**1. Introduction**

Focus on social innovation, both academic and policy-oriented, has increased substantially lately in the hope of offering (albeit partial) solutions to the unresolved challenges by dominant governing methods. Social innovation has been supported by governmental policies and institutions as well [1] and has become a "buzzword" in social policy [2], appearing in various high-level documents including even the collection of inspiring stories put forward by the European Commission [3]. In this policy environment, especially in pre-COVID-19 times, the approach of partially curtailing and decentralizing public welfare responsibilities, fostering social innovation and social entrepreneurship was regarded as an appropriate solution to tackle unmet welfare needs in a fiscally and socially prudent way, through which a socially inclusive market economy could be stimulated.

The concept of social innovation is old and has been evolving over a long period of time. In short, it "refers to localized social initiatives that address unmet social needs through a transformation of social relationships that empowers people" [4] (p. 1). It has been applied in various fields, among other things to describe the fundamental changes taking place in the field of governance, to analyze the transformation of the public sector's role as a decision maker and a service provider, or the increasing civic participation in policy development and delivery, particularly in the field of social policy [5–7]. It has also been used to describe the changing politicizing of cities, where new movements engaged in urban politics transformed the entire arena of local governance and local political dynamics [2]. In this context of urban movements, social innovation can also be viewed as an opportunity to change the local spatial dynamics, not only to develop new ideas (products, services or models) but to allow urban spaces to recover and renew, providing actors and institutions with the possibility to learn and evolve [8].

**Citation:** Szemz˝o, H.; Mosquera, J.; Polyák, L.; Hayes, L. Flexibility and Adaptation: Creating a Strategy for Resilience. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 2688. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su14052688

Academic Editor: Harald A. Mieg

Received: 31 December 2021 Accepted: 10 February 2022 Published: 25 February 2022

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The process of social innovation can be supported and carried out by various bodies, moving on the spectrum between formal, well-established actors to non-formalized initiatives, transient in nature. NGOs, small-scale bottom-up citizen initiatives as well as more established third sector organizations or social enterprises are crucial players in the field, united by their goals with the aim to bring about social change. In fact, social enterprises represent a very particular mix between economic and social goals, where through their "transformative social ambition", the provision of goods and services becomes the means to support social objectives and initiate social change [9].

There is a less-talked-about "dark side" to social innovation, however [10]. Social innovation is by definition disruptive [11], providing its impact through viewing, understanding and approaching problems and issues through a new lens. It applies unconventional methods and even redefines the problems to be addressed. It also offers new coalitions of stakeholders to overcome the difficulties. However, the disruption of former boundaries can have adverse, unintended consequences. Disruptions in social relations can most acutely impact the vulnerable, despite the fact that a significant part of social innovation interventions aim to help exactly these groups. Additionally, the creation of a new normal, which is the higher goal of many initiatives [12], requires rebuilding new structures—even boundaries—and new governance systems to support them to become more resilient. A challenging task, fraught with internal and external complications that puts a strain not only on the recipient of services, but also on the organizations themselves, who embody social innovation. Resilience in their case means not only finding their role, but cementing it in the new environment, while allowing them to pursue their original path. This process can still include change, albeit a gradual one, in the sense of evolutionary resilience by Davoudi which incorporates cautious transformation [13].

The current article asks how civil society actors, as forbearers of social innovation, can create a resilient framework that not only supports their activities but sustains them as an organization. It focuses on the question of how social innovation can be maintained on the long run? How can the organizations pioneering social innovation become resilient, and what type of support do they need? The article uses the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns as a special occasion, which prompted organizations to react and at the same time amplified the key question of resilience: how can bottomup initiatives survive? Through the lens of the first lockdown, this paper views the transformation of civic initiatives, gauging their capacity to adapt flexibly to new situations. It selects cases from all over Europe, where the first wave hit at approximately the same time, and analyses them. While doing so, it brings together the concept of social innovation and resilience, enriching resilience studies through this direction.

While there have been critical approaches to the combination of these two concepts, the current paper support the assumption of Westley that social innovation and resilience mutually enhance each other looking at "social innovation as a particular dynamic that increases the resilience of social systems and institutions, through introducing and structuring novelty in apparently "trapped" or intransigent social problem areas" [1,14,15]. The paper's emphasis on bottom-up initiatives during COVID-19 is also novel, as attention so far has tended to concentrate more on the adaptation efforts of big organizations or public authorities [16,17].

