Framing resilience in Saudi Arabian cities: On climate change and urban policy

While climate change has traditionally driven the search for appropriate urban policy responses, a recent trend in urban studies and planning in the Global South has been to argue for resilience. Considering this call seriously, this article draws on critical literature on urban resilience and secondary data, using Saudi Arabian cities to demonstrate that urban policy -based reflections on climate change are imperative in the pursuit of urban resilience. By laying the groundwork for the conceptualization of urban resilience within and beyond urban studies, we use multiple urban cases across Saudi Arabia to establish approaches towards climate resilience, arguing that an understanding of urban resilience in urban studies and planning is critical to analyzing and combating the impacts of climate change in cities in the Global South. This leads us to argue for the need to explore urban resilience in relation to climate vulnerability, precarity, and urbanization. We conclude by advancing a research agenda on urban resilience in the Global South that draws upon the urban planning ethics of responsibility for climate change management.