While resilience is a term with a long history, it has gotten a specific meaning of late. And while cities have often been shaped by risk and disaster (such as diseases, war, floods, water scarcity, earthquakes and fires), the notion of resilience is distinct from mitigation and adaptation. This panel will discuss the term resilience from a historical perspective, and explore it within the context of the contemporary (capitalist) city, in which risks are accepted and control is given up. It will look at the link between the social and the physical embedded in the idea of resilience, and ask the question what this social component means for the production and understanding of risks and stresses, and also for how we address risks.