ABSTRACT
The crisis caused by the Covid pandemic is certainly the major disruptive event of this first quarter century, the Russian-Ukrainian military crisis also having the potential (in terms of the global dysfunctions generated) to fit into this typology. Beyond the clear negative effects (social, human, economic, etc.) of the Covid pandemic, however, we must also consider the possible challenges it may pose. The research question of the present article is situated in this thematic register, on a niche topic, urban resilience, re-evaluated, following the materialization of this pandemic context, both in academic research and in terms of contemporary management practice. It is intended, in conjunction with a bibliometric analysis, to highlight possible directions of action within the triple and quadruple helix models for strengthening urban resilience based on the lessons learned from this crisis, directions that are considered useful to a wide range of stakeholders in academia, industry and government. While there is sufficient concern directed towards determining resilience indices, the main thesis considered for this article is that there is a need for synergistic stakeholder action, integrating such elaborations into the proactive framework of a robust yet scalable urban resilience profile in relation to a wide range of events across the urban community security threat spectrum, as was the case with Covid 19.
ABSTRACT
Enhancing urban resilience is an important measure to improve preparedness to public health challenges;therefore, understanding the patterns and determinants of urban recovery is of great significance for sustainable urban development under the pandemic new normal. We first propose an analytical framework of urban recovery capacity, and then apply the geographical detector model and geographic weighted regression model to investigate the dynamic characteristics of urban resilience and urban recovery capacity under the impact of COVID-19 in China. The results show that the overall pattern of vitality recovery follows the U-curve;however, the impact of COVID-19 on each region is significantly different, with the highest degree of recovery in the Northwest and East, and the lowest in the Central and West. The geographical detector model reveals that urban resilience indicators can predominantly explain the variations of urban recovery across cities. The geographically weighted regression model shows that environmental resilience, infrastructure resilience, and social resilience are positively correlated with urban recovery capacity, while economic resilience cannot improve urban recovery capacity in the short term. We suggest promoting urban system diversity and redundancy across different dimensions to enhance urban resilience, but caution that linearly promoting systemic redundancy might harm the long-term sustainability of resource allocations.
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Cities respond to climate concerns mainly through climate action plans (CAPs). The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) was the first report from the international climate body that gave worldwide attention to urban climate change. Yet, a global situation of the content and structure of urban CAPs adopted or published after AR5 is not well represented in the literature. This literature void presents a difficulty in holistically understanding the strengths and weaknesses of existing urban CAPs, hence painting a clearer picture for future urban climate planning. Here, we performed detailed qualitative content analyses on CAPs from 278 cities worldwide. This study sought to achieve two specific objectives;(1) to critically analyse the content and structure of urban CAPs adopted or published from 2015 to 2022, and (2) to examine the extent to which sampled urban CAPs align with selected climate action best practices. There have been variations in the adoption or publication of urban CAPs from 2015 to 2022 across city types and world regions. Our analysis showed a rise in the number of CAPs adopted or published during the global COVID-19 lockdown period as compared to the post and pre-COVID-19 lockdown period. We also observed a transition from developing mainly mitigation-focused CAPs pre-COP21 to both mitigation and adaptation CAPs. About 96% of the sampled urban CAPs are focusing on the transport sector to achieve climate objectives. More than half (55%) of cities with climate change mitigation-related urban CAPs (147 urban CAPs of 267 urban CAPs) do not have deep decarbonization pledges, with less than a quarter of the pledges likely to be achieved by 2030. We found that about 81% of 120 cities with deep decarbonization pledges are more likely to report baseline emission inventory in their urban CAPs. A lack of inclusiveness, transparency and verification, evidence-based climate planning, comprehensiveness, and integration were the most common areas of non-alignment with best practices. The explicit consideration of synergies, trade-offs, or conflicts is significantly low. The evidence is a catalyst for understanding the dynamics in existing urban CAPs to shape future urban climate action planning. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.
