In the Face of Climate Change: Perceptions of Interconnections Between Community Resilience and Community Sustainability

Abstract

Community resilience and community sustainability have increasingly become popular topics of research separately and together. The aim of this article is to elucidate the perceived interconnections between community sustainability and community resilience using Dayton, OH, as a case study. This article largely examines the perceived interconnections between climate change mitigation and climate adaptation initiatives within sustainability and the three-class typology of resilience (basic, adaptive, and transformative). A two-pronged data collection effort designed using the Community Capitals Framework was carried out to recruit a broad group of participants. A multi-chain referral sampling process (and subsequent snowball sampling) was initiated subsequently. The data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 75 participants. The interviews were analyzed using a three-tiered deductive structural coding approach. The findings elucidate the multifaceted and multi-dynamic nature of interconnections between community sustainability and resilience. Compared to literature that contends one concept to be a sub-concept of the other (resilience as a sub-concept of sustainability and vice versa), the findings of this study demonstrate that the interconnections between community sustainability and resilience are layered and complex. Some level of resilience was perceived as necessary for community sustainability. The implications of the findings on creating integrated sustainability and resilience strategies are discussed.

1. Introduction

Many communities want to be sustainable and resilient [1,2]. In a changing climate, ensuring human welfare depends on a community’s ability to cope with, adapt to, and shape change without losing options for future adaptability [3]. Therefore, community resilience and sustainability in the face of climate change have become important research topics [4]. In addition to climate change, the current realities of environmental pollution, ecological degradation, and socio-economic conditions in many urban areas make the concepts of resilience and sustainability extremely relevant [5,6]. Within this context, urban planners, architects, resource managers, policy makers, and community leaders are frequently asked to craft policies integrating sustainability and resilience [2,7,8].

Addressing the challenges of climate change requires building the resilience of both human and natural systems in a forward-looking and adaptive way to promote a more sustainable future [3,9]. This is no easy task. Unfamiliarity about the similarities and differences between community sustainability and resilience can lead to several challenges [10]. First, policy makers might fail to capitalize on synergistic opportunities or fail to address contradictory challenges, leading to underperformance and even conflict [8]. Independently constructed goals and strategies may be in conflict and impede respective initiatives, as the conservation goals of sustainability could be in conflict with the adaptation goals of resilience [1]. Therefore, the literature clearly articulates the need for integrated sustainability and resilience strategies [8,11]. Second, mutually supportive sustainability policies and resilience policies could lead to better outcomes [2,8,10]. Synergies can lead to stronger strategies and plans, while understanding the differences between the two approaches could lead to complementary interventions and goals [8]. Third, because of the co-benefits, integrated sustainability and resilience strategies will be more amenable to and better supported by community members [9]. Policy makers can only develop integrated strategies if they have a thorough understanding of community sustainability, resilience, and the interactions between them [2,8]. Therefore, the aim of this article is to elucidate the perceived interconnections between community resilience and community sustainability.

While a large body of literature has examined the dynamics of community resilience and community sustainability, there are still significant gaps in knowledge and an imminent need for further research, especially qualitative research. Most studies explore one concept (community sustainability or community resilience) and/or explore the pertinence of the two concepts within a specific context, such as disaster recovery [6,11,12]. While a significant body of literature examines the interconnections between resilience and sustainability, most are theoretical in nature or focus on a review of the literature [3,13]. Some studies examine the interconnections between community resilience and sustainability within a specific context, such as in the built environment [8,10,14] or disaster events [12]. The literature has also explored interconnections between sustainability and resilience through a specific dimension, such as environmental [3] or social [15].

Several studies highlight the importance of engaging the stakeholders and integrating their views and concerns into resilience and sustainability planning and policies using stakeholder perceptions (such as [16,17]). Stakeholders perceived climate adaptation actions as important and closely associated with building community resilience, especially in relation to disaster events [16,17,18]. Concerns about climate-related threats and harms (from extreme weather events) were also perceived to be driving the need for climate adaptation actions [16]. Stakeholders also perceive that climate change adaptation yields immediate outcomes to advance community resilience, while climate change mitigation actions could be more expensive and take longer to yield results [19]. Adaptive resilience strategies combined with climate change mitigation efforts were perceived to yield better community resilience outcomes [20,21]. Becker et al. [17] argue that understanding and incorporating stakeholder perceptions and concerns is important to crafting effective community resilience-building strategies. These studies show that while some dynamics of interconnections between sustainability efforts and community resilience have been explored using stakeholder perceptions (such as perceived interconnections between climate change adaption and community resilience within the context of disaster events), the interconnections between community sustainability and community resilience remains an important topic to be explored, and the use of stakeholder perceptions to explore such interconnections could yield valuable insights.

The interconnections between sustainability and resilience also remain debated. Some of the literature argues that resilience is a key property of sustainability in that loss of resilience leads to reduced capacity to deal with change [3]. Some of the literature claims that sustainability and resilience are slightly nuanced perspectives on the same phenomenon, while other literature claims that there are distinct differences between them [1]. Therefore, exploring stakeholder perceptions to understand the perceived interconnections between sustainability and resilience could add several important contributions to the relevant body of knowledge. First, it could demonstrate where similarities in perceptions of the two concepts are, and such insights could inform planners and community leaders to craft synergistic policies. Second, differences in perceptions of the two concepts could point out the gaps that need to be addressed through creative interventions and new initiatives. Third, understanding the nuances of interconnections between community sustainability and resilience could help shape community communication and outreach efforts.

Sustainability and resilience are dynamic, broad, complex, and layered concepts. Therefore, this article largely focuses on the mitigation and adaptation dynamics of community sustainability within the context of climate change. Similarly, community resilience has been articulated in numerous ways [22]. This article follows the three-class typology of resilience: basic (bouncing back to a similar state), adaptive (adapting to new or dynamic conditions by changing fundamental characteristics of the system), and transformative (substantial and explicit changes to social–ecological systems) [23,24,25]. Compared to most of the pertinent literature (that focuses on disaster events), this article considers two types of interconnected disruptive events: acute shocks and chronic stressors. Acute shocks are unexpected events, such as natural disasters supercharged by climate change, disease outbreaks, mass shootings, terrorist attacks, etc. Chronic stressors are continuing community conditions that make a community or a neighborhood more vulnerable, such as poverty, racism, food insecurity, and high unemployment.

As noted above, sustainability and resilience are dynamic, broad, complex, and layered concepts. Therefore, all the interconnections between the two cannot be discussed within one article, and we do not claim to have done so. Our aim is to elucidate the perceived interconnections between community resilience and sustainability and outline synergistic opportunities that could be used to develop constructive and innovative policies in the face of climate change. Additional research is needed to further explore the interconnections between community resilience and sustainability. The next section reviews pertinent literature on community resilience and sustainability.

