Resilient Neighborhoods Research Articles

Preferences for sustainable, liveable and resilient neighbourhoods and homes: A case of Canberra, Australia

Australian households are faced with rising energy costs and increasing occurrences of extreme weather events, such as hail storms and heat waves, due to the effect of climate change and influence of energy policies. Consequently, there has been increasing effort into designing homes and neighbourhoods that have built-in or retrofitted sustainable features such as solar panels to ensure that households are able to secure their own supply of electricity in times of shortages, as well as save on utility bills. The objective of this paper is to understand people’s preferences for characteristics of sustainable neighbourhoods and homes using a case study of 300 residents in Canberra, Australia. Findings from this survey suggest that housing affordability, energy saving designs for good temperature control, neighbourhood safety and cleanliness are the most desirable features of the neighbourhood and home across all socio-economic groups and buying intentions (i.e. investor or owner-occupier). The least preferred features are green facades (e.g. green roofs, green walls, large lawns) and communal bins rather than individual household ones. This information can be used to inform the design of future housing estates or suburb developments that want to pitch towards the ‘green’ consumer market.

The Resilience to Emergencies and Disasters Index: Applying big data to benchmark and validate neighborhood resilience capacity

Resilience planning and emergency management require policymakers and agency leaders to make difficult decisions regarding which at-risk populations should be given priority in the allocation of limited resources. Our work focuses on benchmarking neighborhood resilience by developing a unified, multi-factor index of local and regional resilience capacity: the Resilience to Emergencies and Disasters Index (REDI). The strength of the REDI methodology is the integration of measures of physical, natural, and social systems – operationalized through the collection and analysis of large-scale, heterogeneous, and high resolution urban data – to classify and rank the relative resilience capacity embedded in localized urban systems. Feature selection methodologies are discussed to justify the selection of included indicator variables. Hurricane Sandy is used to validate the REDI scores by measuring the recovery periods for neighborhoods directly impacted by the storm. Using over 12,000,000 records for New York City’s 311 service request system, we develop a proxy for neighborhood activity, both pre- and post-event. Hurricane Sandy had a significant and immediate impact on neighborhoods classified as least resilient based on the calculated REDI scores, while the most resilient neighborhoods were shown to better withstand disruption to normal activity patterns and more quickly recover to pre-event functional capacity.

Sustainable urbanism: towards a framework for quality and optimal density?

The question of density is closely connected to urbanization and how our cities may evolve in the future. Density and compactness are two closely related but different criteria, both relevant for sustainable urban development and the transformation of cities; however, their relationship is not always well understood. While a high degree of compactness is desirable, too much density can be detrimental to liveability, health and urban well-being. The purpose of this article is to report first on an extreme case of hyper-density: the Kowloon Walled City (demolished in 1993), where 50,000 residents led a grim life in one of the most densely populated precincts in the world with intolerable sanitary conditions. While the Walled City was a truly mixed-use and extremely compact precinct, it was neither a ‘liveable neighbourhood’ nor sustainable. The article then explores some more recent cases of optimized quality density in developments in Singapore, Sydney and Vancouver. This article sets out to answer the question: Since density is key to sustainable urbanism, what are the drivers and different planning approaches in relation to establishing an optimal density? And what is the ideal density model for tomorrow’s sustainable cities? Some of the critical thinking around the high-density cases is replicable and could translate to other cities to inform new approaches to quality density. Medium to high-density living is acceptable to residents as long as these developments also provide at the same time an increase in quality green spaces close by. The article explores which density types could help us to create highly liveable, economically vibrant, mixed-use and resilient neighbourhoods of the future. It concludes that every development requires a careful optimization process adapted to the conditions of each site.

