Urban resilience: between tradition, crisis response, and global change

Contemporary cities face the acute challenge of balancing competing imperatives: preserving cultural identity while enabling transformation; responding to crises while fostering opportunity; and respecting tradition while embracing modernisation. Rather than choosing between the past and the future, this paper examines how these tensions can be navigated by approaching cities as opportunities to be shaped through culturally rooted, adaptive, and forward-looking planning. The study draws on research, teaching, and fieldwork organised in five thematic clusters. Grounded in the interconnected concepts of urbanity, resilience, and innovative practices, it employs a comparative, interdisciplinary, and multi-scalar methodology. On this basis, the paper argues that urban resilience is cultivated where memory, participation, and innovation intersect. Key insights highlight the value of tradition-informed design for long-term transformation, the potential of co-production and experimentation for sustainability transitions, and the importance of global-local learning for equitable adaptation. The paper concludes that designing for resilience requires an approach that addresses complexity across temporal, spatial, and institutional dimensions through sustained partnerships between planners, policymakers, and stakeholder communities.