning to reach meta-consensus,
especially in polarised contexts (Niemeyer 2011). Meta-
consensus ‘embraces the principle of plurality [. . .] that
there are other legitimate points of view that should
be admitted to the deliberative table’ (Niemeyer and
Dryzek 2007, 502). Such processes, the surge in climate
assemblies all over Europe is an example of this, are
therefore often implemented to deal with current poli-
tical problems that seem to have polarising societal
eects but require urgent action.
The potential impact of these top-down processes
on citizens and communities has been evaluated in
dierent studies and with various foci. These processes
seem to foster learning processes for participants and
political interest, create new social connections or can
serve as a catalyser for further political or social
engagement (Kirby et al. 2021; Michels and Binnema
2019; Talpien 2019). Based on these ndings, one
might assume that it could also have an impact on
community resilience, as aforementioned aspects are
also some of its common characteristics.
Further, we can also think of participation as
a bottom-up process. Contrary to the aforementioned
top-down process, civil society actors determine the
agenda and boundaries of participation. These pro-
cesses result in the creation of claimed spaces for parti-
cipation: spaces that citizens themselves created due to
their dissatisfaction with governing actors, or as a result
of civil society demands (Gaventa 2006). These claimed
spaces can take very dierent forms, ranging from pro-
test and citizen petitions to social movements, orga-
nised civil society groups or community associations.
These spaces may be an expression of public dissent
or can be institutionalised. Campaigns by civil society
actors can claim a space by collecting signatures for
citizen petitions or organising participatory public
events about specic issues (von Schneidemesser and
Kirby 2022). If such bottom-up social movements go
beyond ad-hoc initiatives and embed participatory prac-
tices in established institutions, they can also be
described as democracy-driven governance (DDG) pro-
cesses (Bua and Bussu 2021). An example of a DDG
process could be the implementation of the Berlin cli-
mate assembly in 2022, which was initially demanded
by a civil society group, but also new collaborative
governance approaches towards community manage-
ment (e.g. Barcelona’s Citizen Asset Programme).
The aim of these processes is to create empowered
spaces – rather than merely consultative ones, like top-
down processes usually are. Beyond the policy realm,
bottom-up participatory processes also have an
empowering impact on participants by fostering knowl-
edge, learning and community networks (Arvanitis,
Holenstein, and Schriber 2023). Citizen-led participatory
processes tend to mobilise the public sphere and gen-
erate more participation in other social movements and
participatory practices, leading to a political activation
beyond the direct participants (Della Porta and Felicetti
2022). This mobilising eect hints at a greater societal
relevance of bottom-up participatory processes (Bua
and Bussu 2021). These eects, especially in terms of
agency, empowerment and ecacy, point towards
a potentially positive eect on community resilience.
The distinction between top-down and bottom-up
participatory approaches is not rigid, they can rather
be seen as complementary to one another being in
a dynamic relationship of continuous push and pull
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 11

between contention, collaboration and co-optation.
They can take hybrid forms and learn from each
other. This diversity in form should be kept in mind
when thinking about the impact of participation on
resilience.
The potential impact of participation to
strengthen community resilience
To explore the full potential of the framework, it needs
to be applied in practice, which we do in another paper
(Kirby, Stasiak, and Von Schneidemesser 2024).
However, before doing so, I will present a vignette
case to illustrate the possible impact of participatory
processes on communities to conceptually elaborate
on the framework’s potential.
As we briey delved into, participation should not
be understood as a one-way street but a two-
directional process, where stakeholders from dierent
ends of the power hierarchy seek to engage with one
another – be it by protests from social movements,
through citizen assemblies convened by governing
actors, and everything in between. Evaluating the
impact of such participatory processes depends largely
on the chosen indicators that the process is evaluated
against. The following vignette seeks to give a glimpse
into what the impact of bottom-up participation on
community resilience could look like.
