Project description:Achieving urban economic resilience is a critical objective for sustainable development in the face of external shocks. Public health expenditure plays a pivotal role in enhancing urban economic resilience by improving health outcomes, optimizing resource allocation, and strengthening economic capacity to withstand risks. However, the mechanisms through which public health expenditure influences resilience, as well as its regional variations, remain underexplored. This study utilizes panel data from 284 cities in China spanning from 2008 to 2021, constructing an econometric model that incorporates mediating variables such as technological innovation and per capita GDP, to assess both the direct and indirect effects of public health expenditure on urban economic resilience. Additionally, spatial econometric models are employed to further analyze the spatial spillover effects of public health expenditure. The findings reveal that public health expenditure significantly enhances urban economic resilience, with technological innovation and per capita GDP serving as key mediating pathways. Regional analysis shows that the impact is most pronounced in eastern cities, followed by central cities, while the effect in western cities is weaker and, in some cases, negative. Spatial analysis further indicates that public health expenditure has a significant positive spillover effect on neighboring cities, primarily through resource sharing and technology diffusion. This study suggests that optimizing the structure of public health expenditure, increasing infrastructure investment, supporting non-capital and resource-dependent cities, and promoting digital healthcare and regional cooperation are essential to enhancing economic resilience, fostering high-quality urban development, and advancing regional equity.
Project description:Urban agglomerations serve as crucial spatial carriers of economic development, and their spatial structure profoundly influences regional economic resilience. This study draws on Martin's conceptualization of economic resilience and, considering the administrative hierarchy and development stage of China's urban system, examines the impact of the layered spatial structure of urban agglomerations on regional economic resilience. Based on data from 17 Chinese urban agglomerations from 2005 to 2019, this research employs a one-step system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model to empirically analyze the effects of three mechanisms - polycentricity within urban agglomerations, inter-city development disparities, and inter-city industrial gradients - on regional economic resilience. The findings reveal that both the polycentric distribution of population and economy and the coupling of dual centers significantly positively affect the economic resilience of urban agglomerations. The potential development energy difference between core and peripheral cities can be transformed into developmental momentum for peripheral cities, thereby generating positive spatial externalities that play a significant and positive role in enhancing economic resilience. As the ratio of secondary to tertiary industry employees in peripheral and core cities nears 1, urban agglomerations' economic resilience strengthens, underscoring the importance of a balanced industrial gradient and regional collaboration in mitigating economic shocks. This study also considers the heterogeneity of whether the urban agglomerations are coastal and whether they contain a national-level central city. The research finds that for inland urban agglomerations and those with existing national-level central cities, developing a polycentric spatial structure can effectively enhance the region's economic resilience in responding to various shocks. Furthermore, aside from a few more developed coastal urban agglomerations, other inland urban agglomerations should continue to focus on spatial agglomeration, fostering core cities to strengthen economic competitiveness. Finally, given the varying industrialization stages and structures within urban agglomerations, appropriately adjusting the industrial gradient is essential.
Project description:Risk events frequently occur in "complex urban public spaces" (CUPSs) and cause serious economic losses and casualties. To reduce the risks and enhance the system resilience, this paper formulates a theoretical framework to assess the resilience of CUPSs. Resilience is defined as the ratio of preparedness to vulnerability, according to the implication of the concept. Three-level practical indicator systems were established for these two dimensions, respectively. Furthermore, a hybrid approach combining the Analytic Network Process (ANP) and the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) was adopted. The Chongqing West Railway Station (the Station (W)) and the Lianglukou Rail Transit Station (the Station (L)) were used for a case study. The results showed that the Chongqing West Railway Station was more resilient to risks than the Lianglukou Rail Transit Station. Therefore, the proposed theoretical framework could be applied in assessing the resilience level of CUPSs. Resilience improvement strategies can be formulated according to the assessment results. Furthermore, the practical indicators could also provide references for urban disaster management.
Project description:Due to accelerating climate change and the need for new development to accommodate population growth, adaptation of urban drainage systems has become a pressing issue in cities. Questions arise whether decentralised urban drainage systems are a better alternative to centralised systems, and whether Nature Based Solutions' (NBS) multifunctionality also brings economic benefits. This research aims to develop spatio-economic scenarios to support cities in increasing their resilience to urban flooding with NBS. The novelty of our work lies in the automated routines to assess the potential for decentralised NBS within the existing urban catchment. The identification of locations and dimensioning is based on open, publicly available geospatial data. Moreover, a block-based decentralization potential metric is developed to indicate stormwater mitigation potential in any urban setting. The Ecully catchment, Lyon metropolitan area (France), is presented as a case study to achieve zero combined sewer overflow (CSO) for specific design storm events. This planning workflow enables project cost savings through the most suitable allocation of distributed interventions, with cost functions also incorporating scaling effects. By reducing the number of decentralised NBS sites compared to smaller, wide-distributed interventions up to 34 % of project costs are saved when planning for a 5-year design storm and up to 7 % for a 100-year design storm. When the decentralised NBS scenario is analysed alongside other urban stormwater management practices, the centralised constructed wetland for CSO results to be the most economical solution due to the higher retention capacity and scaling effect, significantly outperforming the grey alternatives.
Project description:With increased uncertainty and instability worldwide, how to enhance the urban economy resilience effectively has become one main issue for urban economic development. Based on the measurement of the economic resilience of 241 cities at the prefecture level and above in China using the sensitive index method, we scrutinize the impact of industrial specialization agglomeration and diversification agglomeration on urban economic resilience. Results indicate that, during the impact resistance period, industrial diversification agglomeration, especially related industrial diversification agglomeration, can enhance urban economic resilience, whereas industrial specialization agglomeration has no positive effect. In contrast, during the period of recovery and adjustment, industrial specialization agglomeration can improve urban economic resilience, and industrial diversification agglomeration, especially related industrial diversification agglomeration, has no positive effect. Further analysis indicates that, under the interaction of specialization and diversification agglomerations, the effect of industrial agglomeration on urban economic resilience depends on the type of dual industrial agglomeration, showing remarkable heterogeneity. This study may provide useful references for policy makers concerned with urban resilience.
