ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connection between the important sustainability-related concept of resilience, on the one hand, and neo-liberalism on the other, and analyses how urban planning comes into this relationship. It focuses on the resilience part of planning discourse on sustainability and analyses how planning is related to the mitigation of threats to urban populations, especially from the economic downturns that seem to be an integral part of capitalist long-term development. The chapter also gives an account of the interconnections between planning theory, neo-liberalism, sustainability and resilience. Neo-liberalism affects planning in many ways, but it concentrates on its emphasis on efficiency and its tendency to create deep slumps. Distributional questions, such as intergenerational fairness at the core of the sustainability concept of the Brundtland Commission, are not high on neo-liberal agenda. The concepts and policies of sustainability and resilience are intertwined in ways that make it inappropriate for planners to concentrate on one at the expense of the other.