The structure of the paper is as follows. After a (2) brief introduction of the topic of resilience where it identifies three key strategies that bottom-up initiatives can follow, it lays out the (3) methodology how cases were selected and analyzed. Then, it describes the (4) resilience strategies followed by the selected civil society actors using the theoretical framework introduced. Finally, the paper (5) discusses the main findings and contributions and closes with (6) concluding remarks.

#### **2. Identifying Resilience Strategies**

The concept of resilience primarily comes from ecology and system theory, and its application today is still heavily influenced by its origins [18]. It can be understood as "the capacity to adjust to threats and mitigate or avoid harm", as offered by Pelling [19]. He also notes that we can understand resilience in a number of ways, according to different disciplines, but the above definition corresponds to societal phenomena at times of crisis, referring to the ability of entities to withstand unforeseen challenges.

Resilience and its conceptual consequences have attracted special focus in urban studies, both on an academic and a practical (policy) level. The acceptance of resilience as a guiding theory into socio-economic governance frameworks has contributed to an approach where crisis and the need to change have become part of the daily discourse of public authorities and NGOs, and the need to adapt and prevail have become central guiding principles for cities and local communities/initiatives alike [20].

Resilience is also understood as a coping strategy, a systemic reaction to stress—such as the COVID-19 pandemic—supporting the evolution of new norms and values [21]. The pandemic has generally sharpened the scientific focus on resilience, bringing to the forefront how sudden events and the general rise in turbulent problems test governing capacities and require new governance strategies [16]. It highlighted the need for integrated, comprehensive approaches in resilience strategies and has also contributed to an increased awareness about the multi-faceted nature of resilience, showing that it was dependent on a variety of factors including territorial, political and governance characteristics [17,22].

To analyze the resilience strategies followed by social initiatives, the paper adopts an ecologically rooted understanding of the concept, which reflects how systems work in nature, thus stressing the importance of decentralized institutions that allow local adaptations and a responsive form of local governance [23]. It follows the footsteps of Davoudi [24] and uses her evolutionary resilience concept as a point of departure, stressing the importance of constant change, acknowledging that there are a multitude of ways to reach equilibrium/stability. The paper takes the concept a step further and argues that the resilience of these organizations requires flexibility and adaptation, which are essential characteristics that allow them to change and to face and overcome challenges of various kinds.

The concepts of flexibility and adaptation have both been used in connection with resilience before, emphasizing that an adaptive governance system has the ability not only to self-organize, but also to co-manage and transform. Similarly, flexibility is essential to support experimentation, as well as to accommodate changes on a multi-governance scale [25]. Flexibility is also directly linked with resilience and proactivity in risk management studies [26]. Finally, both flexibility and adaptation have long been associated with resilience in studies in psychology and business [27–29], but less has been said about their role regarding civic initiatives or even municipalities. Importantly, their role as possible building blocks in resilience strategies has not yet been explored.

This is exactly what the paper sets out to do when it defines three main strategies depending on the various degrees of flexibility and adaptation they require. Each of these strategies allow civic organizations to overcome crises and become resilient. The strategies, although separate, can build on and strengthen each other, and can be applied by different organizations or by different branches of the same organization in a similar environment, even simultaneously. Nevertheless, there are marked differences among them both in the amount of time their execution needs and the complexity of the task it creates, as described below and also shown by Figure 1.

**Figure 1.** Three strategies in pursuit of resilience.

The first strategy is about increasing adaptability. This is defined as the capacity of an initiative or organization to adjust to changing circumstances even without intensive exchange with others and carry it out mostly relying on its own resources. While the advantage of such a strategy lies in the fact that it can be deployed alone, from an organizational point of view its application requires a very high degree of flexibility and the biggest adaptation/transformation in a short time span. Civic initiatives resorting to this strategy need to have reserves either financially or have appropriate knowledge, network and enough personnel, possibly including volunteers as well.

