Resilience in Flux: Unraveling the Shifted Policy Narratives and Norms of Urban Planning in Toulouse, France

Abstract

This article examines the policy narrative of climate change associated with a specific term, ‘resilience’, which has surfaced in environmental public action in over the past decade and has become an important and popular concept in contemporary urban planning. Mobilizing a qualitative methodology through forty-two semi-structured interviews, this study explores how resilience, gradually institutionalized, has evolved into a key term in managing uncertainty within the field of urban planning. It highlights that urban planners, as the key actors responsible for implementing resilience principles, diverge from the scientific foundations of resilience as articulated by generations of scholars across various academic disciplines. This departure occurs through the narrative and cognitive efforts of urban planners. The exponential mobilization of the resilience concept, driven by its demonstrated relevance in scientific research, has led to its broad application, but this can result in interpretations and uses that stray from its original theoretical underpinnings, potentially being exploited for political purposes. This work acts as a vector for norms that lead planners to oscillate between the logics of depoliticization and politicization. The bureaucratic handling of ecological issues, which is being newly established through the institutionalization of the term resilience, challenges existing political narratives. It also marks a gradual shift in planning work towards more norms and a pursuit of expertise and performance in public action. The article highlights that the adoption of the concept of resilience by public officials is not as dependent on current societal issues, such as climate change and the rise of social mobilization, as it is on a robust and burdensome context of environmental reform. Resilience is increasingly becoming the keyword of the neo-managerial wave and the bureaucratization of environmental issues, rather than a political social movement driven by civil society. This new model relies on both public and private, national and international expertise, clearly demonstrating the power of an administrative term and the narratives associated with it in transforming the work of planning.