ABSTRACT
One of the key indicators to measure the sustainability and resilience of a city during a public health crisis is how well it can meet the daily needs of its residents. During the COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai in 2022, e-commerce shopping and delivery became the most important method for ensuring the city's material supplies. This article uses the distribution data of a fresh e-commerce platform's pre-warehouse and static population distribution data to establish a basic material supply system evaluation model for the city and explore its resilience potential. Focusing on the central urban area of Shanghai, this study uses a population heat map with geographic coordinates to reflect the static distribution of residents and obtains the distribution data of the e-commerce pre-warehouses. Using kernel density analysis, the relationship between the pre-warehouses and the residents' needs is established. Through analysis, it was found that the supply capacity of fresh food in different areas of Shanghai during the lockdown could be categorized as insufficient, adequate, or excessive. Based on these three categories, improvement strategies were proposed. Finally, this article suggests establishing a scientific supply security system to promote urban sustainability and prepare for future challenges.
ABSTRACT
As tourism and its related sectors have flourished in Bali Province, Denpasar Municipality, as the capital, has attracted significant urbanization. As a result of this development tendency, the city has become the densest location in the Bali Area. Denpasar Municipality is suffering with urban issues such as waste, land-use changing, housing bubble, and cultural asset loss as a result of the negative effects of urbanization. Not only from the degradation of urban livelihood threat, but Denpasar is also at risk from multi-hazard disasters such as earthquakes, tsunami, floods, extreme weather, forest and land fire, extreme waves, and beach erosion. Currently, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the decline of the tourism business, have forced Denpasar Municipality's resilience to the edge.In addition, to address the threat of disaster and urban issues in Denpasar, this research was conducted to analyze the resilience in the city. Yet, the previous studies have not been addressed the resilience of the urban crisis and disaster in a holistic approach. First, the semi-qualitative research by CDRI (Climate Disaster Resilience Index) Framework was conducted to measure the urban resilience in Denpasar. The result of five parameters (physical, social, institutional, economic, and environment) reveals that West Denpasar has the highest resilience score, followed by South, North, and East Denpasar. In addition, to assess the supporting and restricting resilience factors in Denpasar, a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews with different responsible institutions for disaster management in Denpasar was undertaken. The result shows that sufficient infrastructure and facilities, bonus demographic, collaboration with the private sector, sufficient information access, and control from the government are the supporting factors of resilience while urbanization challenge, budget shifting, the management of the problem, the ownership of the asset, collaboration with the community and focus on physical loss and damage are the restraining factors of resilience in Denpasar Municipality.
ABSTRACT
The focus of this research is to identify the dynamics of regional economic development through digital trends towards tourist visits and the promotion of tourist destinations in the Lake Toba area during the F1 Powerboat World Championship (F1H2O) event on Lake Toba, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Through the conduct of online research methods (ORMs) in diagnosing digital social issues and trends regarding the events, the results show that there was an effort to maximize the increase in regional economic development, by utilizing the potential and attractiveness of holding the F1 Powerboat as part of sports tourism. As an event aims to spur the movement of domestic tourists to super-priority destination areas, the implementation of the F1 Powerboat event is not only a driving force in the recovery and improvement of the local economy after the COVID-19 Pandemic, but also a venue for the promotion of other tourist destinations in North Sumatra. However, the positive impacts of this event organization on sustainable economic growth in the surrounding areas is not without reservations. The event has received some negative feedback, which include the problems of event preparation and implementation, and also the limited awareness of local community tourism. This research suggests that in order to achieve sustainable regional development and urban resilience, the future organization of sport tourism events should not only focus on the economic objectives, but also on the other aspects including socio-cultural and environmental perspectives. © 2023 by the authors.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated restrictions have raised the awareness of building pandemic-resilient cities. Prior studies often evaluated the resilience of one type of urban system while lacking a comparison across various urban subsystems. This study fills this gap by measuring and comparing the adaptive resilience to the pandemic of various urban subsystems in Chinese cities. We propose a novel outcome measurement of the pandemic's socioeconomic impacts on cities, i.e., the citizens' complaints data, and use its temporal changes to measure cities' adaptive resilience to the pandemic. We find a wide range of urban subsystems were severely shocked by the pandemic, including the urban economy, construction-and-housing sector, welfare system, and education system. Different urban subsystems exhibit divergent degrees of adaptive resilience to the pandemic. Using cluster analysis, we also identify three types of cities with different patterns of adaptive resilience: cities whose general economies were the least resilient, cities whose construction-and-housing system was the least resilient, and cities that were mostly affected by restriction measures. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the pandemic's socioeconomic costs and help identify the divergent resilience of different urban subsystems so as to develop targeted policy interventions to improve cities' resilience to the pandemic.
