Resilience and localism through sustainable collaborative communities: the case of Rijeka

The paper contributes to the discussion over the development of an innovative approach that would enable academics to revise the modes of collaboration and processes of engaging people in a way that conventional politics has failed to do so far. This paper aims at filling the gap in the existing literature on social capital and social engagement as it suggests steps or initiatives in the framework of the Transition approach that supports community engagement for transforming the highly vulnerable, non-resilient state to a resilient and more localised place. The purpose is to understand in what way Transition, as a new theoretical approach, can contribute to define a new model for collaboration while leveraging on two key aspects: resilience and localisation. The paper analyses what socioeconomic and community-related structures as well as organisational systems are necessary to implement modes and places of collaboration in a resilient country such as the Croatian City of Rijeka.