2. Review of the Literature

The body of literature on community resilience and community sustainability is broad and can be found in a wide variety of disciplines, from psychology to engineering and from behavioral sciences to environmental sciences [22]. This literature also examines a range of scales, from individuals to planetary systems (and systems in between, such as public infrastructure and regional economies) [22]. The literature synthesized below focuses on the conceptualization and operationalization of community sustainability and community resilience. The review abridges literature relating to community sustainability, disaster recovery, climate change mitigation/adaptation, and community resilience. For this purpose, a community is considered a collective dynamic entity of residents living within certain geographic boundaries (or space) and sharing common interests, with a shared fate [26,27,28,29].

2.1. What Is Community Sustainability?

While the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ appeared for the first time in the Oxford English Dictionary during the second half of the 20th century, equivalent terms in other languages and cultures could be traced back to ancient civilizations (such as Egyptian, Greek, and Chinese), where they were used to elucidate environmental problems such as deforestation and loss of soil fertility [30]. Sustainability and/or sustainable development have many different definitions grounded in several fields, such as environmental science, social science, and the humanities [31,32]. Although sustainability has been historically used to refer to environmental issues and/or challenges [1], the modern evolution of the concept has broadened to include other dimensions, such as social and economic (commonly referred to as the Triple Bottom Line), with the most recent literature suggesting the integration of even more dimensions, such as institutional and political [10,31]. There is no doubt that sustainability and its associated concepts remain important and relevant concepts in theory and practice [2,3,11].

The concept of sustainability is frequently used to elucidate the optimal relationship between humankind and nature, with a goal of enhancing human quality of life and well-being within the bounds of environmental capacity for the present and future generations [5,10]. One of the most widely used and adopted definitions of sustainable development from the Brundtland Commission states that “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” [33] (p. 37). Since this definition, sustainability has become a core conceptual framework for community development [1].

Sustainability highlights the need to integrate a set of normative, distributional, and intergenerational justice considerations that need to be included in the design of physical systems and community planning [34]. Berkowitz [35] outlines three key principles of community sustainability (and notes that there are many others): (1) effective harnessing of all the resources/capacities available to the community; (2) presence of strong social support networks; and (3) meeting the deeper needs of the community. Community resources include all natural, man-made, and human assets available in a community, and more recent literature refers to these assets as community capitals [36]. Strong social support networks help build a common sense of identity/community that manifests in citizen action. A community has to meet “bread and butter” needs, such as a viable economy, healthy citizens, and solid infrastructure, among others, to have some level of sustainability [35]. The deeper needs elucidate a community’s hope for the collective-actualizing of its spirit, rootedness, and pride [35]. Saunders and Becker [11] structure similar considerations along the Triple Bottom Line to argue that the reconciliation of economic (a healthy economy provides jobs, wealth, and happiness), environmental (a healthy, productive, and diverse environment facilitates life), and social well-being (key to an acceptable standard of living) is key to community sustainability.

Meadows, Meadows, and Randers [37] outline a set of characteristics that demonstrate community sustainability, such as an emphasis on adequacy, equity, quality of life, collective wisdom, compassion, overall community health, and citizen involvement. In more recent literature, Sharifi [38] notes that environmental aspects such as energy use, water use, land use, and urban design remain dominant themes in community sustainability, while major socio-economic issues, such as equity, justice, and public engagement, are not well represented. To this end, Gardoni [34] contends that a flourishing environment/natural ecosystem and social justice (distributional fairness in economic, political, and social domains) are foundational to community sustainability. It is important to note that more recent literature outlines sustainable communities as communities depicting certain characteristics, such as smart, efficient, green, diverse, inclusive, circular, eco-based, and socially just [37,38,39]. It could be argued that community sustainability needs to demonstrate at least some of these characteristics [39]. A synthesis of the above literature indicates that community sustainability could be perceived as trying to achieve a balance among different dynamics (such as economic, social, environmental, and institutional), indicated by the presence of desirable/preferable qualities or characteristics.

In a seminal piece, especially applicable within the context of climate change, Tobin [12] (p. 13) defined sustainable and resilient communities as “societies which are structurally organized to minimize the effects of disasters, and, at the same time, have the ability to recover quickly by restoring the socio-economic vitality of the community”. Tobin [12] presents three models if the ultimate goal is to achieve community sustainability and resilience in the face of hazards. The first is a risk management model to reduce the exposure and potential harm from hazards through building protective measures. Since it is not possible to eliminate exposure to all disasters, the second model involves ensuring that the factors and processes necessary for an effective recovery are in place. The third involves a structural–cognitive model where the community collectively addresses any psychological, attitudinal, physical, social, cultural, and economic factors (among others) that may constrain positive action. The risk management model suggests that the adaptation of community systems to climate change is necessary to build resilience against extreme weather events and other hazards, especially in the short term.

A synthesis of the above literature highlights that community sustainability is a multidimensional concept depicted by the presence of certain preferable characteristics (within each dimension) demonstrating a state of harmonious human–human and human–nature relationships. Within the context of climate change, this might translate to certain climate mitigation efforts necessary to address the causes of climate change while at the same time taking adaptive measures to deal with climate change effects already being experienced. These adaptive efforts might require modifications to or the transformation of community systems critical for meeting needs (or sustaining certain preferable community characteristics) by utilizing the resources and assets available and through the deployment of strong social networks. In the long term, transformative change might be the only realistic option for some communities to survive and thrive in the face of climate change. Within this context, it would be critical for a community to build synergies between community sustainability and resilience initiatives.

2.2. What Is Community Resilience?

Resilience, grounded in ecological studies in the 1980s, only emerged in the mid-2000s as a way to understand and approach community development, especially within the context of responding and adapting to climate change [1]. Holling [40] (p. 14) was one of the first researchers to coin resilience as the “measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variables”. The ability of a system would include dynamics such as the ability to absorb, resist, or deflect the impacts of a shock [10,22]. Folke [41] contends that “Resilience is about cultivating the capacity to sustain development in the face of expected and surprising change and diverse pathways of development and potential thresholds between them”. Vulnerability, considered susceptibility to harm, might be described as inversely related to resilience: the more resilient, the less vulnerable, and vice versa [23]. Community resilience could also be described as the ability of human communities to withstand external shocks to their infrastructure, such as environmental quality or social, economic, and political system change [3,15].

While no broadly accepted single definition of community resilience exists [42], the varied definitions commonly focus on a community’s ability to plan/prepare for (and identify vulnerabilities), withstand, absorb, and rapidly recover from disasters, as well as successful long-term adaptation towards changing social–economic–environmental conditions, as central to resilience [10,26,29,43,44]. Asprone and Manfredi [5] describe resilience as a multidimensional system property consisting of three components related to the environment (the resilience of the physical/environmental system, consisting of the natural environment and the built infrastructure), society (the resilience of the social system, consisting of communities and their relationships), and economics (the resilience of the economic system, consisting of the community’s economic resources) [5]. This is parallel to the Triple Bottom Line concept of sustainability and portrays resilience as a system property necessary for sustainability.

