A Practical Approach to Building Resilience in America’s Communities

The Community and Regional Resilience Institute has conducted a number of projects and case studies examining the nature and characteristics of community resilience in order to identify processes, tools, and resources that could assist communities in strengthening their resilient capacities. This article begins by describing a theoretical framework for community resilience developed from literature review and community practice. The authors review the Community and Regional Resilience Institute's practical work to assist selected communities in understanding and improving their resilience through two rounds of case studies and provide summaries of community outcomes and implications of the community work. The article also briefly describes the collaborative development process used to build a web-enabled system of tools, resources, and resilience knowledge that can be used by all communities to build and strengthen resilience. Finally, the article presents key observations arising from the community and collaborative development work and discusses their implications for other communities desiring to improve their resilience.