ABSTRACT
With climate change, urban resilience is becoming a critical concept for helping cities withstand disasters and accidents. However, current research often focuses on concept identification, leaving a gap between concept and implementation. This study aims to investigate the lack of urban resilience in the face of sudden weather disasters, with a focus on the inadequate capacity of urban systems to effectively govern such events. The Zhengzhou subway flooding accident on 20 July 2021, serves as a case study for this research, and the accident causation theories, such as the Swiss cheese model, Surry's accident model, and trajectory intersection theory are used to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the accident's causes. Through this analysis, the paper identifies vulnerabilities in the natural, technical, and man-made systems of the urban system, and reveals deficiencies in four aspects of urban resilience: natural, technological, institutional, and organizational. Based on this analysis, the study proposes a resilient city governance framework that integrates the "Natural-Technical-Man-made” systems, offers relevant recommendations for urban resilience governance, and discusses potential challenges to urban resilience implementation.
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The COVID-19 pandemic, which lasted for three years, has had a great impact on the public health system, society and economy of cities, revealing the insufficiency of urban resilience under large-scale public health events (PHEs). Given that a city is a networked and multidimensional system with complex interactions, it is helpful to improve urban resilience under PHEs based on system thinking. Therefore, this paper proposes a dynamic and systematic urban resilience framework that incorporates four subsystems (governance, infrastructures, socioeconomy and energy-material flows). The composite index, system dynamics and epidemic simulation model are integrated into the framework to show the nonlinear relationships in the urban system and reflect the changing trend of urban resilience under PHEs. Then, urban resilience under different epidemic scenarios and response policy scenarios is calculated and discussed to provide some suggestions for decision-makers when faced with the trade-off between the control of PHEs and the maintenance of city operation. The paper concludes that control policies could be adjusted according to the characteristics of PHEs; strict control policies under a severe epidemic could lead to a significant decrease in urban resilience, while a more flexible control strategy can be adopted under a mild epidemic scenario to ensure the normal operation of urban functions. Moreover, the critical functions and impact factors of each subsystem are identified.
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Making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable is one of the main global commitments for urban development, on which the Covid-19 pandemic adds both pressure and windows of opportunity. Despite an emerging scholarship, ambiguities exist with regard to the similarities, differences and trade-offs between urban resilience, sustainability, inclusiveness and other related concepts. Our empirical research aims to broaden understanding of urban resilience - sustainability nexus and its connection with urban safety and inclusiveness. To this end, we explore the variation in the perception of urban challenges and the interplay between the hazards, shocks and stresses identified and encoded by the cities participating in the 100 Resilient Cities (100 RC) Programme. The results of a multiple correspondence analysis show that hazards and acute shocks cluster together and differentiate from chronic stresses. This allowed us to discriminate between two dimensions: urban resilience and urban sustainability; at their intersection we found different "latent" challenges that score relatively high on both dimensions and represent what we call the urban safety and inclusiveness dimension. A fertile seedbed has been created for adding to the existing literature a new representation of the relationship between urban resilience and sustainability, with forays into safety and inclusiveness as well.
ABSTRACT
The global population has rapidly urbanized over the past century, and the urbanization rate is projected to reach about 70% by 2050. In line with these trends and the increasing recognition of the significance of cities in addressing local and global challenges, a lot of research has been published on urban studies and planning since the middle of the twentieth century. While the number of publications has been rapidly increasing over the past decades, there is still a lack of studies analyzing the field's knowledge structure and its evolution. To fill this gap, this study analyzes data related to more than 100,000 articles indexed under the "Urban Studies” and "Regional & Urban Planning” subject categories of the Web of Science. We conduct various analyses such as term co-occurrence, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, and citation analysis to identify the key defining thematic areas of the field and examine how they have evolved. We also identify key authors, journals, references, and organizations that have contributed more to the field's development. The analysis is conducted over five periods: 1956–1975 (the genesis period), 1976–1995 (economic growth and environmentalism), 1996–2015 (sustainable development and technological innovation), 2016–2019 (climate change and SDGs), and 2020 onwards (post-COVID urbanism). Four major thematic areas are identified: 1) socio-economic issues and inequalities, 2) economic growth and innovation, 3) urban ecology and land use planning, and 4) urban policy and governance and sustainability. The first two are recurring themes over different periods, while the latter two have gained currency over the past 2–3 decades following global events and policy frameworks related to global challenges like sustainability and climate change. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, issues related to smart cities, big data analytics, urban resilience, and governance have received particular attention. We found disproportionate contributions to the field from the Global North. Some countries from the Global South with rapid urbanization rates are underrepresented, which may have implications for the future of urbanization. We conclude the study by highlighting thematic gaps and other critical issues that need to be addressed by urban scholars to accelerate the transition toward sustainable and resilient cities.