Compared to definitions that focus on specific aspects, such as disaster preparedness or recovery, Wilbanks [45] (p. 10) defines community resilience as “one that anticipates problems, opportunities, and potentials for surprises; reduces vulnerabilities related to development paths, socioeconomic conditions, and sensitivities to possible threats; responds effectively, fairly, and legitimately in the event of an emergency; and recovers rapidly, better, safer, and fairer”. This broad encompassing definition highlights how resilience could be viewed as an umbrella concept consisting of different precautionary, reactive, and recovery initiatives to be undertaken in the event of a disturbance event or to changing conditions. In an attempt to better structure these different dynamics of resilience, some of the literature adopts a three-class typology of resilience: basic (bouncing back to a similar state), adaptive (adapt to new or dynamic conditions by changing fundamental characteristics of the system), or transformative (substantial and explicit changes to social–ecological systems) [23,24,25,46].

2.2.1. Basic Resilience

Basic resilience refers to returning back to or reestablishing a state similar to what existed before the disturbance event. In a disaster recovery context, pertinent literature identifies resilience as the qualities (or characteristics or the ability) of a specific entity (such as a community and its constituents or an individual) that empower it to recover from a shock [29,47,48]. To that end, the IPCC [49] (p. 37) defined resilience as “the ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity for self-organization, and the capacity to adapt naturally to stress and change”. As evidenced by the literature, maintaining functions, relationships between actors, and capacity for recovery following a shock is critical for basic resilience. Similarly, Kirmayer et al. [28] (p. 72) define community resilience as the “ability or the capacity of a community to withstand, recover from, and respond positively to a collective crisis or adversity”. Resilience of essential community infrastructure systems (such as transportation, water, energy, sewer, and natural gas systems) is largely focused on minimizing the magnitude of impacts and restoration/recovery to pre-existing fully functioning conditions [22,26].

The idea of “bouncing back” to the pre-status quo of broader complex systems (such as a community) has been criticized as being too narrow and recreating the original vulnerabilities, especially in the face of climate change [22]. Comparatively, learning, re-organizing, adjusting to change to minimize the effects, and coping are considered critical components of proactive or forward-looking resilience [22,26].

2.2.2. Adaptive Resilience

Folke et al. [24] (p. 1) describe resilience as “the capacity of a social-ecological system to continually change and adapt yet remain within critical thresholds”. Sometimes referred to as “change at the margins” or “incremental reform”, this approach entails acknowledgment of risk and adaptation undertaken but is limited to those that do not threaten core attributes of the system [50]. Adaptive resilience focuses on learning processes and medium-term/moderate incremental adjustments to pertinent systems in response to drivers of change, such as extreme weather events or sea level rise through policy changes [51]. According to Folke et al. [24] (p. 7), “while adaptability is part of resilience, it represents the capacity to adjust responses to changing external drivers and internal processes and thereby allow for development along the current trajectory”. Fazey et al. [52] note that adaptability and flexibility, such as having a range of alternative response options to choose from, are going to be crucial in such a situation. Preference for near-term stability and the ability to build stakeholder buy-in provides a strong incentive for adaptive resilience compared to the process of making sweeping changes [50]. However, trying to incrementally adapt a community and its systems in a fast-changing complex environment could be challenging, as the critical thresholds of the existing systems might not be able to withstand the pressures of new conditions such as unusual weather events. In addition, incremental adaptations might not be adequate in some communities if vulnerabilities and risks are significant, which may require transformational changes [53].

2.2.3. Transformative Resilience

As described by Folke et al. [24] (p. 7), “transformability is the capacity to cross thresholds into new development trajectories”. Transformative resilience represents the ability of communities to change and/or reconfigure their systems, forms, functions, processes, and structures in a deliberate and conscious way [51,54]. Transformative resilience involves the development of a new status in which the structures, institutions, processes, and identity of a community evolve into a comparatively desired configuration that has a greater capacity to carry the community’s values and functioning forward within changing conditions [28,55,56]. Transformative resilience requires a community to intentionally alter social–ecological systems and material resources, which could be desirable when it is congenial with societal goals but requires tremendous social agreement and political will [50].

A transformative resilience process is representative of a community bouncing forward in rapidly changing conditions, such as due to climate change [25]. As climate disasters become more frequent and damaging, with devastating effects on communities, built infrastructure, and natural environments, communities would need to increasingly focus on transformative changes to build resilience [52]. Transformative resilience as a response to climate change is at the forefront of many policy initiatives on climate adaptation and disaster risk mitigation and opens a range of novel policy options that require further research attention [51,57]. Meeting the challenges of climate change in some communities will require unprecedented transformative solutions with careful consideration for implementation [58]. Catastrophic events could act as catalysts for community transformation or the formation of novel communities, especially in high-vulnerability contexts (such as repeated storms or repeated wildfires) where collective action spurs the reconstruction process [29]. However, public officials and the political leadership have to at least play a guiding and influencing role in the transition processes rather than leaving community-level stakeholders to pursue their own resilience pathways [4].

2.3. Interconnections Between Community Sustainability and Community Resilience

Several global frameworks and definitions link sustainability and resilience. Sustainable development goal 11 is “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” [59] (p. 1). The Hyogo Framework, adopted in 2005 by United Nations member countries, describes that for development to be sustainable, meaningful actions are needed to prevent new risk creation and the reduction of existing risk [11]. Sustainable development might not be realized without building resilience to natural hazards [11].

Interconnections between community sustainability and resilience in the literature vary widely; some of the literature contends that they are similar or closely parallel concepts, while other literature claims that they are not one and the same—rather, they are interdependently linked [6,10,11,12]. The difficulty of constructing a specific relationship between community sustainability and community resilience arises from the multidisciplinary, multi-dynamic, and layered nature of the two concepts [5,12]. Marchese et al. [10] argue that three generalized approaches for organizing sustainability and resilience seem to dominate the literature: (1) resilience as a component of sustainability, (2) sustainability as a component of resilience, and (3) resilience and sustainability as separate objectives. However, it is important to recognize the context and scale when discussing the interconnections between sustainability and resilience. For example, Asprone and Manfredi [5] (p. S105) characterize the link between resilience and sustainability as “a structure or an infrastructure will be sustainable if…it is able to minimize the negative impacts of potential disasters…in other words, it will be sustainable if it is resilient”. To this end, sustainability could be viewed as a moving end goal and resilience as a characteristic necessary to realize that end goal [3]. Somewhat similarly, Rogov and Rozenblat [60] note that resilience focuses on processes, while sustainability addresses outcomes.

Numerous literature studies outline the similarities between community sustainability and community resilience. Both concepts exemplify fragile relationships and the behavior of system components, such as between the built, the natural, the economic, and the social environments [8,10]. Both concepts adopt a dynamic systems approach to understanding and dealing with complexity [8,61,62]. Both concepts describe a state of a system’s complexity and the need to adopt a holistic view of interconnected natural and human variables under normal operating conditions and in response to disturbances [8,10,63]. Both concepts share some common emphases, such as a focus on climate change and seeking a balance between humans and nature, while striving to develop thriving social, environmental, and economic conditions that allow the community to assimilate to changing conditions [1,2].

