Configurations of spatial resilience : impact of connectivity on spatial resilience

Abstract

Urban resilience is more than just about a city’s ability to resist and ‘bounce-back’ after a disruption. Rather, resilience is also about a city’s ability to respond to and adapt to changing circumstances. Recent developments in urban resilience theory requires that a space be considered at multiple scales when assessing urban resilience. Yet, most assessments of urban resilience have either neglected spatial elements of cities or have only considered a single scale. In response to this oversite, there is a small but growing body of literature which has begun to explore the spatial elements of resilience. Within this context, connectivity is often identified as an important determinant of both resilience and urban design. Connectivity facilitates adaption by creating more opportunities for potential interaction and, though a diverse array of connections, can enable the city to reorganise itself into different configurations should the need arise. While the overall connectivity of the network is important, the configuration of the network is perhaps even more important for spatial questions of resilience. Drawing on the ideas of configurational analysis, we explore the properties of connectivity in terms of access, flow and efficiency as well as how they are measured spatially. Through the case study of Hong Kong, SAR, we then present a method which combines the properties of connectivity with each other and at multiple scales and through multiple modes of transport. Through our approach, we are able to identify areas with varying strengths of connectivity at various scales, and which there for have varying adaptive capacity.