Though the concept’s popularity has increased in recent years, many resilience techniques are not new. In environmental infrastructure they often mark a return to the kind of cautious coexistence with nature that defined much of human history. Resilience thinkers argue that we have inadvertently “fragilized” many of the systems that surround us. Our urge to specialize, reap efficiencies, and impose our demands for unnatural predictability has, like the rerouting of the Rhine, created new threats and damaged our ability to bounce back.
