The focal point for this book is on the ‘how’ of resilience, the on-the-ground processes surrounding the fate of residual inner-city areas deemed ‘service hubs’ (e.g. clusters of voluntary sector organizations) faced with the threat of gentrification-induced displacement. Put as a question, what accounts for their resilience when other arrangements of collective consumption (especially social housing) have been severely curtailed or fallen by the wayside entirely? After all, even those most convinced of pervasive neoliberalism acknowledge that residual mechanisms of support, survival and ‘stay ... More

The focal point for this book is on the ‘how’ of resilience, the on-the-ground processes surrounding the fate of residual inner-city areas deemed ‘service hubs’ (e.g. clusters of voluntary sector organizations) faced with the threat of gentrification-induced displacement. Put as a question, what accounts for their resilience when other arrangements of collective consumption (especially social housing) have been severely curtailed or fallen by the wayside entirely? After all, even those most convinced of pervasive neoliberalism acknowledge that residual mechanisms of support, survival and ‘staying put’ from bygone eras still persist in the city – it is just that they ignore or assume away the resilience inherent in this process, the actual means of resilience, the agents of resilience, the consequences of such resilience, and how these tendencies may differ comparatively. These empirical and conceptual gaps will map onto to five cornerstones that structure the book: neoliberalism and post-welfarism as the context and the threat; resilience as the response and the organizing concept; the voluntary sector as the agent; the inner-city as the territorial focus; and comparison as the method. Empirically and comparatively, the book seeks to understand how processes of resilience play out across 10 different inner-city neighborhoods in 3 global city-regions (London, Los Angeles and Sydney), in an attempt to learn from these places, both differences and similarities.