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Urban resilience reflects the ability of cities to resist, absorb, adapt and recover from danger in a timely and efficient manner, which is critical to the normal operations of cities and the daily lives of citizens. An increasing number of cities have included resilience in their city planning. Thus, conducting the resilience evaluation is necessary for urban resilience improvement and enhancement. This paper proposed a MACBETH-based method for urban resilience evaluation, in which a multi-dimensional evaluation system including four dimensions and sixteen criteria is established, and the main procedure was presented to determine the overall and dimensional resilience indices. The proposed method was applied to evaluate Beijing's urban resilience. The results shown that Beijing's resilience improved from 2016 to 2020, despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
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COVID-19 has heavily attacked the urban system and has continued to cause economic losses and human fatalities worldwide. Methodologies to properly evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of epidemic prevention strategies are urged, and to develop mitigation and improvement are required post-COVID. The urban system includes many elements;existing epidemic prevention and control strategy evaluation only focus on the effectiveness of containing confirmed cases. Therefore, a new resilience concept by combing multifaceted effectiveness is proposed for evaluating how epidemic prevention strategy influences urban system. The approach reflects the short-term factual effectiveness for epidemic mitigation and long-term value, including urban social and institutional resilience improvement and PDCA-cycle-based dynamic adjustability. An integrated model is used to evaluate prevention and control strategies in Shenzhen and Shanghai, China. The scores obtained are consistent with the facts and indicate that Shenzhen has more reasonable strategies for urban system than Shanghai. The strategy evaluation framework based on resilience proposed in this paper presents an innovative approach for assessing public health emergencies more comprehensively. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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The focus of this study is on the influence of urban ‘woods’ on people’s quality of life in disadvantaged neighbourhoods investigated via the lens of architecture in a Sub-Saharan metropolis. The new intra-Covid Urban Agenda acknowledges that current urban and state-wide resilience management plans, policies, and practices of neighbourhood are failing. While the architectural sector— tasked with enhancing people’s quality of life, must promote more environmentally sustainable approaches to human-made surroundings, its design, and its management. The increasing attention on people’s health and well-being in human-made surroundings, as the intra-covid renaissance of a new age unfolds, calls into question the role of society’s environmental relationships. The study explicates ecologic, epidemiologic, and psychologic engaging scenarios. A city’s environment redesigned as Eco-equitable Community Absorbent Spaces (ECaS) can foster neighbourhoods with economic, mental, and physical cohesion— that in part encourage habitat disaster risk reduction and the health of the citizenry, when inclusive of all stakeholders’ ambition.
ABSTRACT
Social vulnerability is related to the differential abilities of socio-economic groups to withstand and respond to the adverse impacts of hazards and stressors. COVID-19, as a human risk, is influenced by and contributes to social vulnerability. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between social vulnerability and the prevalence of COVID-19 infection in the counties of Khuzestan province, Iran. To determine the social vulnerability of the counties in the Khuzestan province, decision-making techniques and geographic information systems were employed. Also, the Pearson correlation was used to examine the relationship between the two variables. The findings indicate that Ahvaz county and the province's northeastern counties have the highest levels of social vulnerability. There was no significant link between the social vulnerability index of the counties and the rate of COVID-19 cases (per 1000 persons). We argue that all counties in the province should implement and pursue COVID-19 control programs and policies. This is particularly essential for counties with greater rates of social vulnerability and COVID-19 cases.
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At present, the novel coronavirus variant strain has broken out in some cities in China. After prevention and control, the epidemic situation is basically in the final stage of control. To assess the resilience of cities in different regions, this paper established a COVID-19 resilience assessment model based on TOPSIS and fuzzy mathematics. Firstly, according to the concept of urban resilience, three first-level indicators are selected, namely elasticity, resilience and adaptation. Then 17 second-level indicators are selected to quantify the three first-level indicators. Finally, based on the results of the model, possible approaches to improve resilience in COVID-19 prevention and control are proposed. © 2022 SPIE.
