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This edition of Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society is devoted to examining regional resilience and assessing its underlying theoretical foundations, the empirical evidence that may lie behind it and importantly what it may have to offer the formulation of policy. The articles in this issue explore the concept from a variety of angles and demonstrate why it has emerged as a popular, albeit contested, concept in environmental studies and the social sciences.

We acknowledge that one reason for the popularity of the term ‘regional resilience’is its malleability; it can mean different things to different people. As the term originated in environmental studies, it described biological capacity to adapt and thrive under adverse environmental conditions. At the other end of the spectrum, in economics, resilience has been defined in terms of return to a fixed and narrowly defined equilibrium (as measured by …