In a recent study Arvanitis, Holenstein, and Schriber
(2023) develop a conceptual framework to understand
the relationship between bottom-up initiatives (BUIs) and
community resilience. They selected seven BUIs to ana-
lyse this relationship. They dene community resilience as
the ‘capability of a community to resist and potentially
thrive in a period of pressure, disturbance, or change with
solutions, actions, or development that are sustainable for
the community’ (Arvanitis, Holenstein, and Schriber 2023,
60). Based on Maclean, Cuthill, and Ross (2014) their con-
cept of community resilience consists of six relevant com-
ponents (engaged governance; community networks;
community infrastructure; diverse & innovative economy;
knowledge, skills & learning; and people-place connec-
tions) activated through agency and the ability to self-
organise (Berkes and Ross 2013). Based on interviews with
BUI members and the assessment of project team experts,
they found that the components knowledge, skills and
learning, community networks and engaged governance
were signicantly strengthened through their engage-
ment. They found that the existence of a BUI not only
can strengthen community resilience but is also an indi-
cator for an already resilient community (Arvanitis,
Holenstein, and Schriber 2023).
These ndings provide a helpful starting point
for future analyses through the framework pro-
posed in this paper as they align with our assump-
tions for the impact of participation. However, our
proposed framework seeks to go a step further on
two accounts: By including further important cate-
gories like social structure, social mechanisms and
CAT capacities, it seeks to get a more nuanced view
on more specic indicators that participation might
have an impact on, as well as the interdependen-
cies between these dimensions to show how its
understanding is constant in ux and dynamic.
Conclusion and outlook
Community resilience as a concept allows us to
integrate various community qualities within one
framework. Frameworks oer us a means to under-
stand specic phenomena or processes in
a simplied, yet analytically comprehensive way by
breaking multifaceted concepts up into individual
layers and indicators. What makes community resi-
lience such a challenging concept to grasp is its
fuzziness and often also lack of delineation from
related concepts. In my view, what makes commu-
nity resilience unique and useful as a concept is the
fact that it combines a multitude of community
qualities and capacities within dierent community
dimensions. The developed framework can help
understand these various layers and how the indi-
vidual, social, governance and economic dimen-
sions relate to each other. Further, as the
framework shows, resilience is not a stable state
but constant dynamics of interactions between dif-
ferent dimensions.
Currently, many frameworks for community resili-
ence focus on resilience against specic threats or
disasters and less on more general reasons for resi-
lience. This inhibits a transformation-oriented focus
on resilience necessary within a polycrisis setting. To
enable transformation, a focus on strengthening fac-
tors for community resilience is helpful. Further, resi-
lience is often understood as a capacity, with little
focus on the social dynamics within communities. In
this framework, community resilience is understood
as a social dynamic enriched by capacities that can
enable transformation processes necessary to thrive
in an environment characterised by change and
uncertainty.
This understanding can help to evaluate the impact
of participatory processes on communities – not just
when top-down measures are implemented, but also
when communities engage in a bottom-up manner.
This can further be helpful for designing policies aimed
at increasing community resilience, by using dierent
participatory measures. The framework is limited to the
extent that it is quite complex, requiring time and
resources to apply and assess. Further research should
test how the assessment framework can be applied in
practice and how well it can be applied in dierent
participatory contexts.
12 N. KIRBY

Acknowledgments
The author acknowledges the support provided by the
Research Institute for Sustainability-Helmholtz Centre
Potsdam (RIFS), Potsdam, Germany, which is funded by the
Helmholtz Association.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work has been supported by HLRS together with the
Foundation “Umwelt- und Schadenvorsorge”.
Notes on contributor
Nicolina Kirby is a research associate in the research group
“Co-creation in democratic practice” at the Research Institute
for Sustainability | at GFZ Potsdam (RIFS), Potsdam, Germany.
In her work, she explores the relationship between participa-
tory practices and community resilience in the context of
urban transformation processes.
ORCID
Nicolina Kirby http://orcid.org/0009-0004-8612-8845
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