Resilience – Meanings, Practices, and Capacities of Change in Nordic Landscapes

In recent years, resilience has experienced increasing meaning and has become both a buzzword and a guiding principle in the face of various crises and hazards. Although interpreted differently in human science and planning professions, the common ground is the ability of systems to adapt and recover from shocks. Thus, resilience is also captured in research as a learning process and an option to withstand future unpredictable catastrophes.

The workshop will focus on urban and rural landscapes in northern Europe (Baltic Sea region and Scandinavia) to determine whether resilience can be made sustainable as a guiding principle and model for coping with the profound changes in landscapes in the Anthropocene. By asking what makes cities, gardens, and landscapes resilient, we aim to address how change is to be understood as an immanent characteristic of resilience in the landscape context: is it about short-term reactions or long-term transformation? Is it about stability through transformation or maintaining certain qualities despite transformation? What is and how does it deal with the connection of design interventions, nature, and society?