Assessing urban resilience in China from the perspective of socioeconomic and ecological sustainability

Global uncertainties brought about by external shocks have surged in recent years, posing huge challenges to achieve the global 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Urban resilience determines how cities responds, adapts and recovers from external shocks. At present, the theoretical analysis and systematic evaluation of urban resilience in China are still insufficient. Here, we constructed an urban resilience index (URI) system from the perspective of socioeconomic and ecological sustainability to evaluate the urban resilience of prefecture-level cities in China from 2000 to 2020. Then, entropy method and exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) were used to investigate the spatiotemporal evolution of urban resilience in China. Finally, the influencing factors that hinder the improvement of urban resilience in China were identified through the obstacle diagnosis model. Results showed that over the past 20 years, China's urban resilience has been greatly improved, as shown in the average URI increased from 0.048 in 2000 to 0.092 in 2010, and further raised to 0.148 in 2020. But the growth rate of China's urban resilience improvement over the past decade (2010−2020) has been slower than in the previous decade (2000−2010). Over the past two decades, China's urban resilience varied across the geographical regions, urban agglomerations and population scales, showing that URI was higher in eastern regions, urban agglomerations and cities with larger population scales than in the mid-west, non-urban agglomerations, and cities with smaller population scales. China's urban resilience has positive spatial auto-correlation, indicating that cities with higher or lower URI tend to have a trend of spatial agglomeration. The dominant factors that hinder the improvement of urban resilience in China have changed over time, manifested as the role of infrastructure gradually weakening, and the role of economic level, industrial structure, and education level gradually strengthening. In view of the heterogeneity of urban resilience in China and the complexity of its influencing factors, differentiated rather than one-size-fits-all countermeasures to improve urban resilience may be more effective. Our findings would provide a beneficial reference for China and other developing countries to optimize urban planning to cope with external shocks and build sustainable and resilient cities.