Narratives about natural risks and resilience in the construction of the global neoliberal urban agenda

Abstract

This article aims to approach (socio-environmental)
risks and the idea of resilience, discussing their main
contemporary meanings and usages in the debate
on world urbanization and how these structuring
terms head the narratives of the global urban
agenda taken up by multilateral organizations.
The study has an exploratory/analytical character, based on surveys, readings and bibliographic/documentary analyses. Narratives about socioenvironmental risks, associated with the idea of resilience, are used in the current urban planning and management of cities in different contexts. We found that the market has transformed these dynamics and socio-environmental problems into big “sustainable” businesses, transferring, disseminating and mobilizing such discourses and their “solutions” for different urban problems, aiming to implement the ideas of the global neoliberal and “sustainable” urbanization agenda.