Project-community interface conditions, not just physical delivery, shape whether infrastructure builds or erodes community resilience, with practical lessons for impact assessment.
Global infrastructure investment is projected at US$94 trillion to 2040 (GI Hub, 2017). Australian public projects alone total A$242 billion for 2024-25 to 2028-29 (Infrastructure Australia, 2025). Impact assessment (IA) has long managed these projects' social impacts but rarely asked whether their delivery builds or erodes the community resilience needed for disaster risk reduction, climate action and sustainable development. Drawing on Carmen et al.'s social capital framework and Imperiale and Vanclay's work on collective intentionality, I used PLS-SEM on surveys of 1,524 residents in 11 Australian communities with major projects to test how six project-community interface conditions that practitioners can influence shape resilience.
Relationship quality has the strongest direct effect on resilience. Engagement has the largest total effect, building trust, making benefits visible and improving relationship quality. Communities perceiving more cumulative development report greater resilience yet rate benefits lower and risks higher: an infrastructure accumulation paradox. Perceived risks weaken resilience only by eroding the relationship quality engagement builds: a relational risk pathway.
The findings reinforce that physical delivery is not the only route to resilience. In stable-governance settings worldwide, they point to shifts to expand IA's role in sustainable development: ensuring meaningful engagement and tracking relationship quality across project lifecycles, addressing cumulative development legacies, and managing perceived risks through visible benefits.
Sabit Otor is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University's Institute for Infrastructure in Society, researching social licence, cumulative effects and community resilience.