Is smart city resilient? Evidence from China

Smart city is originally aimed at dealing with various urban problems due to rapid urbanization, like energy shortage, congestion, and environmental pollution. The Chinese government has been devoting to the promotion of smart cities for many years. However, it is unconfirmed whether the city is more resilient with all the modern technologies provided when unexpected predicaments like climate changes or disasters occur. Therefore, it is urgent to consider resilience in the smart city. This paper provides a MCDM approach to assess and rank the resilience of 187 smart cities in China. The results demonstrate that the overall resilience of smart cities is at a relatively low level. There is also a significant unbalance of resilience between smart cities due to different infrastructural, economic, social, institutional, and environmental conditions. The potential links between urban smartness and resilience were also explored, and the results showed significant positive relationship between the smartness of a city and its resilience. Evidence also proved that developing smartness is more or less useful for improving urban resilience. Suggestions such as strengthening the development of infrastructure and economy, and enhancing the multi-stakeholders’ cooperation are proposed to further promote the smart and resilient development in China.