Waterfront asset, vulnerability, and coastal community resilience: Case study from Bangladesh

Abstract

Low-income coastal waterfront settlements are widely viewed as spaces of risk, informality, and deficit, as the assets that sustain everyday life within these perils remain underexplored in urban resilience research. Yet the role of these social, spatial, and livelihood assets in shaping community resilience has largely remained overlooked and understudied. Using evidence from Rasulpur, a vulnerable waterfront settlement in southwestern Bangladesh, this research aimed to construct an asset-based community resilience framework. It examined both its socioeconomic and spatio-environmental vulnerabilities and available assets. It used a qualitative approach that included observation, interviews, community narratives, and spatial analysis, and analyzed five corresponding asset categories: physical, economic, natural, human, and social. The findings show that vulnerability and asset are not separate conditions but overlapping realities embedded within the same waterfront spaces. While the physical and economic conditions appear the most problematic, natural, human, and social assets provide important bases for adaptation and transformation. Finally, the findings are translated into key resilience principles and a schematic waterfront strategy, offering a spatially grounded, practice-oriented framework for asset-based coastal community resilience.