Housing as a social-ecological system : resilience, adaptive capacity and governance considerations

Recent work has discussed the implications of "new ecology" for other disciplines and systems, asserting that developments in ecological theory over the past few decades have spread from this originating point to influence areas including sociology, anthropology, resource management, politics and urban planning (e.g., Scoones, 1999). New ecology reflects a transition from stasis, equilibrium and order to complexity, nonlinearity and a sensitivity to place and context. These themes can also be traced in work on housing and the home, and are indicative of a generalised turn toward particularity, complexity and contextuality in diverse realms of theory and practice. This paper considers housing from a new ecological perspective to examine the utility of resilience, adaptive capacity and adaptive comanagement for housing. It first provides an overview of the concepts of resilience, adaptive capacity and adaptive comanagement as developed and researched in new ecology. Secondly, the paper explores the potential for application of this framework to housing systems and research. Finally, the paper outlines questions which may emerge from this examination.