Why do we use the term ‘resilience’ and what are the implications of this use for urban space? The reflection in this article is based on this question. The purpose of this text is to illustrate –in dialectic form– the way in which resilience has been used in neoliberal strategies of urban transformation, given that it has been instrumentalized to normalize distinct spaces in cities. To respond to the question, document analysis has been used as a research methodology. Among the main conclusions of the study on which this article is based, two aspects regarding urban resilience that had not been studied to-date stand out. First, the use of the term reflects typical characteristics of performative concepts, with the power that that type of notion has for reducing its object to a hegemonic and repetitive narrative –in this case, the urban and its construction. Second, in concordance with critical urban theory and through a genealogical analysis of Foucauldian inspiration applied to the instrumental use of resilience, it is shown how this concept has been converted into a notion that facilitates the neoliberal project, which has dominated processes of change in urban Latin America in the 21st century.
