Regional resilience: a promising concept to explain differences in regional economic adaptability?

One of the most intriguing questions in economic geography is why some regional economies manage to renew themselves, whereas others remain locked in decline. To tackle this question, the idea of resilience has emerged building upon concepts derived from ecology, psychology, disaster studies and elsewhere. This conceptual paper aims at critically assessing whether regional resilience contributes to our understanding of regional economic adaptability, in particular, and its potential contribution to evolutionary economic geography, in general. It concludes that, due to three main shortcomings, its contribution is relatively limited. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.