Project description:An adequate charging infrastructure is key to enabling high personal electric vehicle (EV) adoption rates. However, urban flooding-whose frequency and intensity are increasing due to climate change-may be an impediment. Here, we study how geographically-correlated outages due to floods impact public EV charging networks in Greater London. While we find no appreciable impact on the ability of battery EVs to serve typical urban driving behaviors, we observe disproportionate stresses on chargers both near, and surprisingly significantly farther from, the flooded regions. For instance, we find over 50% increase in charger utilization and 260% increase in the distance to the nearest available charger in parts of Greater London over 10 km away. Concerningly, the impact is most concentrated on already-stressed sections of the network, underscoring the infrastructure's vulnerability. Finally, we develop and evaluate four strategies for city planners to enhance the flood resilience of cities' public EV charging networks.
Project description:The high-quality development of service industry has become an important engine for promoting sustainable economic development. This paper first constructed the evaluation index system of high-quality development of service industry, based on panel data from 2005 to 2020. Second, Kernel density, Markov chain and Dagum Gini coefficient were used to represent the regional differences and dynamic evolution of service industry, and the Koo method was used to explore the characteristics of spatial agglomeration. Finally, social network analysis was used to identify core indicators. The study found that: (1) From 2005 to 2020, the overall level of service industry first decreases and then increases, with Chengdu and Chongqing leading other cities. (2) The development of service industry in the CCEC has large spatial differences, mainly due to inter-regional differences. (3) The level of spatial agglomeration is less variable, with high agglomeration mainly in Chengdu. (4) Indicators such as the level of human capital are the core factors of its high-quality development. This study is of great theoretical and practical significance for the optimization and upgrading of service industry in the CCEC and the synergetic development of the region.
Project description:With the outbreak of the global public health crisis in 2019, enhancing the resilience of regional economies has become the current focal point. Existing studies have mostly focused on the region itself, lacking exploration of regional economic resilience from the aspects of dynamics, multiple perspectives, and multidimensional integration. At the same time, the digital industry, as an emerging sector, should not only consider its impact on economic development itself, but also focus on whether it can continuously and effectively enhance the level of regional economic resilience, in order to cope with crises that may arise at any time. Therefore, through empirical methods, we conducted a detailed study of the spatial correlation and internal driving factors between the digital industry and regional economic resilience, aiming to build a more valuable theoretical framework based on existing research findings and explore a regional resilience development strategy centered around the digital industry. This paper, combining conclusions and methods from existing literature, attempts to expand the definition of regional economic resilience, evaluation index system, and the relationship with the digital industry from the perspective of evolutionary economic geography. This article empirically examines data from 30 provinces in China from 2014 to 2022 (excluding Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan due to lack of data). Firstly, this paper employs a two-way fixed effects model to examine the direct relationship between digital industry development and regional economic resilience. The research results indicate that the development of the digital industry can effectively enhance regional economic resilience. Secondly, the role of spatial location, as an important aspect of evolutionary economic geography, is also considered in this paper. The spatial Durbin model is used to discover spatial spillover effects of digital industry development on regional economic resilience under different spatial location relationships. Finally, this paper considers environmental regulations as a threshold variable to study the impact of the digital industry on regional economic resilience under different levels of environmental regulation. The results indicate that when the degree of environmental regulation is less than 0.0011, the digital industry can more effectively empower the enhancement of regional economic resilience levels. In conclusion, this paper finds that while emphasizing the role of the digital industry in the resilient development of regional economies, it is also essential to promote regional cooperation for mutual benefit and win-win results. This will accelerate the transformation of digital enterprises, optimize industrial structures, and achieve green development.
Project description:The recent efforts dedicated to understanding important features and consequences of city growth have profited from the scaling approach to urban indicators. This kind of analysis can be conveniently used to investigate the impact of geo-economic transformations, like fast urbanization and industrial development, which occurred in continental size countries (e.g., India, China, and Brazil) during the past half-century. Profiting from high quality data, this work explores how scaling relationships among urban indicators are influenced by strong regional heterogeneities in Brazil. It is based on economic, infrastructure and violence related data sets for the time interval 2002-2016. Results indicate that regional specificities related to infrastructure, economic development, and geography have a larger influence on the absolute value of the urban indexes. Regional scaling similarities and differences among Brazilian regions were also uncovered. Interesting enough, the results indicate that the richest and poorest Brazilian regions share similar scaling behavior, despite all huge different local influences. By contrast, the results for the two richest regions, with similar average values of urban indexes and the same kind of local influences have rather different scaling properties. Thus, scaling analysis suggests that distinct political solutions might be necessary to improve life's quality, even for two regions with similar average values of urban indicators.
Project description:As the majority of the global population resides in cities, it is imperative to understand urban well-being. While cities offer concentrated social and economic opportunities, the question arises whether these benefits translate to equitable levels of satisfaction in these domains. Using a robust and objective measure of urbanicity on a sample of 156,000 U.K. residents aged 40 and up, we find that urban living is associated with lower scores across seven dimensions of well-being, social satisfaction, and economic satisfaction. In addition, these scores exhibit greater variability within urban areas, revealing increased inequality. Last, we identify optimal distances in the hinterlands of cities with the highest satisfaction and the least variation. Our findings raise concern for the psychological well-being of urban residents and show the importance of nonlinear methods in urban research.