Develop an urban form assessment model based on the spatial resilience approach

A B S T R A C T
Urban resilience in the last decade, especially with the outbreak of Covid-19, is considered as a new path and strategy for urban development. The resilience of the urban form is one of the subsets of the urban resilience discourse, and although research and articles have been written about the resilience of the urban form and how to evaluate it in the past decade, this issue is still in the conceptual and exploratory stage. This article tries to make a comparative comparison between the city form resilience evaluation tools by explaining the different dimensions of the resilient place assessment toolbox which is derived from the spatial resilience framework. In this framework, urban morphology is defined as the spatial and physical manifestation of human activities resulting from the complex interactions of various social, economic, and environmental factors that affect the city's response to natural and man-made hazards. Urban tissues lacking the capacity of a resilient place (as the essence of the resilience of urban morphology) face the risk of exhaustion and deterioration of environmental qualities in the process of urban development and extensive changes, and the quality of livability and vitality of these tissues declines in the long term. In this regard, the three dimensions of body and structure, place and image (cognitive and perceptual), environment and behavior as the main axes, are justified through comparison with other frameworks and toolboxes for evaluating the resilience of urban form (literature review). This tool can provide planners, designers, and urban policymakers with the possibility of more effective interventions against changes and risks by measuring the resilience of urban forms and the resilience of places, especially in contexts exposed to development.
 
Extended Abstract
Introduction
In urban morphology, a systematic investigation of the urban form should include spatial structure, land uses, functions, and the source and evolution of “urban form” over time. Urban morphology focuses on the study of physical form, but it also implicitly associates the physical elements of the city with the social and economic forces that shape the elements. On the one hand, urban morphology results from gradual human interventions in the built environment and, on the other hand, part of human being’s environmental preferences and behavior patterns result from urban form and environment. Thus, urban morphology comprises multiple factors other than merely physical ones and includes cognitive-perceptual, environmental, and behavioral dimensions.
Urban changes have brought about many social, cultural, and economic consequences, such as changes in urban morphology, particularly in the most unpredictable and irreversible urban developments. Over time, the morphology of cities has manifested diverse and sometimes sophisticated patterns which result in different qualities and conditions in facing threats. This aspect of urban morphology has so far been disregarded and its role in increasing urban resilience has recently received considerable attention in academic circles. As a result of rapid urban changes in the contemporary era, urban morphology has lost the capability of keeping up with recent changes and, despite its potential and points of strength, it is confronted with severe issues due to the lack of adaptability in the face of crisis.
 
Methodology
This study tries to fill the gap in the development of assessment tools for the resilience of urban form in urban fabrics, particularly ones which are faced with development and change, on the meso and micro scales (with emphasis on the essence of a resilient place) through both quantitative and qualitative methods. The main question is: what are the indices need to assess the resilient urban form on the meso-scale? An extensive review of the literature extracted the indices in our assessment tool. Then, the indices were evaluated by 20 Delphi panelists in two rounds of the Delphi technique. Finally, a multi-dimensional tool with 51 indices was developed to assess the resilience of urban form against threats that could potentially help urban planning, design, development, and management to increase urban resilience.
 
Results and discussion
Today, resilience is defined as “the ability of complex socio-ecological systems to change, adapt, and, crucially, transform in response to stresses and strains”. In this new approach, resilience is conceptualized as a solution to facing indeterminacy and constant change. This concept allows creating a remarkable capacity to face and tolerate threats and pressure (even though unpredictable) and revive urban fabrics. Thus, it becomes possible to utilize resilience more practically in the urban context concerning slight, gradual changes and reinforce the belief that resilience essentially begins at the scale of an urban place and a resilient place. Given this, urban forms without the capacity of resilient place are at a higher risk of deterioration and becoming locked-in in the process of urban development and their liveability and vitality is likely to decline in the long term. In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic has doubled the importance of the relationship between resilience and urban form, particularly on the meso-scale. Assessment of the resilience of urban form on “the scale of resilient place” and the relevant assessment tool is considered a significant challenge in urban resilience research.
 
Conclusion
A number of approaches and frameworks for urban resilience have been proposed on different scales (local or global) with different methodologies, especially in the last two decades. The researchers developing these methods have used various terminology referring to their method, including tool, toolbox, model, framework, guide, and index.
 
 
Although many tools have been designed for assessment of the resilience of urban form on the neighborhood scale, few attempts have been made to adopt an urban-morphology approach and propose an assessment tool in the resilience literature, not least on the scale of resilient place. The resilient urban design framework on the macro-scale and the resilient place assessment (RPA) framework on the meso-scale have proposed both quantitative and qualitative indices for the assessment of urban form resilience. In contrast, the rest of the tools mainly address the quantitative dimensions of urban form. The assessment of the resilience of urban form through a resilient-place approach based on the urban morphology entails using both quantitative and qualitative approaches that could accurately evaluate the resilience of the urban system against possible threats on the meso and micro scales.