Social Innovation as a Factor of Community Resilience? The Case of Catalonia

This paper contributes to the debate on social innovation as a driver of community resilience on the basis of two observations stemming from the “Barris i Crisi” project –an ongoing research on the impacts of the crisis on the dynamics of urban segregation in Catalonia and the factors of community resilience in deprived urban areas. The first observation refers to the factors that encourage the emergence of solidarity practices within communities. The mapping of social innovation in Catalonia shows that areas concentrating more needs are not necessarily the ones hosting more collaborative practices. Moreover, starting from a cross-case comparison of 6 deprived districts we observe that current bottom-up initiatives are only one of the several factors explaining the unequal capacity of neighbourhoods to resist the crisis effects. Among others, we highlight the traditions of collaboration between governmental and non-governmental actors or the long-term coordination between top-down and bottom-up initiatives.