Necessities and challenges to strengthen the regional infrastructure resilience within city clusters

摘要

Building resilient infrastructure and making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable are the important elements making up the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Economic development and population growth have brought diverse needs of citizens for urban mobility resulting in various forms of urbanization including suburbanization, urban sprawl, and local or cross-border city clusters, and this has generated greater citizens' demands for quality, resilient, safe and secure infrastructure services. As infrastructures of different cities within a cluster are highly interdependent and interconnected, any minor disruptions of a single infrastructure component within a city could lead to unpredictable knock-on effects on its neighbors. Despite great research efforts being attributed to community and city resilience, there are limited studies focusing on regional infrastructure resilience within the city clusters, in particular those cross-border city clusters like the Pearl River Delta city cluster of China. This paper aims to investigate the necessities and challenges of strengthening regional infrastructure resilience within the city clusters by applying and extending an integrated framework for resilience management of internetwork city infrastructures developed by the authors. The necessities, gaps and challenges will be explored from multiple perspectives not least the organizational structure, people, policy, management process, technology and supporting system, as well as the decision-making and performance management perspectives. Two typical city clusters in China are selected for case studies. Programs and practices of the cities within the two clusters pertinent to sustainable development, climate change, urban planning, built environment management and hazard management are critically examined and analyzed to produce a panoramic view on the necessities and challenges. The findings of this research shall invoke more innovative researches and solutions to enhance national, regional and city resilience, as well as building regional sustainability.