Sustainability and resilience have become an indispensable part of contemporary research discourse. In the literature, the notions of these two concepts are numerous and diverse. Approaches to sustainability and resilience thus range from philosophical, political, economic, psychological, ecological, etc., to more complex, systematic considerations, i.e. from broad theoretical or metaphorical views to particularised sets of proposed measures and actions. Although sustainability and resilience basically deal with human systems and social organisations, for which reason expressions like ‘sustainable community’ and ‘resilient community’ are often used in current studies, the social dimension of sustainability and resilience and the role of culture, however, persist as the least clarified and are without consensus. Recognising the challenge that, in a multitude of interpretations, can primarily be connected with a necessity to revisit the conceptualisation, this paper unfolds several fundamental questions: What is the relationship between environments, communities, sustainability, and resilience? What is social sustainability and what does social sustainability have to do with sustainable development? What are the concepts and characteristics of sustainable/resilient communities? What are the roles of individuals and of community as a whole? Finally, how do sustainability and resilience relate to each other within the socio-cultural dimension?
The research based on the questions posed above, however, does not aim to find the only correct answers, but to assist in deepening the understanding of some of the most intricate and least illuminated topics in the fields of sustainability and resilience, thus bridging a knowledge gap regarding the socio-cultural implications of planning and design decisions for built environment subjected to shifting dynamics, irregular and unexpected changes, and growing uncertainty.
