Resilience planning in Canada: An analysis of resilience in local governments' strategic planning documents

Resilience planning has grown in popularity as it offers opportunities to address complex challenges faced by cities; however, operationalizing resilience proves to be difficult. Through a comprehensive policy analysis of 171 Canadian local governments' strategic plans, this research aims to understand how resilience is incorporated into planning documents. Results indicate that there are many approaches to meaningfully incorporate resilience, but strategic plans must prioritize resilience by defining it, incorporating it throughout the plan, referring to different resilience topics, and presenting information through a clear design. Within the Canadian context, local governments also have the opportunity to customize inclusions of resilience to be place-based and use opportunities to be creative.