ABSTRACT
With the global prevalence of COVID-19 disease, the concept of urban resilience against pandemics has drawn the attention of a wide range of researchers, urban planners, and policymakers. This study aims to identify the major dimensions and principles of urban resilience to pandemics through a systematic review focused on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and comparing different perspectives regarding resilient urban environments to such diseases. Based on the findings, the study proposes a conceptual framework and a series of principles of urban resilience to pandemics, consisting of four spatial levels: housing, neighborhoods, city, and the regional and national scales, and three dimensions of pandemic resilience: pandemic-related health requirements, environmental psychological principles, and general resilience principles. The findings show that resilient cities should be able to implement the pandemic-related health requirements, the psychological principles of the environment to reduce the stresses caused by the pandemic, and the general principles of resilience in the smart city context. This framework provides scholars and policymakers with a comprehensive understanding of resilience on different scales and assists them in making better-informed decisions.
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Sustainable development and urban resilience are dominant urban planning paradigms that have become buzzwords in urban planning and policy domains over the past 2–3 decades. While these two paradigms have been analyzed and scrutinized in different studies, the interconnection between them in policy realms is understudied. Compact development policy is expected to contribute to a variety of sustainability goals. However, these goals’ alignment with the principles and goals of urban resilience is under question. This research tries to shed some light on this issue. A critical review method is employed to understand how compactness as a sustainable urban development policy relates to different principles and dimensions of urban resilience. First, the conceptual and theoretical relationship between urban resilience and compact city is established. Next, the resulting framework is used to critically analyze 124 articles to understand how the compact city policy relates to urban resilience from different dimensions and principles. Densification and intensification, mixed land use and diversity, and spatial connectivity and public transportation are identified as principles of the compact city. Finally, the interconnection between compact city policy and urban resilience dimensions and principles is explored and assessed through examining the selected literature. The results of the review show some alignments between compact city policy outcomes and urban resilience. However, the level of alignment may vary depending on the context, scale, or dimension. In other words, while compact city in one scale/dimension can increase urban resilience to a specific adverse event or stressor, it might increase vulnerability to others in another scale/dimension. From the policy perspective, compact development policy and urban resilience principles should clearly be defined a priori to reach favorable outcomes.
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This research uses panel data of cities in Jiangsu from 2009 to 2018 to construct a resilience framework that measures the level of urban resilience. A combination of the entropy method, Theil index, Moran ' sI , and the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) is used to explore regional resilience development differences, the spatial correlation characteristics of urban resilience, and its influencing factors. The study finds that: (1) The spatial heterogeneity of regional resilience development is significant, as the overall level of resilience presents a spatial distribution pattern of descending from southern Jiangsu to central Jiangsu and to northern Jiangsu. (2) The total Theil index shows a wave-like downward trend during the study period. The differences between southern Jiangsu, central Jiangsu, and northern Jiangsu make up the main reason for the overall difference of urban resilience in Jiangsu Province. Among the three regions, the gap in resilience development level within southern Jiangsu is the largest. (3) There is a clear positive spatial correlation between urban resilience in the province and an obvious agglomeration trend of urban resilience levels. Among all subsystems, urban ecological resilience is the weakest and needs to be further improved. (4) Lastly, among the five factors affecting urban resilience, general public fiscal expenditure/GDP, which characterizes government factors, has the largest positive impact on urban resilience, while foreign trade has a negative impact. In the following studies, the theme of urban resilience should be constantly deepened, and more extensive data monitoring should be carried out for the urban system to improve the diversity of data sources, so as to assess urban resilience more accurately. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11069-022-05368-x.
ABSTRACT
This study analyzed the effects of the urban institutional actions and voluntary actions on COVID-19. We use two fundamental organizational model that underpin crisis management on local level: the top-down and the loosely coupled model to understand what choice works better. Based on data in 64 Italian regions, we employed a random-effect panel model. It was found that: 1) despite the non-significant effect of local police controls, urban planning has an important role in constraining the spread of the pandemic since context characterized by an update local plan are related to smaller values of COVID-19 incidence. 2) Vaccination on voluntary action also helps to reduce the COVID-19 incidence. 3) NPOs initiative are positively related to the incidence over time. In light of results, a mixed coordination model with authority in a central role and voluntary action inside a formal net of emergency seems to be the optimal urban resilient response to the pandemic. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.