Abstract

The resilience trap: exploring the practical utility of resilience for climate change adaptation in UK city-regions. Regional Studies. This paper examines how adaptation is interpreted across different UK city-regions by governance and policy actors, finding that the discourse of adaptation is giving way to resilience. This is explained by the value of resilience as a discursive construct in mobilizing and coordinating policy actions. Resilience has greater appeal as a framing device over adaptation to such actors given its potential to enable buy-in from a wider city-regional governance network. However, this paper also highlights the resilience trap: the dangers of adopting short-term strategies, re-badging existing strategies and widening governance networks that obfuscate sub-national mobilization around adaptation. It then reflects on how governance actors may act to avoid the resilience trap.