In pursuit of resilient urban form typologies : testing a quantitative approach for morphologically based urban resilience

Abstract

Urban systems which can absorb shocks, manage crises while simultaneously adapting to change can be regarded as being resilient. Furthermore, with the adoption of the New Urban Agenda by the UN, resilience has now been cemented as a key factor for sustainable urbanism. Yet, even with this the acknowledgement, there has been limited research into the role of urban form in building resilience. Through ongoing research into spatial resilience, several determinants which enhance the resilience of cities have been identified, namely connectivity, diversity, capital, redundancy and modularity. By using these spatial determinants as a basis, this paper aims to explore which urban typologies are most likely to enhance the spatial resilience of a city. To achieve this aim, we discuss each of the determinants and their related indicators. Next, using Manhattan, New York City, as a case study, we assess the performance of the city against the indicators. We then perform a Gaussian finite mixed model cluster analysis on these indictors and identify thirteen urban typologies. From there, we explore each of the typologies in terms of their general morphological properties and find that the grain of plots and blocks likely has a vital role to play inbuilding spatial adaptive capacity.