Future scenarios provide challenging, plausible and relevant stories about how the future could unfold. Urban Futures (UF) research has identified a substantial set (>450) of seemingly disparate scenarios published over the period 1997–2011 and within this research, a sub-set of >160 scenarios has been identified (and categorized) based on their narratives according to the structure first proposed by the Global Scenario Group (GSG) in 1997; three world types (Business as Usual, Barbarization, and Great Transitions) and six scenarios, two for each world type (Policy Reform—PR, Market Forces—MF, Breakdown—B, Fortress World—FW, Eco-Communalism—EC and New Sustainability Paradigm—NSP). It is suggested that four of these scenario archetypes (MF, PR, NSP and FW) are sufficiently distinct to facilitate active stakeholder engagement in futures thinking. Moreover they are accompanied by a well-established, internally consistent set of narratives that provide a deeper understanding of the key fundamental drivers (e.g., STEEP—Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental and Political) that could bring about realistic world changes through a push or a pull effect. This is testament to the original concept of the GSG scenarios and their development and refinement over a 16 year period.

‘Critical infrastructure’ generally refers to significant pieces of plant and equipment, such as power stations and motorways. High population densities in cities, and the increasing interconnectedness of the services and supply chains that sustain them, mean local infrastructure is equally important. Local infrastructure must be able to cope with system shocks, whether from natural hazards, terrorism or catastrophic failures. Engineering design plays a major part in achieving this, but shocks will occur that overwhelm even the most conservative design. Local infrastructure must therefore be able to adapt to, and recover from, shocks: it must be resilient. Local infrastructure has evolved with little consideration for resilience of the interconnected system as a whole, whereas resilience has been the subject of much research in many other systems. This paper explores the lessons that local infrastructure can learn from such research by reviewing literature related to resilience of ecological, economic, physical infrastructure, community/social and government systems. A critical analysis highlights the factors affecting resilience and different approaches that need to be taken into account when attempting to model infrastructure at a local scale. The ultimate aim is to provide an evidence base on which to build resilience into various infrastructures and direct future local infrastructure resilience research in an age of austerity.