Despite the similarities, sustainability and resilience are different concepts that are often used without clear distinction in meaning and purpose and could even contradict each other [8,10,64]. While sustainability aims to minimize social, environmental, and economic impacts, resilience aims to minimize the disruption and quick recovery of community functions when shocks or stressors occur [2,8]. Sustainability and resilience agendas sometimes reveal different priorities, leading to complexities and sometimes conflicts in decision making [8]. Resilience and sustainability goals could even be in conflict [2,8]. For example, the construction of a levee to protect a community from flooding could disconnect riverine habitats and undermine ecological systems [2]. When a community might add spare capacity, reserve resource stocks, and redundancy (especially based on fossil fuels) to enhance resilience, such actions might be in conflict with sustainability [8]. Saunders and Becker [11] argue that a community can only be sustainable if it holds some degree of resilience. This would imply that a community could be somewhat resilient while not being sustainable, at least in the short term [11]. The findings of Saunders and Becker [11] suggest that a resilient community should also be a sustainable community to ensure the needs of current and future generations are met—economically, socially, culturally, and environmentally.

Sustainability efforts are often focused on larger spatial and longer temporal scales [10]. Resilience, on the other hand, is frequently applied to shorter temporal scales [1,10]. Resilience is frequently applied in a narrower context to address certain features of a specific system, such as an energy system or flood prevention system, and prioritize the functioning of that system, whereas sustainability prioritizes the outcomes of that system [10,65]. Resilience is increasingly implemented as proactive preparedness or as a response to interruptions or disturbances [10,66].

Interconnections between sustainability and resilience could also be examined through climate mitigation and adaptation strategies [9]. Mitigation efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases would avoid further reliance on carbon-intensive infrastructure and reduce the progression of climate change [9]. IPCC [49] describes mitigation (of climate change) as human actions to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases and adaptation to climate change as making adjustments to natural and/or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic effects that reduce harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. Three types of adaptations could be outlined: anticipatory (proactive action before climate impacts are observed), autonomous (spontaneous, reactive action rather than a conscious response to climate effects), and planned (deliberate conscious actions in response to changed or changing conditions) [49].

IPCC [49] also describes adaptive capacity as the ability of human and/or natural systems to adjust to potential damage. Abeling et al. [67] argue that adaptive capacity and resilience are very similar concepts, as both aim to enable a system to maintain key functions (or operability) up to a certain limit of stress and/or transform itself in the face of a stronger stress. Saavedra and Budd [9] also argue that communities need to adapt to change, and resilience is key to successful adaptation. Such literature reveals that there is some confusion about the interconnections between climate change adaptation, adaptive capacity, and resilience. Adaptation is clearly necessary in the short and longer term to withstand the impacts of climate change [9].

Hazard- and disaster-related literature frequently refers to sustainability and resilience as the guiding principles behind effective planning and readiness [5]. While it might be theoretically easy to anticipate the effects of disasters and establish systems to recover quickly, the practical implementation of comprehensive and integrated plans might be more elusive and complicated [5]. Sustainable recovery from a natural hazard should minimize existing risks and manage any new risks [11]. However, the relationship between community sustainability and disaster recovery is multi-dynamic and cannot be discussed without considering social, economic, and political factors [12]. After a disaster event, communities become more aware of the risks from hazards, and community leaders might have more political leverage to incorporate sustainability principles into redevelopment [68]. Tobin [12] argues that sustainable and resilient communities must include characteristics such as a less hazard-prone community with lowered risk to all members of the community; reduced levels of vulnerability, especially for politically and economically marginalized community members; continuous planning for sustainability and resilience; high level of political support and community buy-in; network of partnerships and collaborations between pertinent community stakeholders/government agencies; and strong social networks within the community and supporting initiatives. Since certain marginalized or economically disadvantaged community members might be more impacted by or vulnerable to a hazard than others, the concept of distributional justice that is central to sustainability becomes critical for disaster recovery resilience as well [34].

Synthesizing the above literature, several points can be highlighted that are pertinent and important within the context of this research study. First, both concepts represent broad, complex, and significant systemic issues, and further elucidation of the two concepts is needed to prevent underperformance risks stemming from an incomplete understanding of their interconnections, similarities, and differences [10]. Second, while there are several similarities between the two concepts, the differences require consideration of community resilience and community sustainability as interrelated and interdependent concepts. Third, some degree of resilience might be needed for a community to be sustainable. Fourth, the exact nature or dynamics of interactions between community resilience and sustainability remains a debated topic requiring further exploration. Within this context, the main aim of this article is to elucidate the interconnections and interlinkages between community sustainability and community resilience. The next section outlines the methods adopted and describes the research site.

3. Methods

The findings reported in this article are part of a bigger project exploring community resilience and community sustainability dynamics using Dayton, OH, as a case study. Findings related to this project are published in other work [69]. The aim of this manuscript is to explore the perceived interactions between community resilience and community sustainability.

The data were gathered through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 75 participants from Dayton, OH. Similar studies (such as [70,71]) adopted a similar data collection approach. A review of pertinent research was conducted to understand the dynamics that needed to be explored and to frame the interview guide for the semi-structured interviews. Stakeholder engagement guides and climate change-related issue guides from the 100 Resilient Cities network and the climate resilience planning process resources of Second Nature were used to design the interview guides, the questions to be explored, and the participant recruitment process. Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval governing human subjects research was obtained concurrently.

The interview guide for the project was made up of eight open-ended questions that were presented to all participants and specific open-ended questions presented to certain stakeholder groups based on their roles and responsibilities. Sovacool [18] examined the perceptions of climate change risks and resilience using a similar approach to their interview guide. The eight open-ended questions included questions such as the following: “What does resilience/sustainability mean to you (work/community)? How would you define/describe them? How do you see the two terms connected (or not)? What are some strengths and assets of the community? What are challenges/vulnerabilities facing the community? What actions and best practices for advancing sustainability/resilience are undertaken by the community?”, etc. Probes were used for deeper reflections into basic, adaptive, and transformative resilience, as well as for mitigation and adaptation areas for clarifications and elaborations as needed. Further questions were presented to specific participant groups, such as questions about infrastructure to public officials and questions about disaster recovery to resident groups. When needed to ensure adequate information gathering, the original questionnaire was adjusted and fine-tuned as the interviews progressed. The interviews were conducted between April and August 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic under unprecedented circumstances.

A two-pronged approach was adopted for sampling and participant recruitment. Lizarralde et al. [8] examined the perceptions and representations of resilience and also adopted a similar two-phased data collection approach. First, the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) was used to structure participant recruitment and initial purposive sampling process. This approach has previously been successfully employed in the literature [72]. Flora and Flora [36] present the CCF as a systems approach to examining and understanding community dynamics. The CCF analyzes 7 capitals (natural, financial, political, social, human, cultural, and built) to understand the strengths and weaknesses within each community and how the capitals could be leveraged to recover from a disaster or negativity [36]. The CCF has been used to study community recovery after a tornado [73] and wildfires [74]. The descriptions of different types of capitals outlined by Flora and Flora [36] and an asset mapping effort were undertaken to identify the key community stakeholders that would fall into the 7 types of capitals of the CCF. Biernacki and Waldorf [75] note that initiating multiple referral or sampling chains represents greater sensitivity and attentiveness to information, where the sample initiation and progress are deliberately developed and controlled.

