1. Introduction
According to United Nations projections, two-thirds of the global population will reside in urban areas by 2050 [
2]. This rapid urban growth and suboptimal development practices are intensifying the issues faced by communities, especially those related to climate change, heightened disaster risk, and social fragmentation [
3,
4,
5]. In response to these pressures, blue-green infrastructure (BGI) is increasingly recognized for its multifaceted benefits, encompassing environmental, social, cultural, and public health aspects [
6,
7,
8,
9,
10]. Although BGI is typically introduced given its ability to manage stormater and mitigate climate change impacts [
6], BGI plays a pivotal role in nurturing social connections within communities, which is essential to building social resilience [
8]. The establishment of these social connections stands out as a fundamental characteristic of a resilient community, which is a key component of building social resilience [
11].
In response to BGI’s role in fostering social resilience, this research introduces a conceptual framework designed to foster social resilience within urban settings through the strategic integration of BGI. This framework is developed from an extensive examination of current literature on social resilience theories and frameworks and the unique contribution of BGI spaces. The framework seeks to fill an identified gap in current research and application by providing specialized insights into planning and developing BGI to enhance social resilience equitably across diverse community demographics.
Foundational to this debate is the definition of BGI as an interconnected planned network of natural and semi-natural 'blue green' landscape components designed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services at various scales [
12]. From a social perspective, these spaces serve as communal hubs where people gather, interact, and engage in shared activities that help improve a community’s resilience profile [
10]. These regular interactions in BGI spaces foster attributes of social capital such as trust, solidarity, and a sense of belonging [
13,
14] within the community. Social capital is recognized as a vital component of social resilience, enhancing the collective strength and adaptive capacity of communities to effectively tackle contemporary challenges [
15]
Furthermore, these spaces are catalysts for social learning, information exchange, and problem-solving skills, enhancing a community’s adaptive capacity and ability to respond to contemporary challenges, both foundational for resilience [
16]. Activities within these spaces are pivotal in strengthening and broadening social networks and fostering collaborative efforts. They also create platforms where communities can share information and implement collective solutions to common challenges [
17,
18,
19]. Importantly, the social connections forged in these settings contribute significantly to the mental and emotional wellbeing of individuals, thereby enhancing overall community resilience [
20]
These interactions demonstrate a dynamic exchange where BGI spaces are integral for community development and supported by the communities they serve. BGI’s significant role in enhancing community socialization and capacity-building underscores its crucial contribution to building communities that are resilient, inclusive, and adaptive [
15,
21,
22]. This understanding has led scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to regard BGI as an essential element of urban resilience strategies [
6,
8,
9,
23,
24]. The broad acknowledgment of BGI's benefits across various sectors highlights its pivotal role in the holistic development of sustainable and healthy urban environments.
Despite the recognized value of BGI
, a clear and concise framework for assessing social resilience in these spaces is needed [
1]. Specifically, there needs to be a clearer understanding of the attributes and practices that foster social resilience, while meeting the diverse needs of communities [
25,
26]. However, this is challenging due to social resilience’s inherent complexity and ambiguity and variations in frameworks interpretations and applications across diverse contexts [
1,
27].
Social resilience is studied and applied across many disciplines, and like many other interdisciplinary concepts, definitions of social resilience vary across the literature. Earlier, social resilience was defined as the ability or capacity of a social entity, such as an individual, community, or organization, to absorb, cope, and adjust to disturbances and threats because of social, political, and environmental change [
28,
29]. This definition focuses on the capacities of social entities to protect themselves from all kinds of hazards and threats.
As social resilience gained more prominence in the field of urban planning, it was referred to not only as a response to threats and disturbances or crisis planning but also as a means of strengthening social ties, improving wellbeing, and addressing inequities that may exist for vulnerable or marginalized groups [
30]. Studies highlight the importance of fostering trust and cooperation, understanding cultural practices and social norms and the capabilities to assimilate knowledge and learning within these frameworks, as essential for building and maintaining resilience [
19,
31,
32]. Today, social resilience is recognized as a critical component of sustainable urban development, particularly in fostering thriving and healthy communities [
33,
34].
Early case study research on social resilience focused on various threats and stressors across temporal and spatial scales. These are broadly grouped in three categories: 1) disaster management [
35,
36,
37], 2) resource management and ecological urban resilience [
28,
38,
39], and 3) social change and development referencing policy and institutional change [
40,
41]. Across these categories are themes of learning, adaptation, and the recognition of political dynamics and processes [
42].
