There are many definitions of resilience, and a growing body of literature suggests that how resilience is defined may have significant consequences for planning and policy making outcomes. In the Great Lakes Region, resilience is gaining increasing attention from planners and policy makers in response to more frequent disruptions to social-ecological systems and built environments from coastal hazards. There has not yet been extensive research into how resilience is being defined in practice and how these definitions can affect geographies of risk and resilience and contribute to varying ecological, social, cultural, political, and economic outcomes. In this paper, we analyzed how stakeholders engaged in natural resource management activities within the Laurentian Great Lakes coastal environment define resilience and discuss the implications for planning and policy making through a critical geography and critical space lens. We systematically reviewed gray literature published by these stakeholders to document definitions of resilience. We then applied a 5Ws + H of resilience framework—resilience for whom, what, where, when, why, and how—to develop descriptive statistics and qualitatively analyze the definitions, considering the potential implications for ongoing regional planning and policy making efforts. Our analysis revealed a large degree of variation in the definitions, although we note two distinct gaps. We discuss how these gaps could affect ongoing regional planning and policy making efforts, and we lay out four research needs to inform planning and policy making going forward.
