With the increasing uncertainty factors such as extreme weather and public safety risks, "resilient cities" have gradually moved from a professional concept into the public eye and become an important benchmark for measuring the level of urban governance. Recently, Beijing released the first systematic system in the field of resilient cities in China - the "Capital Resilient City Construction Standard System", which has attracted widespread attention. This is not only an institutional innovation of technical standards, but also sends a clear signal: urban development should not only maintain vitality, but also enhance the ability to resist risks, achieving a higher level of dynamic balance between development and security.
Why do cities need resilience? With high population density and increasingly complex urban systems, urban infrastructure such as transportation, electricity, water supply, drainage, and communication are interconnected. Any problem in any link can trigger a chain reaction. Especially in recent years, the number of mega cities and mega cities in China has continued to increase, and modern cities are increasingly dependent on complex systems for operation. Once there are fluctuations in a certain field, the impact often quickly amplifies. This also means that cities cannot just "grow fast", but must also "stand firm".
The concept has already been formed, the key is how to implement it. The construction of resilient cities involves various aspects such as infrastructure, public services, and emergency management. Without unified standards, it is inevitable that problems such as fragmentation and poor connectivity will arise. Once an emergency occurs, the efficiency of collaboration will be affected. In other words, without a unified standard, resilience tends to remain at the conceptual level and is difficult to transform into tangible and touchable practical abilities.
How to reserve surplus space in infrastructure, how to actively strengthen monitoring and early warning in urban operation, and how to form a collaborative linkage mechanism among multiple departments... These issues need to be clarified through standards. The significance of establishing standards lies in thinking clearly about the problem risks and determining the path and methods before risks arise. From a deeper perspective, the promotion of standardization system means that urban governance is shifting from "experience driven" to "institutional driven". From this perspective, the system released by Beijing this time has demonstrative significance. This system breaks the limitations of traditional single domain standards and innovatively constructs a framework covering five dimensions: basic universality, spatial resilience, engineering resilience, operational management, and social resilience, promoting resilience construction from point breakthroughs to overall improvement. When facing risks, cities no longer rely on a single domain, but rely on overall protection capabilities to enhance their ability to systematically respond to risks.
Looking at the whole country, various regions are actively exploring the construction of resilient cities. Building a city perception system in Shanghai to achieve intelligent perception of urban operational risks; Chengdu in Sichuan and Lishui in Zhejiang have been selected as the first batch of pilot cities for the United Nations' "Creating Resilient Cities 2030" initiative... The experiences of different cities can be learned from each other, and collaborative mechanisms can be formed between different departments to promote the overall improvement of resilient cities from their own explorations.
Resilience building is not only a security issue, but also a development issue. The more stable the urban operation, the more predictable the development environment, and the stronger the attractiveness. In the long run, competition between cities is expanding from a single competition for development scale to a greater emphasis on development quality and safety resilience. When a city has the ability to withstand shocks, it can maintain its development pace in uncertainty. Dealing with risks calmly is the foundation of high-quality urban development.
It can be foreseen that as the concept of resilient cities continues to deepen, relevant standards will become important tools for promoting modernization of urban governance. From passive response to proactive prevention, from temporary handling to institutional arrangements, when cities learn to be "prepared", people will naturally have more composure when facing risks. And this is exactly the confidence and warmth that a modern city should have. (Source: Economic Daily, Author: Han Bingzhi)
(Editor in charge: Zang Mengya)
