ABSTRACT
This chapter describes concepts of resilience and adaptive capacity of individuals and populations within that built environment. It presents a case study of the failure of the Arizonan housing market in 2007–2010. The chapter introduces the second case study of the city of Dundee in Scotland and a consideration of the role that solar technologies might play in alleviating fuel poverty in that city. The solar potential of cities lies in not only reducing fossil fuel energy use in, and carbon emissions from, cities but also improving local businesses and the economy, and by doing so while improving the lot of the ordinary citizen. The chapter discusses the development of standardized metrics and indicators for describing the adaptive economic capacity of a population and testing the sensitivities of a group to a range of hazards that may threaten to cause the socioeconomic systems within which they operate to collapse.
