resilience

The Krasny-Tidball piece is very representative of the ideas that we have studied thus far in this class, and even in my other classes. I think that the most interesting idea in this paper is the idea that cities are in fact no different from any other ecosystem, they too need diversity to thrive. After studying the history of Johannesburg for my Global Cities class, I have become very sensitive to ideas regarding land use and segregation. The horrible decline, inhumane inequalities and the huge gap between the rich and the poor that existed and continue to exist in Johannesburg seem to be the natural outcomes of homogenous land use planning.
Just to play devil’s advocate, I would like to push against resilience and the use of this word in the paper. To me, words like inequality and resilience have duel meanings because our understanding of them has become entrenched with social connotations. For example, inequality is a word that economists use to describe a social factor that can actually spur the economy. And yet, when we think about inequality, we automatically think of exploitation or oppression. The same goes for the word community, as we discussed in class. Resilience, in this paper especially, seems to have a very positive connotation. But what happens when structures of control that are negative are resilient? Would that imply overall non-resilience because of the uneven capacity to adapt? This arguement could go on and on, like we did in class over the word community...

on another note, i really enjoyed the references to planning and community building. I was able to connect ideas mentioned in my planning classes, like participatory planning ect.