A referral sampling chain was initiated for each of the seven capitals. Once the initial participants who aligned with the 7 capitals were identified, snowball sampling was used to identify additional participants within each capital until data saturation. A total of 42 key stakeholders were interviewed under this effort. This effort yielded participants who were largely public officials or key community stakeholders representing different organizations. Public officials were asked to respond to the questions in their official capacity. If the participants represented a community organization (such as within social or cultural capital), they were asked to respond to the questions within their organizational context.

A second effort was undertaken to reach the residents through neighborhood associations. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several neighborhoods did not have monthly meetings. Therefore, it must be noted that the voices of some neighborhoods (especially vulnerable) that did not have access to pertinent technology are not represented in the findings. Eighty percent of the active neighborhood associations were reached for participation. A total of 33 residents representing 18 different neighborhoods were interviewed. Snowball sampling was used after the initial set of interviews to identify additional participants, and the interviews continued until data saturation. Resident participants were requested to answer the questions within the context of the neighborhoods they lived in.

Considering the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, all semi-structured interviews were conducted and recorded using Zoom. Each interview lasted around 45–60 min. Verbal informed consent was obtained from the participants at the beginning of each interview. Participants were encouraged to express their ideas and thoughts freely with guaranteed anonymity. Extensive notes were taken during the interviews for context and additional data. Both sampling processes (key stakeholders and residents) ended at the point of data saturation, at which point no new insights from the data emerged from additional interviews.

The interviews were then transcribed verbatim and analyzed using deductive structural coding and analysis methodologies. A three-tiered coding approach was adopted. A codebook consisting of an initial set of descriptive codes was developed using pertinent research on community sustainability, community resilience, and the interview questions. Answers to questions such as “what does the word resilience/sustainability mean for your work/community?” were coded using structural coding. New descriptive codes were recognized, and the codebook was updated as the coding progressed. The codes were then organized into groups under a pattern coding effort using the three-class typology of resilience: basic, adaptive, and transformative, as well as climate change mitigation/adaptation. Thirdly, a comparative analysis was undertaken between the pattern-coded data groups to identify perceived similarities, differences, and major themes between community sustainability and community resilience. No causality was implied in the comparative analysis. Findings were shared, presented to, and discussed with participants to obtain feedback and ensure accuracy and validity.

Description of the Research Site

Dayton, Ohio, has a rich historical legacy filled with innovative entrepreneurial spirit [76,77]. The city is known as the birthplace of aviation [76]. Dayton claimed more patents per capita than any other U.S. city in 1900 [76]. As depicted in Figure 1, Dayton is located at the intersection of highways I-70 and I-75, making it an ideal location for the manufacturing industry. Its entrepreneurial climate nurtured innovators such as Charles Kettering, inventor of the automobile self-starter, and air travel pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright [76]. The city also nurtured companies that would become stalwarts on the Fortune 500 list, including National Cash Register (NCR), Mead Paper Company, Standard Register, Reynolds and Reynolds, and Dayco and Phillips Industries [76]. However, with globalization and automation, the city lost many of its renowned manufacturing giants [69,77].

The city and its residents have struggled to overcome adversities following the loss of NCR, General Motors, and, consequently, thousands of manufacturing jobs [77]. The effects of industrial and manufacturing decline are still visible in some neighborhoods with abandoned industrial buildings [69]. Many neighborhoods in Dayton are identified as food deserts (areas that lack availability and access to fresh and nutritious food), as depicted in Figure 2 (neighborhoods colored in orange), and Dayton has one of the highest poverty rates in the United States of America among mid- to large-sized urban areas [78].

Addressing the challenges presented and adapting to climate change requires creative and innovative solutions [69]. The rich historical legacy of the City of Dayton as an industrial pioneer has led to a culture of creativity and a sense of innovation [77] that could help the city craft constructive solutions in the face of climate change. Dayton has pride, grit, and a knack for problem-solving [77]. Daytonians also value art [69]. According to the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, Dayton is one of the smallest cities in the country to have an orchestra, ballet company, dance company, and opera company. The historical legacy and these community attributes could be assets for a more sustainable and resilient Dayton. The historical legacy also helps with understanding some of the creative strategies and initiatives that are happening in Dayton to advance sustainability and resilience.

Recently, Dayton has experienced a resurgence [77]. In the last decade, the city has seen a significant shift in the economic growth of the downtown area with new apartments; an increase in local restaurants and bars; and an increase in other small businesses that keep money in the community [77]. One of the most notable ventures is the development of the Gem City Market. The Gem City Market is a community-owned local grocery store developed and led by residents and located in a food desert [69].

According to the National Weather Service, on Memorial Day in 2019, the Dayton area was struck by 19 tornadoes, and 15 of those happened within Montgomery County, where Dayton is located. Many properties and neighborhoods suffered damage as a result [69]. There was a mass shooting in 2019 in one of the historical restaurant districts of the downtown. There was also a white supremacist rally in downtown Dayton in 2019. The city also experienced a significant water main break in 2019. It is not an overestimation to state that Daytonians have experienced several disturbance events recently.

Dayton’s climate is also changing [79]. The city has experienced an overall increase in temperature, warmer winters, record-breaking heat in the summer, and periods of flooding followed by seasonal droughts [79]. The change in weather within the region has led to crop damage for farmers, increased energy demand in the summer, and failures in infrastructure [69,80]. According to the Great Lakes Adaptation Assessment [79], the average temperature in Dayton is expected to increase by about 3–4 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-century. Based on climate models, precipitation will continue to increase in Dayton with wetter winters, springs, and falls, but there will be drier summers, when agricultural crops are growing in the region [79]. These weather conditions might yield more hot days, frequently occurring heat waves, flooding during spring and fall, more single heavy rainfall events, and delayed spring planting [79]. However, a warmer winter might also mean a longer growing season. With these expected conditions, it is clear that the city, its infrastructure, its systems, and Daytonians can expect to experience changing future climate conditions. In the face of these changes, the City of Dayton’s Office of Sustainability developed a comprehensive sustainability strategy in 2020 [80], focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, advancing equity, and resilience in the city.

Given the above background and community context, Dayton is a fitting place to explore community sustainability and community resilience perceptions. The city grapples with many economic hardships experienced by other Rust Belt cities. But it also has success stories to share. Dayton is already impacted by climate change, with projected changes to come. But Dayton and its residents take pride in their innovative and problem-solving mindset and in the art that brings them together.

