Abstract:

As a new organizational form and research paradigm of urban spatial system, city network has been widely concerned in recent years. However, most of the studies on city networks were based on a positive perspective, while the negative effects, security, and sustainable development of city networks were rarely addressed. By reviewing the literature of city network and regional resilience, this article tentatively proposed a concept and an analytical framework of city network resilience based on evolutionary resilience theory to explore the "negative problems" of city networks. In brief, city network resilience could be comprehended as the ability of city network systems to prevent, resist, respond to, and adapt to the impact of external acute shocks and chronic pressures and recover from them or switch into another development path by means of the cooperation and complementarity of social, economic, organizational, and engineering fields among cities. Based on this concept, combining evolutionary resilience and adaptive cycle theory, a city network was regarded as a complex adaptive system with dynamic changes. Based on the social network, economic network, organizational network, and infrastructure network, considering both adaptation and adaptability, a framework of urban network resilience analysis from the perspective of resilience characteristics and resilience processes was proposed. Furthermore, the analysis and optimization methods of urban network resilience were prospected, and some core issues involved were discussed. The research aimed to provide a scientific basis for regional planning, regional policy formulation, and regional organization establishment with the goal of achieving safe development, and provide valuable references for each city node to identify its role in a region and participate in regional governance.

Key words: city network, regional resilience, city network resilience, safe development