Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Marcus and Colding (2014) and Soane et al. (2012) have argued for the need to use the adaptive cycle theory as a conceptual tool of analysis and design focusing on bottom-up social dynamics. This heuristic focuses on Gunderson & Holling’s (2002) adaptive cycle and panarchy theory, which divides the dynamics and resilience of community resilience in two distinct loops: the front-loop, which includes capital growth and conservation phases, and the back-loop, which includes collapse, and reorganization and social bottom-up phases. Most recently, Herrmann et al. (2016) have used the tool to compare the growth and collapse of habitat, highlighting the complementarities of the two loops, as well as their social and spatial dimensions. In particular, the novelty is to focus on resilient initiatives and its associated bottom-up urban policies when analyzing an habitat’s adaptive cycle. We use the adaptive cycle theory to improve our understanding of cycles of change and offer a powerful narrative with bottom-up social drivers and practical implications for better understanding the vulnerabilities and windows of opportunity of these urban communities. The objective is to contribute to bridge theory and practice and consolidate the use of Resilience Thinking design as a methodology to identify thresholds for social dynamics, analyze urban actions, and forecast forthcoming bottom-up social change scale up processes for community resilience. We use methodologies and tools developed by the resilient thinking concept to conduct and compare community-based actions and their evolution. The workshop focus is how to facilitate local bottom-up actions for global sustainable policies.