Evaluation and regulation of resource-based city resilience: Evidence from Shanxi Province, China

With the continuous progress of global urbanization, urban resilience has been of great concern due to the impact of many risks. The single industrial structure and environmental pressure of resource-based cities (RBCs) make it an imminent need to strengthen their resilience. However, RBCs are less discussed in current resilience studies. Thus, this study attempts to evaluate the resilience of 10 RBCs in Shanxi Province of China from 2005 to 2019 and also to detect the dominant influencing factors of urban resilience and their interactions. In doing so, several modeling tools including entropy weight method, multi-factor comprehensive evaluation method and Geographic detector are employed to measure and review the changes of urban resilience in Shanxi and also to detect the development potentials for resource-based city resilience. It is found that the urban resilience in Shanxi has been on the rise from below 0.3 in 2005 to above 0.35 in 2019, with an overall upward trend, and there are obvious regional differences. The results of the Geographic detector indicate that the determinant power of influencing factor increases significantly after the interaction. And the top three dominant interaction clusters are market capacity boolean AND rationality of employment structure, facility completeness boolean AND land production efficiency, and internal economic dynamism boolean AND coordination of ecological development. It is recommended to accelerate industrial restructuring and high-quality urbanization, grasp infrastructure construction and ecological environmental protection, and coordinate in multiple dimensions in order to achieve a high degree of urban resilience.

Automated summary

With the continuous progress of global urbanization, urban resilience has become a major concern. However, there is a lack of discussion on resource-based cities (RBCs) in current resilience studies. This study evaluates the resilience of 10 RBCs in Shanxi Province of China and identifies the dominant influencing factors and their interactions. The results show that urban resilience in Shanxi has been increasing with regional differences. The study provides recommendations to achieve a high level of urban resilience.