4. Findings

The findings presented in this section describe the major themes that were frequently and consistently mentioned by the participants, which is the standard for qualitative research. Selected participant quotes are provided to support the findings, and these quotes are representative of the ideas that were frequently mentioned by the participants and exemplify the findings. The findings exemplify the multifaceted and multi-dynamic nature of interconnections between community sustainability and resilience. The findings are organized into four sections. The first section elucidates the perceived overall interconnections between community resilience and community sustainability. The next three sections describe the perceived specific interconnections between the three-class typology of resilience (basic, adaptive, and transformative) and climate mitigation/adaptation.

4.1. Perceived Overall Interconnections Between Community Sustainability and Community Resilience

Most participants described community resilience as largely the ability to withstand disasters or recover from disturbances. For example, one participant noted that “I would say it’s the ability of a community to bounce back from stresses, generally. But I would also say it goes deeper than that, I think it’s also tied into sustainability in a way. In my mind, you can’t talk about one without the other”. As this comment indicates, many participants clearly perceived community sustainability and resilience as interlinked concepts. The perceived interconnection was through certain essential community infrastructure and systems. One participant described the interconnection as “We are way behind in investing in maintenance and upkeep of water infrastructure. There was one breakage that was caused by the storm and there was one that was caused by we don’t know what…But our water infrastructure is critical to the resilience and sustainability of this community”. Such essential community infrastructure includes systems such as water, energy, roads, food system, bridges (and similar infrastructure), and strong social networks.

Several participants expressed sentiments such as “You cannot be sustainable if you are not resilient” or “I think of resilience as a path to sustainability”, which clearly indicates the perceived interconnections between community resilience and sustainability. These comments also suggest that participants perceived some degree of resilience as a necessary condition for sustainability.

Some participant perceptions revealed certain confusion about what sustainability and/or resilience meant or the difference between the two concepts. For example, a participant noted that “I think the definition of sustainability is to keep going at a certain rate without having to really change”. However, that describes community sustainability as maintaining a steady state, ignoring the climate adaptation dynamics of sustainability. Change is an inherent characteristic of social–ecological systems. Another participant mused, “Okay, so what I have coined, my definition of resilience is having the mental, emotional, social, spiritual and financial resources to overcome obstacles. To me, that’s sustainability”. These comments indicate that some participants found it challenging to exemplify the differences between the two concepts or what each concept meant.

When describing resilience, several participants started by describing resilience as a concept applicable at the individual scale and then attributing similar dynamics to describe community resilience. For example, one participant stated, “For me, as a person, I see resiliency as the capacity to provide your needs with what your environment provides to you”. As described above, this comment also reveals some confusion about what resilience is or its close perceived connection to sustainability. Another participant noted the following:

“When we had the water outages…It’s changed the way I’ve planned out my future developments for at my own home, when I do re-modelling at my house, it’s actually taking into consideration the lack of reliability of it, of the infrastructure that it’s connected to…if I need to, I can literally catch water off of my metal roof”.

Comparatively, sustainability was largely described as an institutional (top-down) concept while taking into consideration a resident’s preferences and behaviors. For example, one participant described it as follows:

“How can we really reshape people’s mindset and behavior for them to go to the sustainable goal? And because the reason I do that instead of from a bottom-up approach to set up a policy is that if we don’t understand people’s mindset and behavior, and we just set up a policy that we think is good, that is not resilient at all and it cannot be sustainable…So to me, if we wanna be resilient, we need to be bottom-up. Eventually, you set up a formal rule that is compatible with the individual’s self-interest, right?”

Many participants noted how chronic stressors such as poverty, hunger, lack of affordable housing, food insecurity, high unemployment, etc., weaken the resilience of a community and also make sustainability a challenge. Chronic stressors were perceived to make some community members more vulnerable to acute shocks, as one participant described: “I think the parts of the city that have low-income families and residents, and may not have the resources available to them to respond to impacts are particularly vulnerable. And not just to climate change, I think they’re vulnerable to a lot of other issues”.

Another participant noted how high levels of chronic stressors negatively impact the community: “I would say another stressor for our community is the under-utilization of a large part of our community. We have a 39% poverty rate, that is, in my opinion, a stress that is not sustainable”. Participants pointed out how chronic stressors also inhibit sustainability initiatives. For example, one participant stated the following:

“An inequitable community is probably not sustainable long-term. And I suspect that a comprehensive review of our sustainability, our sustainable efforts and our resilience have to include how forthrightly is the community acknowledging and then dealing with issues of inequity. Bike and walking infrastructure is just less available on the west side of Dayton than it is on the east side, and that’s because of a variety of factors, but one has to accept the fact that race may be part of that”.

Access to green spaces, tree-canopy cover, walking/biking infrastructure, and renewable energy infrastructure were identified as representing unequal access/availability of sustainability-focused initiatives in some neighborhoods experiencing high levels of chronic stressors. Participants attributed these inequities to historical racial segregation and legacy issues, as one participant claimed:

“There’s such a close correlation between redlining maps from the 1930s, the opportunity maps where there’s low opportunity, to the racial segregation patterns in the City of Dayton. And it’s like, they’re so interlinked…So in my mind, resiliency in my mind is thinking about…Has to include this equity piece, because if you’re not thinking about it through an equity lens, then you’re gonna miss out and you’re just gonna continue to perpetuate the injustices and the inequity that’s been going on for a century. Yeah, so resilience is beyond sustainability in my mind, it really is this justice work, this race-equity work”.

Many participants discussed addressing chronic stressors within the context of social justice/equity initiatives rather than climate change-focused sustainability initiatives (such as renewable energy or mitigation efforts). Therefore, participants perceived social justice/equity initiatives focused on addressing chronic stressors (such as poverty and hunger) as important to advancing both community sustainability and resilience. It must be noted that social sustainability encompasses focuses such as social justice and inequality initiatives, and SDGs target several chronic stressors.

4.2. Perceived Interconnections Between Basic Resilience and Community Sustainability

Many participants attributed basic resilience to disaster recovery and, in general, to the ability of a community to recover from acute shocks, including extreme weather events. For example, one participant described that “resiliency is very much related to those things like natural disasters where if the region or the community experiences a problem or a natural disaster, how quickly can we return the grid back to its state?” Disaster preparedness, planning, and recovery were perceived as a part of basic resilience efforts. Several participants described how extreme weather events and disaster events are expected to become more frequent and more severe with the further progression of climate change. One participant described this as follows:

“When you think about resilience and sustainability, like a climate lens, in my opinion, you’re never gonna be resilient enough. So sustainability efforts to help mitigate…, efforts to mitigate the carbon emissions that are driving climate change have to be part of your resilience plan. You’ll never be able to harden enough and prepare enough. If we’re gonna expect tornadoes like we had a year ago more frequently than we’ve been having them, we’re never gonna catch up”.