The strategy of diversification refers to the ability of an initiative to establish new connections within its social, economic and territorial context and to build resilience through the provision of new services or the creation of new goods. This requires both flexibility and adaptation, but to a lesser extent than previously. However, it also needs deep local embeddedness and knowledge about missing services or any niche activities.

Finally, the strategy of ecosystem building is focused on network building that enables individual organizations to join forces and complement each other by moving resources and capacities more efficiently according to emerging needs. While this is the most timeconsuming strategy, this allows individual organizations to retain their original profile in face of a crisis and, thus, requires the least flexibility and adjustment from them.

#### **3. Methodology**

To validate the theoretical structure explained above, the paper employs a qualitative case study methodology. A qualitative approach in general is applicable to a small sample size and less standardized data collection methods [30], which is the case here. The case study methodology provides the opportunity for an in-depth understanding of how different initiatives managed to build up resilience strategies facing the COVID-19 crisis. This method is particularly useful to discern factors determining the success of these resilience strategies, but it also allows comparisons. The latter helps to see how the respective local environment influences the strategies chosen by the initiatives.

There were three main sources the cases for this paper were selected from:


From this rich source material, cases were selected for a closer inspection based on their relevance to the topic of the current paper. Primarily, we were looking for cases where the pandemic created a situation of a sudden challenge needing immediate intervention to sustain the organization itself, its community or both. We only looked at cases that involved social-innovation-focused initiatives as we wanted to see the specific patterns their actions showed. Secondly, the selection also took the various institutional backgrounds into consideration, supposing that the existence of a supportive environment strongly influences the resilience strategies chosen by the initiatives. Thirdly, we wanted to provide a relative difference in size of the initiatives, assuming that more established ones could react differently, having more financial and network resources at hand. Finally, we made the conscious decision of involving cities as cases, since their elaborate programs could influence the resilience strategies followed by the initiatives locally. Municipalities often realize their programs through activating local civic initiatives and their support is necessary for these initiatives to build their resilience strategies.

Using the above criteria, 8 cases were finally selected (see Table 1 for their list) for a more in depth inspection. They span geographically between Portugal and Hungary, allowing the collection of vastly different experiences and versatile strategies, all of which were effective in the same constrained timeframe of the first COVID-19 lockdown. They are either bottom-up initiatives themselves or are organizations/institutions working closely with bottom-up initiatives. Among the chosen initiatives, there are some which can rely on strong municipal support, whereas others were left more to their own devices during a crisis. All the initiatives selected use space—both urban and rural—as an opportunity to transform their surroundings and they all have basic social innovation aims, which is more apparent in some cases, while in others, it has been constantly in the background of many of their projects.


**Table 1.** Overview of the selected cases with brief case characteristics and the source of primary information about them.

The data about the cases come from interviews with members/participants of the initiatives, but not from the local communities. As a result, these reflect their internal views. Given the paper's focus on organizational strategies, this was not regarded as a problem. Interviews were always conducted with someone who had sufficient overview and knowledge to assess the internal operation of the initiative involved. The questions asked were divided between pre-COVID-19 activities and then emergency interventions.

Additional information comes from presentations and desktop research using background materials of the OpenHeritage, the URBACT projects, as well as the recordings and transcriptions of the Cooperative City webinar series. The following table (Table 1) summarizes the exact sources of information for every selected case.

In the following, the paper will examine these cases in light of the strategies followed to support resilience. For each resilience strategy, the paper gives various examples, explaining how it was executed by the organizations, also highlighting the role of flexibility and adaptation played in the development of these strategies.

#### **4. Applying Resilience Strategies**

#### *4.1. Adaptability*

For Keck and Sakdapolrak [53], adaptability (adaptive capacity) constitutes a dimension of social resilience: the ability to learn from past experiences and adjust to future challenges in everyday life. Considered as such, adaptability represents a dynamic quality empowering social system—including civic initiatives supporting social innovation—to respond and cope with crises as a normal rather than exceptional condition. In an urban environment, together with the transformative dimension of social resilience, adaptability proposes new scenarios for social and spatial development. In this sense, adaptability can be seen as a dimension of the type of open urbanism envisioned by Richard Sennett [54] and meant to represent a flexible environment, not over-determined or fully defined a priori. This kind of openness nurtures social innovation and leads to new ways of considering the city and the challenges society is called to face, allowing for quick and speedy reactions.

