Building resilient cities: The role of local strategies for the development of small cities

The concept of resilience, developed mainly within physics, natural sciences and technological disciplines, has progressively spread within social sciences, and has recently become important to interpret the dynamics of regional systems and urban areas. If resilience is defined in physics as the ability of a system to recover shape and balance after turbulences, in the regional and urban fields that term is understood as a system's ability to respond to change. The idea of resilience in economy and geography has assumed a growing importance, especially since the global financial and economic crisis of 2008, which produced significant effects on regional and local economies, which have differently responded to the shock. The difficulties related to the economic crisis have been particularly relevant for small cities since they seem to play an increasingly secondary role, if compared to the processes of concentration of creative vitality and technological activities, which seem to reward larger cities, more open and more able to adapt to change. This paper focuses on small cities, with particular attention to the need for them to promote local policies and practices, in order to define new models of intervention aimed at building or strengthening the urban resilience. The theoretical discussion and the case study presented in this work highlight the importance of two attitudes of the city, which may affect its resilience: on the one hand, the promotion of the distinctive characteristics of regional and local context (smart specialization); on the other hand, the ability to respond to changes at different scales and to develop new development trajectories (dynamic capabilities). The application of the concept of resilience to small cities also involves the role of local actors and development strategies to capture new ideas and innovations from the outside and to respond locally and with self-determination to external stimuli. These responses include not only the economic, but also the cultural sphere, the relationship between citizens and city, social inclusion and territorial sustainability. These aspects represent fundamental values especially for the smaller systems,systems, which cannot rely on the creative skills and attractive assets of metropolitan areas.