Planning for Resilient Cities: Linking Urban Resilience to Spatial Structure

Professor Li, Weifeng   (Principal Investigator (PI))

15

2016-04-01

2017-06-30

45980

Planning for Resilient Cities: Linking Urban Resilience to Spatial Structure

Climate change, Natural disturbances, Resilience, Urban spatial structure

Urban Studies and PlanningUrban Development

201511159133

Seed Fund for PI Research – Basic Research

2015

Completed

Natural disturbances associated with climate change are closely related to the dramatic changes in population and land use in cities. Phenomenon shows that there is spatial mismatch of resilience in cities, especially in the big cities, e.g. areas with low urban resilience are often the places around low-grade communities, with poor natural and physical environment. This research aims to examine the connections between urban resilience to natural disturbances and urban spatial structure, both theoretically and empirically. In detail, this research aims to explore and answer the question: to what extent and how urban spatial structure improvement contributes to the spatial match of urban resilience to natural disturbances through the linkages between urban resilience and urban spatial structure？ In order to answer these questions, theoretically, resilience will be analyzed in a dynamic perspective consisting of (1) system performance (SP), (2) recovery duration (RD), (3) recovery effort (RE), and (4) learning and adaption (L&A). The first three stages, which connect to different dimensions of urban spatial structures (ecological, infrastructure, and socio-economic structures), are further studied, followed by the learning and adaption phase. Determinants of changes of urban spatial structure will be identified and further explored together with L&A, which will contribute to making strategies for future improvement of urban resilience. Empirically, the city of Shenzhen, located in the south of Guangdong Province, China, and its susceptibility to urban flooding is chosen as an example. Precipitation and socio-economic data from the yearly statistics, reported damages, injuries and deaths from typhoons, and remote sensing data will be used to simulate and map urban resilience and urban spatial structure, as well as to improve the potential capacity for urban resilience. The study will contribute to a quantitative method to calculate urban resilience within a specific disturbance in a real world, which provides an intuitive method to find the mismatch problems about urban resilience. It also provides a theoretical mechanism for improving urban resilience to natural disturbances from the perspective of urban spatial structure, which can be applied in other rapidly urbanizing cities in China.