Socially disorganized yet safe: Understanding resilience to crime in neighborhoods in New Zealand

PurposeDrawing on theories from environmental criminology, this article identifies neighborhood-level characteristics that promote resiliency in neighborhoods in New Zealand with disadvantageous socioeconomic settings. MethodsWe used neighborhood-level crime (2008–2010) and socio-economic data to develop a Crime Resilience Index for New Zealand (CRINZ) to quantify neighborhood level resilience to crime across the country. We then examined relationships between the index and a suite of built and social neighborhood-level characteristics. ResultsAccess to built environment factors generally decreased across neighborhoods stratified by resiliency. That is, resilient neighborhoods had decreased access to a range of healthcare, education, and living infrastructures. Very little difference was found in the social environment of high resilient and low resilient neighborhoods in New Zealand. ConclusionsUnderstanding why communities respond differently in similar environments can enable communities to respond better or more effectively to such stressful environments and consequently build resilience. Identifying ‘place-specific’ resilience factors can be effective in reducing crime in neighborhoods.

Modeling Nonmotorized Travel Demand at Intersections in Calgary, Canada

In September 2009, the City Council of Calgary, Canada, approved Plan It Calgary, which proposed policies that focused on the development of resilient neighborhoods through the intensification and diver-sification of urban activities around transit stations and routes. More intensive development and mixed land use encourage nonmotorized trips and reinforce comfortable, safe, and walkable streets. The development of high-density, mixed-use, and transit- and pedestrian-oriented communities has the potential to generate shorter trips to destinations; these trips are expected to result in a higher share of active travel modes, such as biking and walking. Thus, there is a growing need to estimate the impact of land use development scenarios and transportation policies on bicycle and pedestrian demand to predict nonmotorized trip volumes and design the related infrastructure adequately. In this study, on the basis of multiple linear and Poisson regression models were calibrated to estimate nonmotorized travel demand on the basis of geographic information system data, transportation services, and road characteristics. The empirical models developed in this research can be used to assess the impacts of urban design and built environments, such as development of high-density and mixed land use areas, of complete street construction in the middle ring communities of Calgary, and of influenced demand for active travel modes. The developed models also show the benefits of improved pedestrian infrastructure, such as improved network connectivity and increases in the length of pedestrian pathways, as well as the benefits of the integration of transit and walking modes and transit and bicycle modes in encouraging more nonmotorized travel demand. This method is a straightforward statistical analysis for practitioners, and the needed data are relatively easy to access.

Spatial information of hippocampal pyramidal cells along the dendrosomatic axis of behaving rats

Drawing on theories from environmental criminology, this article identifies neighborhood-level characteristics that promote resiliency in neighborhoods in New Zealand with disadvantageous socioeconomic settings.We used neighborhood-level crime (2008–2010) and socio-economic data to develop a Crime Resilience Index for New Zealand (CRINZ) to quantify neighborhood level resilience to crime across the country. We then examined relationships between the index and a suite of built and social neighborhood-level characteristics.Access to built environment factors generally decreased across neighborhoods stratified by resiliency. That is, resilient neighborhoods had decreased access to a range of healthcare, education, and living infrastructures. Very little difference was found in the social environment of high resilient and low resilient neighborhoods in New Zealand.Understanding why communities respond differently in similar environments can enable communities to respond better or more effectively to such stressful environments and consequently build resilience. Identifying ‘place-specific’ resilience factors can be effective in reducing crime in neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Resiliency

ABSTRACT This paper argues that a neighborhood's resiliency depends on the stability of its initial equilibrium state. A neighborhood that possesses a large stock of social and physical capital is not easily dislodged from its beneficial equilibrium, but if dislodged by adverse shocks, its reservoir of capital enables it to return to its initial equilibrium. In the opposite case, a neighborhood severely deprived of social and physical capital and which crosses a critical threshold is not easily dislodged from its harmful equilibrium. The paper first analyzes the properties of resilient neighborhoods, arguing that an increment in any one of them will increase resiliency. Then it argues that ceteris paribus, public and corporate policies that result in an increase in resources will strengthen these properties, while opposite policies will weaken them, and beyond a critical threshold, will result in a “lock-in” effect whereby the neighborhood loses its capacity to bounce back from adversity.