Highlights

Abstract

Graphical abstract

Keywords

۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Theoretical background: resilience and urban studies

۳٫ Material and methods: Rome, or more than 2750 years of a historic urban landscape

۴٫ Discussion

۵٫ Implications for urban management: the role of sentiment analysis and collective perception-based maps in fostering resilient thinking

۶٫ Conclusion and future directions

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Appendix A.

References

Vitae

Abstract

Resilience has been intensely investigated as the viable quality of individuals, groups, organizations, and systems to respond productively to notable change without engaging in an extended period of regressive behaviour. Recently, there has been growing attention to the relationship between resilience and cities. To contribute to this stimulating debate, this paper first provides the theoretical framework and links the concept of resilience to urban studies. Subsequently, it enlightens, through a systems perspective and the aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) methodology, the possibility to enrich the information variety endowment of urban policymakers, generated by new information units, to foster resilience capabilities in the urban context. Specifically, a large-scale text analysis study was conducted on the city of Rome to understand the sentiments expressed within the text generated online by citizens and visitors. The positive or negative sentiments linked to the hidden problems of the urban context were organized within collective perception-based maps for each of the analysed points of interest (POIs). Since cities represent complex decision-making contexts, this study aimed to outline a methodology and a tool that would help foster resilient thinking in urban policies by enriching the diversity of the information variety endowment of urban decision-makers.

۱٫ Introduction

From physics to ecology, from engineering to social sciences, resilience has been increasingly investigated as the viable capability of individuals, groups and social systems to respond productively to notable change or challenges without engaging in an extended period of regressive behaviour (Home III & Orr, 1998; Kobasa et al., 1982). Managerial and organizational scholars (Contu, 2002; Durodie, 2003; McManus et al., 2007; Pooley & Cohen, 2010; Seville, 2009; Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003; K.E. Weick, 1993; K.E. Weick & Sutcliffe, 2006) have further defined resilience as the “ability to survive” while maintaining adaptive, proactive, and reactive strategies to deal with threats, risks, and disruptive challenges.

In recent years, thanks to its usefulness for understanding complex systems such as cities, in urban studies, there has also been a growing effort to uncover what makes an urban context “resilient”. Resilience is thus the potential to exhibit resourcefulness by using an available internal and external slack of resources in response to different contextual and developmental challenges. Accordingly, urban resilience is defined herein not only as the capacity of an urban system to adapt to changes either by absorbing sudden disturbances (absorption) or by managing to maintain or restore initial functions without limiting future adaptability (adaptation) but also, when intense alterations and disturbances occur, the capacity to design and undertake broader and deeper changes that can even lead to transformation (transformability).

By focusing on the city of Rome (Italy) and applying a robust research methodology, this paper aims to contribute to the stimulating debate on the resilience capability of urban contexts and to promote – at both the theoretical and managerial levels- a resilient thinking in managing complex urban contexts. As complex systems, urban contexts configure wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973), whose understanding (requisite variety) depends on the richness of the information variety endowment owned by the decision makers. The methodology (ABSA) and the related tool (collective perception-based maps) proposed herein help to enrich the information variety of the policy-makers with respect to their awareness of the “perceived” urban resilience and its dynamic. This draws the attention to the crucial relevance that the “perceived” context should play for policy makers involved in resilient thinking, i.e. a thinking aiming to make the urban context more and more resilient.