Community Planning to Foster Resilience in Children

Clauss-Ehlers, Caroline and Weist, Mark (eds.) (2004).
New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum; 377 pages. $69.95. ISBN 0306485117.

Readers interested in learning about the relatively new concept of “resilience,” will find this to be a very good book with which to start. This is an edited book, with 22 chapters written by 49 authors, all but one of them from the U.S. Almost all of the chapters are wide-ranging literature reviews, which serve a very useful purpose for readers who are unfamiliar with this area of study, and for those wishing to begin to make use of the resilience concept.

The chapters are divided into four sections. The first, "Foundations," presents a general introduction to the concept of resilience and its intellectual history. These chapters give a first glimpse of the fact that there is no single definition of resilience. One chapter defines it as “the ability to rebound from acute or chronic adversity,” another as “to thrive, mature and increase competence in the face of adverse circumstances or obstacles,” and other chapters in different words. The general gist of it is consistent and clear, but somehow there is no consensus on phrasing.

The second section, "Promoting Resilience in Diverse Communities," considers the relevance of the concept for American Indian youth, Latino youth, African-American children, Asian children, and includes two more general chapters on different groups in America and around the world. The third section, "Areas of Special Need," includes chapters on various groups of children: those exposed to terrorism, mentally handicapped children, juvenile offenders, sexually abused children, youth gang members and military children and adolescents. Section four, "Promising Resilience-Promoting Developments," describes different programs, mainly school-based, designed to increase the resilience of various individual or groups of children.

The chapters differ in the context on which they focus—six are clearly school-focused, two clearly center on the family, and two on the community, while the others relate to some extent to more than one of these contexts. Although the title of the book mentions children, nine of the chapters focus on youth. I would imagine that this is an indication that the teenage years are seen as very problematic ones within a social context.

One of the strengths of the book is that it is wide-ranging, presenting differentiated perspectives on very different groups of children and youth, and not relating to children or youth as a monolithic group with “average” characteristics. In the foreword, we are told by James Garbarino that "the theme of resilience is important intellectually and morally. Intellectually, it offers a way of summarizing the reality that humans are not fragile beings." However, he goes on to say, "relying on resilience as a concept out of social context can become a recipe for rationalizing social deprivation and inequities." The chapters indeed are never out of context.

That said, I read the book as an environmental psychologist, searching all the while for the physical environment as part of that context. Unfortunately, I came away very disappointed. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that some aspect of the physical environment was mentioned, and it was very briefly and superficially at that. It is important to explain my reaction—it was not that I was insulted because the authors seemed to be unaware of my field. Rather, I was frustrated that this lack of awareness prevented them from understanding the positive role that the physical environment can play in promoting resilience, or the negative role that it can play by erecting obstacles. If you are not aware of the physical environment or do not understand it, you are unable to take advantage of it to help in your efforts to support resilience in children, or to correct its aspects that may foil those efforts. For example, the concept of privacy is not mentioned at all, and the possible effect that facilitating privacy in the home could have on children and youth is missed. Similarly, the chapter on inner-city children totally ignores the positive aspects that urban living may have in terms of the possibilities for enrichment, independent activity and so forth, which the physical aspects of the city could facilitate. Additionally, Bronfenbrenner is mentioned, but his attention to the physical context is ignored. Given that the concept of resilience focuses on strengths and on positive factors, it is unfortunate that none of the authors recognizes the potential of the physical environment for supporting and facilitating those strengths.

In addition, I should note that urban planners would not recognize the term “community planning” as it is used in this book. That said, there are several things that planners and environmental psychologists have in common with the field of resilience study. The first historically interesting one is that the notion of resilience evolved out of developmental psychopathology, and environmental psychology research initially studied psychiatric hospitals for adults and for children. Further, both of these fields recognize the importance of context and focus on it, and examine contingent relationships between various factors. Planners and environmental psychologists also share the authors’ applied focus and an interest in policy and attempt to improve peoples' lives.

The book, therefore, can serve as a background resource that opens a window to an important psychological concept and to the ways in which it is presently being used. Some readers may wish to link into this discourse and contribute their particular viewpoint to it. That could be a significant contribution to the joint goal of improving the quality of life of children and youth.

Arza Churchman

Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
Haifa, Israel

Arza Churchman is an environmental psychologist with a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She is a professor in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion in Haifa, Israel, where she is the Dean of the Faculty. She served for six years as the President of IAPS—The International Association for Person-Environment Studies. Among other courses, she teaches one on planning for children. The environmental needs of children have been one of her research interests for many years.