How can resilient infrastructures contribute to social justice? Preface to the special issue of sustainable and resilient infrastructure on resilience infrastructures and social justice

Over the past two decades, the attention for resilience has increased dramatically and resilience has become the leading paradigm for considering risks and uncertainty in complex systems. Resilience is now commonly used within a broad range of fields. The concept has not only attracted the attention of academics; decision-makers across disciplines, sectors, and scales, also organize their risk strategies around the idea of resilience as resilience is often thought to lead to a better – that is, a safer and more just – society. However, the alleged link between resilience and justice is controversial. Some scholars argue that the resilience paradigm primarily benefits those people who are already reasonably well-off at the expense of disadvantaged groups. The focus in this special issue is on the relation between resilience, specifically ‘resilient infrastructures’, and social justice. While written from different disciplinary perspectives, all are centered around the question of how resilient infrastructures can contribute to social justice