Enhancing social resilience: the role of social infrastructure in crisis management within the built environment

• Comprehensive categorisation of social impacts derived from 128 diverse crisis scenarios, extending analysis beyond single-hazard approaches. • Future-oriented impact taxonomy for integration of theory to real-world, place-based social infrastructure cases. • Identifying specific socio-material elements, material settings, embedded networks, and governance routines, that serve as actionable leverage points for enhancing social resilience. • Operational framework for social resilience and proactive crisis management by shifting focus from static infrastructure inventories to dynamic resilience capabilities. Resilient solutions in the built environment primarily focus on technical aspects, with implementation processes often based on a top-down approach that overlooks people’s perspectives. However, social resilience plays a crucial role in addressing polycrises, and social infrastructure is critical for building such resilience. This study aims to enhance understanding of how social infrastructures can improve social resilience. Through analysis of 58 Futures-Wheel workshops with 179 multidisciplinary experts investigating 128 crises, seven groups of social impacts of crises were developed. Subsequently, three Finnish social infrastructure cases were selected to explore how and to what extent they address the identified social impacts. The findings indicate that social infrastructure fosters resilience by generating two specific forms of social capital: bonding capital (essential for immediate response) and bridging capital (critical for prevention and adaptation). However, the analysis also identifies critical trade-offs, including risks of green gentrification, exclusionary group dynamics, and resource fatigue in volunteer-led initiatives. Consequently, policymakers, urban planners, and community organisations should adopt a context-specific approach that balances these networks and integrates both bottom-up and top-down perspectives. By doing so, they can ensure that social infrastructure not only supports everyday life but also strengthens communities’ ability to cope with crises.