The ideal of resilient systems and questions of continuity

The importance of resilience is contextualized within the sustainable long-term management of the built environment. The built environment is considered as a set of different capitals (natural, physical, economic, social and cultural) with limited possibilities for substitution between the capitals. Resilience is related to other concepts used in the search for a sustainable development of the built environment: continuity, stability and equilibrium, duration and durability, robustness and vulnerability, fast- and slow-moving risks. Cultural capital (in its material and intangible forms) as well as natural capital are significant due to long foresight considerations, high uncertainty and limitations on substitutions. Different time and scale categories and the conservation of different capitals need different anticipation and resilience strategies. It is argued that natural and cultural capitals can be transmitted if they are conservatively used and if adaptation occurs slowly. Specific strategies are needed for the ‘non-recoverability’ of cultural capital.