“Technical Resilience” and “Institutional Resilience”: Enlightenment from the Response of Urban Public Space to Public Health Emergencies

Urban public space is an important guarantee for the emergency under the public health emergencies, and its resilience is related to the health of citizens and the basic operation of the city. Based on the concept of “resilient city”, the paper constructs an idea of resilient urban public space, and explains its connotation and characteristics. Combined with the staged anti-epidemic measures adopted by mainland cities in China in the COVID-2019, it analyzes the process and enlightenment of urban public space in response to public health emergencies, and summarizes a system of the “technical resilience- institutional resilience”. It further proposes: (1) the technical resilience depend on health-oriented planning, including integrating the health impact assessment into the whole process of planning, improving the planning of the emergency unit and capacity, establishing a resilient public space system made up of “hub-node-flow”, and designing the emergency space for “combination of peace and epidemic”; (2) urban public space institutional resilience depend on sound and smart social governance, including establishing the emergency response system, matching the emergency responsibilities, rights, capacities of communities, improving laws and regulations and other policy tools, and applying intelligent platforms for precise prevention and control. Technological resilience, integrated with institutional resilience, establishes a new paradigm for urban public space to respond to public health emergencies.