Cities are ever-changing complex ecosystems that can be at high tide or low tide–days of prosperity followed by times of crisis and then again by periods of creative change and evolution. According to the ‘100 Resilient Cities’ project, urban resilience is ‘the capacity of individuals, institutions and systems within a city to adapt, survive and thrive no matter what kind of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience’. 1 Either way, emergence–one of the most important concepts in the modern theory of complexity and the systemic conception of life–plays a key role (Capra and Luisi 2014, p. 154). 2 My intention here is to outline the contours of a specific case study on the city of Athens and its resilience thanks to culture during a period of crisis. To achieve this, the notion of emergence and its mechanics are useful–firstly, as a conceptual framework to interpret some key aspects of the city in its process of becoming an example of social innovation and secondly, as a functional key to unlock the premises of some of its innovative proposals and the reasons why they may have been instrumental for a positive social change.