Socio-economic characteristics of resilient localities – experiences from Slovenia

Abstract

The concept of resilience is used to refer to a territory’s capability to withstand recession and recover afterwards. This paper explores what types of localities were most resilient to the 2008 economic recession due to their socio-economic structure. Resilience was defined on the basis of a business cycle as the recovery to pre-recession value and is measured with the change in gross value added per employee by municipality in Slovenia (LAU 2), and the change in the registered unemployment rate. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the most resilient Slovenian municipalities’ socio-economic structure before the recession. It was found out that specialization, export and transport infrastructure had the greatest influence on local resilience, while economic development and social structure partly influenced it. This paper adds to the discussion of the vagueness of the concept of resilience by clarifying its definition and measurement. Findings about socio-economic structure’s influence on resilience are important for academics as well as practitioners who contribute to municipality’s ability to avoid or mitigate a future recession.

Keywords

• Resilience
• resistance
• economic recession
• economic downturn
• socio-economic structure
• regional planning
• municipality
• Slovenia