Community resilience through bottom-up participation: When civil society drives urban transformation processes

In the past few years, the Superblock concept has gained traction in numerous European cities and beyond. The urban planning concept aims to improve the habitability of public spaces and urban biodiversity, increase urban greenery, promote active and sustainable modes of mobility, as well as increase public participation in planning. In Berlin civil society adapted the concept to its local context and developed a procedure to file for “Kiezblock” petitions from their local governments. Within two years 65 initiatives were founded, 24 petitions with at least 1.000 valid signatures handed to local governments, and 21 of these were approved by February 2023. While local administrations are slowly taking up the concept, civil society initiatives were the main drivers for bringing the planning concept to the forefront. Their active involvement is understood as bottom-up participation in a claimed space. Since they were not invited to participate in a top-down participatory process but claimed the space to do so on their own account, they could determine the agenda and boundaries of the processes. This study seeks to figure out possible effects of these bottom-up participation processes on the citizens. While literature on social resilience sees participation as a factor contributing towards resilience, the resilience concept is largely neglected in the discourse around participation. However, looking at the possible effects of participation beyond policies is vital for understanding why and how these civil society groups persist in driving transformation processes in times of crises and when faced with backlash and criticism. Community resilience, understood as the capacity of a social group to thrive in times of change seems to be a core element enabling these collectives of initiatives. How is this resilience affected by their participation? In how far does it continue to enable participation? This empirical study based on surveys with members of the initiatives and interviews with local administrations tries to shed light on some of these issues by looking at the links between citizen participation and community resilience.