Adaptability is also a strategy that requires the least time to develop, but it can support social innovation organizations to prevail in difficult times, allowing them to change—even temporarily—the focus of their activities. Importantly, this strategy allows them to act alone. Such a strategy is exemplified by Les Grands Voisins (LGV) in Paris, a project which had formerly concentrated on the temporary reuse of a disused hospital complex. Between 2015 and 2020, they have created a social and cultural space in the heart of Paris where altogether 2000 people lived and/or worked, with additional emergency accommodation for up to 1000 people. They also created spaces for workshops and offices and involved more than 5000 volunteers a year.

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, the Municipality of Paris reached out and asked Les Grand Voisins if they could help with food distribution to the most vulnerable. The connection between LGV and the city had existed prior as well, since it was the city municipality that temporarily handed over the management of an unused area to three NGOs, allowing the LGV to be established in the heart of Paris. During the first wave of COVID-19, LGV not only became engaged in providing support, but could also do this task very efficiently despite its prior inexperience and the short notice. It could adapt very quickly because its mission of work for the common good was at the base of the organization, and such an adaptation came naturally. Additionally, architects and social workers play a very important role in LGV, and they had a specific know-how on how to adapt to this new scenario. Finally, flexibility and quick adjustment to changing circumstances was already at the core of the initiative, which utilized the methodology of temporary use to test new functions and activities in an existing site with little physical transformation. Therefore, in the context of COVID-19, adapting the space for a new purpose was relatively easy, and it became not just about giving food to people, but it also meant allowing the organization to develop.

As it was summarized by Martin Locret, a project manager:

"*We have been contacted by the Municipality of Paris—they asked us if we could help with food distribution, as we run our activities in empty and/or abandoned buildings.* *We were able to immediately say yes because we always kept in mind the fact that urban commons should be able to respond and adapt as quickly as possible*".

The COVID-19 pandemic similarly required a high level of adaptability in other places as well, often meaning the sudden conversion of their spaces for entirely different purposes. In Naples, a new "informal welfare" system was created by social centers, community groups and bottom-up initiatives, which underwent a sudden change following the outbreak of the epidemic and the subsequent quarantine measures. With all the usual activities suspended because of the lockdown, social centers, self-organized spaces and urban commons such as Scugnizzo Liberato, ex Opg, Mensa Occupata, Sgarrupato Occupato and Zero81 reconverted their spaces into kitchens or food stores, and they packed parcels to be distributed once or twice a week, using small pickup trucks, motorbikes or simply on foot. Additionally, as there was the need to raise money, the organizations designed and carried out crowdfunding campaigns. Such was the case with ex Opg, which through a word of mouth and online communication raised more than EUR 42,000 to buy supplies, personal protective equipment and other primary goods to be given to poor families, migrants and the homeless.

Adaptability as a strategy could be followed by city municipalities as well, allowing them to intervene efficiently and quickly, and supporting both social innovation and civic initiatives. During COVID-19, many municipalities converted buildings for new uses to respond to the most urgent needs, while others reached out to local initiatives and developed emergency services together, using community spaces and mobilizing the skills and knowledge organized around these spaces. Such changes required flexibility both on the side of the initiatives and on the side of municipalities.

One particular city example is the case of Milano, where the importance of adaptability is reflected by official strategies, including the Milan 2020 Adaptation Strategy [34], which builds on public–private partnerships and recovery measures to address the current health crisis as well as future urban challenges. The strategy is aimed at supporting social innovation and social cohesion as a means to fight the effects of the COVID-19 crisis. One of the city's immediate actions during the crisis was to have a dual use of infrastructures with a temporary conversion of buildings to make a significant contribution to the emergency management: its "Open Schools" program turned school buildings, particularly during the summer months, into community areas and green spaces dedicated to educational activities; "Milano Abitare" transformed used vacant apartments as emergency housing; accommodation facilities and other public and private facilities were also used for emergency management. In Milan, the adaptability strategy was both a way to cope with the crisis and to prepare the city for future challenges. Additionally, it also helped the city to become more resilient by adapting the available spaces to new functions.