As the above quote indicates, participants perceived sustainability-related climate mitigation efforts to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (and stop the further progression of climate change) as having a positive impact on disaster preparedness/recovery efforts and as a part of community resilience efforts. The potential lessening of the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events (or acute shocks) could enable communities to cope better. Therefore, climate mitigation actions and basic resilience were perceived as interconnected. Another participant highlighted the importance of climate mitigation to basic resilience while describing the individual dynamics of resilience:

“I’m talking to you, my internet’s great, I got clean water in my glass right here. That could change in minutes, and then we would be in trouble. So this has taught me a lot personally about how to make my household resilient and how to make me think in a preparedness kind of way. But I also feel that the environmental side of it is kind of a really big thing that’s churning in the background in my mind often, because these natural disasters are all related to climate change or climate disruption. And if we don’t try to amend that problem, then then we’re always gonna be digging our way out of a hole”.

However, as several participants noted, while climate mitigation and basic resilience were perceived as interconnected, several challenges must be addressed to manifest any synergies. For example, one participant stated the following:

“It’s a really different story when you talk to the political leadership, for them to adopt resiliency plans or for them to adopt climate declarations…and not only here, it’s all over…And that makes sense that our political leaders are having more difficulty making these types of commitments or declarations because for whatever the reasoning is in our political climate today making these declarations to protect our environment or to reduce carbon emissions is a radical thing to do. So it’s all like emergency planning, that’s what we have”.

Participants also highlighted challenges with monetary resources:

“So I think that the city is doing as much as it can. It’s looking for ways to reduce its expenditures because it’s having these new, a lot of them unanticipated, expenditures coming at them, and they’ve gotta meet those because they can’t just run deficits…That said, they’re gonna have to start budgeting, essentially, contingency plans and funding for unnamed storms that they know will happen. And if they don’t spend that money, that’s fine. But nobody has money like that. The problem is when you do that, what are you taking that money away from?”

4.3. Perceived Interconnections Between Adaptive Resilience and Community Sustainability

Three major themes emerged that elucidate interconnections between sustainability and adaptive resilience. First, many participants described sustainability as the ability to meet the needs now and into the future, and certain essential community infrastructure and systems were perceived as important for meeting community needs, as one participant described:

“So we’re in a very select group in the country, we have over 120 miles of electric infrastructure, and we made a commitment many years ago to stay with the electric when everybody else shifted to more diesel-powered operations. So sustainability for us is how can we leverage the assets we own already into the future to provide service that not only meets community’s needs, but also sustains both the environment in our community”.

This quote also highlights how participants perceived the positive impact of proactive/out-of-the-box solutions.

Adaptive resilience was perceived as a characteristic/property of the systems necessary to meet community needs through change, as indicated by this participant quote: “I would say resilience is our ability to maintain the services we provide to the community…For the community to be sustainable, these services need to be provided well into the future and have the flexibility to expand to meet community needs”. The characteristic/property that most participants attributed to the adaptive resilience of certain essential community infrastructure and systems (food, energy, water procurement systems, transportation, and infrastructure) was the ability of these systems to continue to provide services (or function) to meet community needs through disturbances and change, including climate change.

Second, while most of the literature views resilience through a short-term lens, participants recognized the long-term and forward-looking dynamics of resilience, especially of adaptive resilience. Within this context, adaptive resilience and climate change adaptation were perceived as closely connected. As one participant described, “And so I think in terms of resilience, it is making sure that our long-term plans are taking into consideration our changing environment and the changing needs of our communities, but then also making sure that our short-term decisions were able to respond quickly to change”. Several participants used the term “capacity” to describe resilience. For example, one participant noted that “another word I would use with resilience is not just the capacity to respond to consequences or to recover from difficulties, but also the vision to anticipate that such will happen…So how do I prepare for that? What contingencies do I put in place?” These quotes indicate that adaptive resilience is perceived to be closely interrelated to climate change adaptation and/or adaptive capacity to climate change.

Third, since adaptive resilience entails making incremental changes to systems without changing the system itself, certain adaptive resilience actions were perceived as having a positive impact on sustainability, while other adaptive resilience actions might have a negative impact on sustainability. As the below quote describes, the use of smart meters and smart switches could provide information to improve energy use and efficiency and at the same time enhance resilience:

“So meters that can tell us almost real time how much electricity we’re using and what things in our home or business are using that electricity, putting what we call smart switches out on the grid that are able to help us add another layer of resiliency in terms of when an event happens, whether it be weather, an automobile accident, an animal gets into our equipment and causes a problem, we’re able to isolate the problem and turn back on a greater number of customers than maybe we would have before”.

However, certain adaptive resilience actions that are especially based on fossil fuels, such as adding backup generators, adding more concrete poles (carbon footprint of concrete), and creating redundant capacity, might have a negative impact on sustainability, as follows:

“And so they seem like the weather events are getting more intense, more destructive, and so we have to really look at how we’re putting our system back together…And what I mean by that is when a weather event causes the destruction of say 10 large, big wood poles that hold our transmission lines, we look at that and say, how can we prevent that to the best of our ability in the future outside of putting everything underground, which would be so astronomically expensive, the rate payers wouldn’t be able to pay for it. So we look at how we are going to design, whether we’re going to build a new section of the grid or we’re just going to rebuild an existing section of the grid, what design changes are we going to make so that it is more resilient and sustainable for the future”.

The above two quotes exemplify that in order for adaptive resilience to have a positive impact on sustainability, it needs to be a conscious effort. The use of renewable energy to create backup capacity, such as mobile solar panels that could be moved to communities in need after a disaster, was outlined as an example of such conscious actions.

4.4. Perceived Interconnections Between Transformative Resilience and Community Sustainability

One major theme emerged that elucidates the interconnections between transformative resilience and sustainability. Certain transformative initiatives (that create new systems or infrastructure compared to existing ones) were perceived as advancing resilience and sustainability (climate change mitigation and/or adaptation) at the same time. Participants recognized local food system initiatives (produce more food locally), green infrastructure, distributed renewable energy efforts (roof-top solar and microgrids), more tree canopy (to sequester carbon and also help deal with heat waves), and rainwater harvesting as efforts that could concomitantly advance transformative resilience and sustainability. For example, one participant elucidated the following: “And we’re trying to include a lot more sustainability initiatives in that plan than they originally had, so a lot more clean energy and more trees, maybe some more edible landscaping, different ways of retaining you know rain water. Trees, encouraging tree canopy and reducing heat island”. However, it must be noted that a transition to renewable energy that largely depends on current infrastructure (mass producing renewable energy in one location, such as at a solar farm or a massive wind farm, and then transmitting it to another location) was not perceived as enhancing resilience, as one participant noted: “We don’t have a coal plant around here anymore, but we don’t have any local production of electricity anymore, and so in terms of resilience, we need to be thinking about more local generation in terms of renewables, getting more solar panels on people’s roofs things like that. And whether or not microgrids needs to be part of that”. Participants outlined that specific local-based transformative initiatives are needed to concomitantly advance resilience and sustainability, as the below quote from a participant elucidates:

“I think having in the systems that make a community more sustainable also makes them more resilient. So for example, if you look at Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria, they were out of power because one of their major plants got hit. But if they had had a more distributed system of solar panels and multiple different kinds of renewable energies, then they would have gotten the grid back up faster or with food production, we saw this with Coronavirus. There were shortages everywhere, but if we had food coming from more places than just California, if we had more local farming, then maybe that could have been avoided”.

