Regional resilience through the lenses of the capability approach

Abstract Regional resilience has been widely studied in economics and economic geography. The extant literature proposes different measures and definitions, without achieving a unitary view of the concept. In this paper, an interpretation of regional resilience thorough Sen’s capability approach is proposed. In particular, resilience emerges as a collective capability and “being resilient” as a collective functioning. Individual characteristics of the agents operating in a region and the interaction between them lead to this interpretation. The definitions adopted by the extant literature appear to be parts of a whole, which is difficult to capture in a single analysis.