Designing to expand adaptive capacity means creating objects, templates
and platforms that allow people and systems to survive and even thrive in a complex and uncertain planet... designers
are coming to grips with how to help users create local resilience and self-reliance. In fact, the concept
of resilience has become an important term that designers are just now grappling with. An emergent property of systems
that is related to the "longevity" tenet of sustainability but qualitatively different from its "no impact" focus, resilience
is concerned with cycles of change and positive adaptation. Resilience thinking integrates social and environmental
factors into a holistic framework that helps users prepare for —or even take advantage of—shocks to a
system...
As Salt and Walker explain, "any proposal for sustainable development that
does not acknowledge a system's resilience is simply not going to keep delivering goods and services. The key to sustainability
lies in enhancing the resilience of social-ecological systems, not in optimizing isolated components of the
system."...
sustainability is a journey not a destination.
