Urban resilience : a dynamic interaction of place and people

Abstract

Urban systems can be disrupted and evolved by dynamic disruptions like natural disasters, health crises, and social movements. As a response, urban researchers have focused on building urban resilience - the ability of an urban system and its subsystems to remain functional and safeguard human activities during disruptions. Existing studies on “urban resilience” emphasize two aspects: the complex nested constituents of an urban system and their spatiotemporal dynamics. However, the complexity and dynamics of urban systems have hardly been well measured, engendering a gap between scholarly work and planning practices. This calls for refining our understanding of urban system constituents and leveraging data/methodologies to better measure and evaluate urban resilience.

From an urban planning perspective, this study views "people" and "place" as two essential urban system constituents, where their interaction shapes human activities. Considering people’s needs, places’ functions, and their interactions can significantly change amid disruptions, this study aims to (re)conceptualize “urban resilience” as a process of how people-place interactions evolve, using mobility dynamics as a proxy to investigate their spatiotemporal dynamics. Based on empirical studies of Hong Kong amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the study answers four research questions: (1) How could we interpret and quantify ‘urban resilience’ as the interactions of people’s needs and places’ functions? (2) From a place-based perspective, how could the function of places serve people? (3) From a people-based perspective, how could people’s needs be satisfied by functions and activities at places? (4) What are the policy implications for promoting urban resilience?

The key findings of this study are as follows. First, people's needs and place's functions could be spatiotemporally dynamic. By operationalizing sets of indicators to assess people-based resilience (characterized by socioeconomic characteristics) and place-based resilience (characterized by physical settings), the study reveals the varying people's needs and places’ functions across TPUs of Hong Kong (the chosen spatial analytical units) over time. Some TPUs have relatively high resilience values while others do not. The TPUs with high resilience in the short term might be low in resilience in the long run. The results indicate the unequal ability of localities to handle disruptions. Second, based on spatial autocorrelation examinations, people's needs (people-based resilience) might not necessarily be integrated with place's functions (place-based resilience) across space and time. The population in localities exposed to more risks or with particular needs can still have no better access to more resilient functions and facilities. Vulnerability and secondary disruptions at places can co-exist. Third, places respond differently to satisfy people's needs. Mobility dynamics can vary across transport systems, types of venues, and metro stations (or OD pairs) during the pandemic. The trip resilience (TR) to, from, and among metro stations can be shaped by place-based resilience in station areas, such as transport provision, street density, and the intensity and diversity of supporting facilities. Fourth, people can have dynamic needs for functions at places, reflected by the variations in mobility patterns of different people during disruptions. TR of stations could be explained by their people-based resilience, such as lower-income population and population density. By clustering riders based on selected trip characteristics (e.g., trip frequencies), the study finds that riders varied in their mobility patterns. The riders who increased trips were found in areas with high population density and more public and temporal housing populations. The elderly and young among these riders were more likely to live in areas with more low-income populations. The above findings can provide insights into placemaking for Hong Kong's urban resilience planning and management.

This study sheds light on the conceptualization and measurement of urban resilience, which can help policymakers assess how different people’s needs are and can be satisfied by the functions of places during disruptions. The proposed people-place framework for urban resilience, as well as the procedures and methods employed, are highly transferable across contexts.