Urban lifelines and resilience beyond the Strait of Hormuz

Cities depend on infrastructural lifelines that extend far beyond their territorial boundaries, yet urban resilience is often conceptualized through capacities located within cities themselves. This Perspective uses disruptions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz to reconsider how urban resilience is shaped by geographically dispersed infrastructure networks operating across multiple spatial and institutional scales. Drawing on emerging rerouting responses in the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia, the discussion traces how flows can be reconfigured across pipelines, Red Sea ports and overland logistics corridors when established maritime routes are constrained. We argue that such reconfiguration represents a potential mechanism of adaptation and should not itself be interpreted as evidence of resilience. Alternative pathways can provide additional options for maintaining essential flows, but they can also shift pressure, costs and dependencies toward other infrastructures, jurisdictions and chokepoints. Urban resilience should therefore account not only for capacities within cities, but also for the wider infrastructural connections through which essential urban functions are sustained and reorganized under disruption.