Resilience Evaluation of Old Community Renovation Projects from the Perspective of Urban Renewal
This paper proposes and validates a resilience evaluation model for old community renovation projects in China, utilizing a hybrid fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and entropy weight method combined with a cloud model to address infrastructure and social deficiencies within the context of urban renewal.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Cities in China have reached a turning point. For decades, growth meant building outward, expanding into new land. Now, the focus has shifted inward, turning toward the existing neighborhoods that already exist. This is the era of urban renewal, where the goal is to improve what is already there rather than consuming more space. At the heart of this effort are old communities, the residential areas built decades ago that house millions of people. These neighborhoods often struggle with aging infrastructure, crowded streets, and a lack of modern services. To survive and thrive in a changing world, these places need to be "resilient." In simple terms, resilience is the ability of a community to withstand shocks, whether they are natural disasters, economic shifts, or daily stresses, and to recover quickly. It is not just about having strong buildings; it is about having a social fabric and a support system that holds together when things go wrong.
A team of researchers from Chengdu Jincheng College set out to answer a difficult question: how do we measure whether a renovation project has actually made an old community more resilient? While many projects claim to improve these neighborhoods, there has been no standard way to judge if they truly meet the high bar of a "resilient" community. The researchers focused on Chengdu, a major city in southwestern China that has invested heavily in upgrading its older districts. They chose a specific neighborhood, The New Gui Dong community, which was built in the 1980s and faced typical problems like poor traffic flow, unused spaces, and a lack of green areas. The goal was to see if the recent improvements had successfully transformed this area into a place that could handle future challenges.
To do this, the team built a new way of looking at the community, breaking it down into four main pillars: social, environmental, facility, and organizational resilience. Social resilience looks at how well neighbors know and support each other. Environmental resilience checks the quality of the air, green spaces, and how waste is managed. Facility resilience examines the physical hardware, such as roads, water pipes, and emergency equipment. Organizational resilience measures how well the community is managed and how prepared it is for emergencies. The researchers gathered a large list of specific factors under these pillars, such as the completion rate of sewage tasks or the availability of fire-fighting equipment. They then brought in a group of ten experts to score the neighborhood on these factors.
The challenge was that some of these factors are easy to measure with numbers, like the number of fire extinguishers, while others are harder to pin down, like the "sense of community." To handle this mix of hard data and human feeling, the researchers used a sophisticated method that blends expert opinion with mathematical precision. They combined two different ways of weighing the importance of each factor. One method relied on the experts' judgment, while the other looked at the actual data to see which factors varied the most across different projects. By merging these two approaches, they created a single, balanced score for every part of the community. Finally, they used a model that could translate these scores into a clear picture of the community's overall strength, allowing them to see exactly where the neighborhood stood on a scale from "poor" to "excellent."
The results offered a clear and nuanced picture of The New Gui Dong community. The overall renovation was judged to have achieved a "good" level of resilience, meaning it successfully met the basic needs of the residents and provided a safe, comfortable environment. The community's organizational strength was particularly high, rated as "excellent." This was due to strong management programs and a high level of resident participation in self-governance. The social and facility aspects also scored well, showing that residents felt secure and that the physical upgrades, such as better public services and emergency systems, were effective. However, the environmental aspect received a lower rating of "moderate." While the renovation solved major issues like parking and garbage sorting, it fell short in creating enough green space and improving the landscape around the homes to meet the city's highest standards for a livable environment.
This study does more than just grade one neighborhood; it provides a new tool for city planners and officials. By showing exactly which parts of a renovation work and which parts need more attention, this evaluation method helps avoid blind spots in future projects. The researchers found that while the physical and social upgrades were largely successful, the environmental improvements required more focus. The study concludes that their new evaluation system is a practical and reliable way to measure the success of urban renewal. It offers a scientific path forward, ensuring that when cities invest in their old neighborhoods, they are not just fixing buildings, but truly building communities that can stand the test of time.
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