German civil protection increasingly embraces the involvement of the population in crisis and disaster management processes. Numerous experiences have revealed civil society support as an essential pillar of overcoming acute emergencies. Thus, citizens are no longer regarded as passive beneficiaries, but as active participants in crisis and disaster management. In this context, the concept of community resilience is attracting considerable attention among scholars in the field of emergency management. The concept identifies crucial coping resources in the collective capacity of local residents. However, the resilience of local communities is full of preconditions that we locate on the small-scale neighbourhood level. In our presentation, we analyse the requirements of community resilience as factors inscribed in the individual perception of social capital and the degree of place attachment._x000D_
Based on empirical data from a recent population survey in the German city of Wuppertal (n=1.582), we show that the fundamentals of providing mutual support in an emergency emerge in people’s everyday social interactions. The stronger their personal place attachment, the greater their willingness to provide help in crises and disasters. However, the results of multilevel modelling show that the basic requirements for providing mutual support are unequally distributed due to varying socio-spatial conditions. The perception of social capital negatively relates to small-scale indicators of concentrated disadvantage. That is, residents perceive the level of social cohesion more pessimistically in distressed neighbourhoods, which in turn result in a lower willingness to provide support in emergencies. Considering different theories of social capital and place attachment, we discuss our statistical results in the broader context of a vital reorientation of civil protection that engages more closely with the social infrastructures and socio-structural conditions of urban neighbourhoods.

Bo Tackenberg; Tim Lukas
University of Wuppertal, Institute for Public Safety and Emergency Management

 
ID Abstract: 254