Post-anthropocentric sustainable urban resilience: Reframing cities as human-nonhuman-artificial co-resilient systems

Abstract

Background: Urban resilience scholarship is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift, moving beyond anthropocentric frameworks that position human welfare as the sole measure of success and technology as a neutral instrument. Conventional resilience models remain anchored in anthropocentric assumptions that treat non-human ecological agents and artificial intelligence (AI) as passive instruments rather than co-constitutive participants in urban adaptive capacity. In this conceptual paper, I advance the theoretical understanding of post-anthropocentric co-resilience by reconceptualizing cities as hybrid assemblages where humans, non-human species, ecological processes, and AI function as interconnected agents within a unified system. Drawing on a synthesis of Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS) theory, complexity science, posthumanist philosophy, and emerging scholarship on algorithmic governance, I developed a novel Triadic Co-Resilience Framework that identifies three mutually constitutive dimensions of urban adaptive capacity: biophysical, sociotechnical, and cybernetic. Methods: A thematic literature synthesis was conducted across Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar, covering publications from 2015 to 2024. Sources were selected through systematic searching and citation tracking, with inclusion criteria requiring direct engagement with at least two of the three framework dimensions. Thirty-seven sources were retained for detailed coding and thematic analysis, organized around four analytic themes: Paradigm shifts, distributed agency, ethics and governance, and systemic fragility. Results: The analysis revealed that conventional resilience approaches systematically underestimate the contributions and vulnerabilities introduced by non-human actors, particularly as AI systems assume increasingly autonomous roles in urban sensing, decision-making, and resource allocation. Rather than enhancing resilience uniformly, AI integration can amplify systemic fragility when divorced from ecological and ethical co-resilience principles. I identified a paradox of artificial resilience, in which AI integration can simultaneously enhance and undermine urban adaptive capacity depending on whether ecological and ethical co-resilience principles are maintained. Conclusions: In this paper, I articulate a prioritized research agenda focused on operationalizing distributed agency, developing systemic accountability mechanisms for hybrid systems, and integrating multispecies justice into urban governance. Key priorities include empirical case studies in diverse urban contexts (including cities in the Global South with limited technological infrastructure), experimental governance pilots, and the development of measurable co-resilience indicators. This work contributes to sustainability science by providing conceptual tools for designing urban systems that can adapt, transform, and thrive as genuinely collaborative human-nonhuman-artificial endeavors.

Keywords

urban resilience / post-anthropocentrism / artificial intelligence / co-resilience / distributed agency / socio-ecological-technological systems / multispecies justice / smart cities / algorithmic governance / sustainability

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