Resilience

Resilience Article
The article investigates the resilience in communities and the effects that community gardening and civic ecology can have on cities. I thought it was interesting that the definition of resiliencein ecology can be applied in the same way to cities. Diversity provides functional redudancy, which says that if one species is lost to the ecosystem, another with similar functions can replace the lost species and keep the ecosystem stable. This same property can be applied to cities where different ethnic, religious groups, community memebers, NGOs, and government officials can all contribute to management of a resource and if group declines, the resource can still be managed properly. The paper states that resilience can be built through nurturing diversity, self-organization, adaptive learning, and positive feedback loops which will allow a city or community to respond to disasters. The researchers argue that urban community greening promotes these necessary qualities in communities. Civic ecology should be used to build resilience through allowing and teaching people to learn, act and organize. They must become accustomed and accepting of change.