These transformative initiatives could help reduce a community’s greenhouse gas emissions, help a community better adopt to changing climate conditions, and make a community’s critical infrastructure and systems more resilient. However, several participants noted that this is no easy task. For example, one participant pondered the following:

“Where do we wanna be? Why do we have to be there? And how do we get there in incremental steps? But it’s not that easy to push through, it really isn’t, it’s like I want the government to embrace what’s gonna happen in 2050 if we don’t do anything and why we have to act, and then we can lay down those milestones that we will take from here until 2050 to reach there but we have to have the big vision before we start laying out smaller things, and that’s the hard part to do”.

Another participant also similarly noted the following:

“It’s like there’s so much that could be done around food to create a resilient local food economy and system, but I don’t see it happening anywhere. Everyone’s talking about food, but no one’s talking about creating a policy or system where you’re thinking about where it’s grown, what’s grown, how it gets to people who need it, and bringing people together to create that robust food economy…which creates a more resilient community, which improves sustainability”.

The next section provides policy suggestions based on the findings discussed in this section and collates the findings presented from other studies that have examined community resilience and sustainability.

5. Discussion and Conclusions

Based on the findings above, it can be concluded that the participants perceived community sustainability and community resilience as clearly interconnected concepts. The findings demonstrate the multifaceted and multi-dynamic nature of the interconnections between the two concepts. Compared to literature that contends one concept to be a sub-concept of the other (resilience as a sub-concept of sustainability and vice versa), the findings of this study demonstrate that the interconnections between community sustainability and resilience are layered and complex.

It can be concluded that many participants perceived community sustainability and resilience as interconnected through certain essential community infrastructure and systems (such as water, energy, roads, and other similar infrastructure, as well as strong social networks). This is similar to arguments in Folke, Colding, and Berkes [3] and Asprone and Manfredi [5]. While a significant body of literature [1,10] frames community resilience as a short-term-focused (disaster planning/preparedness/recovery-based) concept, the participants of this study perceived resilience as having both short-term and long-term dynamics, especially framing adaptive resilience and transformative resilience as long-term-focused.

Similar to Saunders and Becker [11], participants of this study also perceived some level of community resilience as necessary for community sustainability. Sharifi [38] argues that environmental themes dominate community sustainability literature, while socio-economic themes (such as equity and justice) are lacking. The findings of this study demonstrate that participants perceive social justice/equity initiatives focused on addressing chronic stressors (such as poverty and hunger) as important to advancing both sustainability and resilience. Chronic stressors were perceived to make certain community members more vulnerable to disasters (and other acute shocks) and hinder community sustainability initiatives (such as renewable energy and walking/biking infrastructure). Therefore, it can be recommended that policies targeting chronic stressors need to be a focal focus of integrated community sustainability and resilience strategies.

Participants highlighted the importance of integrated climate change mitigation and resilience strategies by elucidating how climate change mitigation actions and basic resilience are interconnected. However, it must be noted that due to climate lag [81], the current mitigation efforts to halt the further progression of climate change might only have a positive impact on future basic resilience efforts (by lessening the threat of extreme weather events and, thereby, helping communities cope better). This difference in timescales is important to note (similar findings in [19]). The perceived interconnection between climate change mitigation and basic resilience also presents an opportunity to better communicate integrated strategies to community stakeholders: sustainability initiatives to mitigate the emission of greenhouse gases are needed today in order to lessen the future burden of disaster recovery on our communities. Otherwise, we might never be able to keep up. In the current political climate, such communication messaging might provide opportunities to better convince local political leaders of the importance of integrated mitigation and basic resilience strategies.

It must be noted that if the aim of basic resilience is to keep restoring a system to its status quo following a disaster, basic resilience efforts might negatively impact (or be in conflict with) climate mitigation efforts if the current system is based on fossil fuels. This could lead to a perpetual cycle of damage and recovery that communities might not be able to keep up with as climate changes further. For example, a centralized above-ground energy production and distribution system is vulnerable to impacts of climate change at different stages of energy provision and from a variety of climate events (such as tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, strong storms, etc.). As the frequency and magnitude of climate events increase with climate change, at some point, it might be difficult to maintain (or keep restoring) the power system as it is. As communities are unable to control the occurrence of extreme weather events, creating the capacity to deal with resultant change might be their best option [9]. A community would need to consider adaptive resilience options, such as burying power lines underground or transitioning to a distributed energy system.

Many participants described community sustainability as the ability to meet the needs now and into the future and perceived adaptive resilience as a characteristic/property of the essential community infrastructure and systems necessary for meeting community needs. This finding is similar to the literature (such as [3,5]) that frames resilience as a key property of sustainability. The characteristic/property that most participants attributed to the adaptive resilience of certain essential community infrastructure and systems (food, energy, water procurement systems, transportation, and infrastructure) was the ability of these systems to continue to provide services (or function) to meet community needs through disturbances and change, including climate change. Within this context, adaptive resilience and climate change adaptation were perceived as closely linked. Participants frequently used terms such as “capacity” and “ability to maintain” to describe adaptive resilience. The literature (such as [3,9,67]) identifies adaptive capacity to climate change and resilience as very similar or closely linked concepts. Folke, Colding, and Berkes [3] portend that resilience might be a precondition for adaptive capacity. Based on the literature and the findings of this study, further research is necessary and recommended to explore the specific interconnections between adaptive resilience and climate change adaptation (and/or adaptive capacity). The findings of this study also show that in order for adaptive resilience to have a positive impact on sustainability, it needs to be a conscious effort (such as the use of mobile solar panels to create backup capacity).

Transformative resilience has received the least research attention compared to the other two resilience types but holds great potential. Certain local-based transformative initiatives were perceived as advancing long-term resilience and sustainability (climate change mitigation and/or adaptation) at the same time. These transformative initiatives could help reduce a community’s greenhouse gas emissions, help a community better adapt to changing climate conditions, and make a community’s essential infrastructure and systems more resilient to changing conditions. For example, a local food system to produce more fruits and vegetables could reduce the food miles, improve the availability and accessibility of nutritious food (irrespective of climate change impacts in other food-producing locations), and help the community cope better if there is a disturbance to the overall food production system. A similar argument could be made for a local decentralized/distributed energy system comprising micro-grids and roof-top solar panels. However, activating these integrated transformative initiatives requires addressing many challenges. Further research is necessary to understand and identify innovative community-based tools and mechanisms that could be deployed to craft local-based transformative initiatives.

This study explored the perceived interconnections between community resilience and sustainability using Dayton, OH, as a case study. Not many studies have explored this topic, especially qualitatively. The findings of this study reveal the multifaceted and multi-dynamic nature of interconnections between the two concepts, which can aid in crafting constructive strategies. Therefore, further research should continue to explore interconnections between community resilience and sustainability in other economic, cultural, and technological contexts, as it provides valuable insights for crafting strategies and policies to make communities more resilient and sustainable.