A diverse array of frameworks for assessing social resilience has emerged, each varying in its approach, focus, and breadth of characteristics and indicators it [
1,
27]. Many of these frameworks are rooted in disaster resilience literature, with a predominant emphasis on disaster risk, response, and management [
27,
1,
21]. Many of these frameworks focus on the role of social connections and relationships within the context of disaster preparedness, emphasizing their importance as support networks during emergencies or as channels for information and resource sharing post-crisis [
27,
43,
44]. While this context is essential, there's also a growing recognition of the broader potential of social dynamics in enhancing community health and wellbeing [
45,
46,
47].
This expanded view encourages a comprehensive approach that includes strengthening community bonds, promoting wellbeing, and ensuring equity as key components of social resilience. Within this framing, BGI presents an ideal context for cultivating these relationships [
8,
21,
48,
49] and can be a tool for creating equity [
50,
51]. This expands the focus beyond mere disaster resilience to encompass the development of healthy, interconnected communities.
Acknowledging the insights from existing literature on the lack of a comprehensive framework for characterizing and measuring social resilience within disaster contexts, the challenge becomes even more pronounced when integrating BGI within a broader resilience framework. This gap limits the understanding of BGI’s potential in strengthening social resilience, emphasizing a need for a comprehensive approach that extends beyond conventional scopes and delves into the nuanced interplay between BGI and social resilience in urban settings.
This manuscript presents a new conceptual framework for characterizing and measuring social resilience within the context of BGI. It is driven by the primary research question: How can a social resilience framework be developed and operationalized for the BGI context to foster social resilience amidst urban growth and its challenges? This overarching question is explored through several sub-questions: What are the key elements of established social resilience frameworks, and how might they inform the development of a framework for BGI? How can a selection of characteristics and indicators from existing frameworks be adapted for social resilience in a BGI context? What methods can be integrated to operationalize a methodologically robust BGI social resilience framework? What specific measurement and implementation methods can be integrated to ensure the operational success and methodologically robust social resilience framework for BGI?
The new BGI Social Resilience Framework synthesizes urban spatial features with BGI practices. It is specifically designed to address disaster resilience and broaden the scope to include key aspects of community health and wellbeing. This approach enhances social connections and promotes equity, reflecting a comprehensive strategy for understanding and improving urban resilience in diverse community settings.
The manuscript unfolds across three interconnected stages, beginning with an examination of challenges and complexities in defining and applying social resilience, as well as existing frameworks (Phase 1). This is followed by adapting social resilience characteristics and indicators specific to the BGI context (Phase 2). The final stage (Phase 3) involves developing a tailored social resilience framework for BGI, grounded in a comprehensive literature review that helps identify and integrate relevant social resilience features into BGI. The document concludes by charting a course for future case study research.
2. Applying Social Resilience Framework Concepts to BGI
The methodology for developing a conceptual framework for BGI entails a three-phase approach: (i) conducting a systematic review of academic literature on social resilience frameworks, (ii) adapting the framework elements specifically for BGI, and (iii) developing the structure and organization of a new conceptual framework. The literature review critically evaluates prevailing conceptual methods, metrics, and indicators to identify notable frameworks to inform the BGI Social Resilience Framework development. The reviewed frameworks are then critically examined, extracting relevant themes and concepts, and identifying gaps to address in the proposed BGI framework. Key themes, characteristics, and indicators are analyzed for applicability in the BGI context. Lastly, these learnings are synthesized to present a comprehensive conceptualization and methodology for a new conceptual framework for the BGI context, called BGI Social Resilience Framework
2.1. Phase 1 Literature Review: Identification of Challenges and Complexities in Defining and Operationalizing Social Resilience, and Relevant Social Resilient Frameworks
A systematic literature review was conducted to identify and examine social resilience frameworks to uncover inherent challenges and complexities and assess their pragmatic applicably across diverse contextual landscapes. The selection of literature encompassed a broad range of approaches, integrating insights from disaster management, social change, and urban development to facilitate a comprehensive analysis that extends beyond traditional disaster scenarios. This process is instrumental for identifying notable gaps and refining key elements necessary to effectively address the complex dynamics of social resilience in the development of a new framework for BGI.
The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) [
52] method was used conduct a systematic and thorough review of resilience frameworks. The PRISMA method is based on four steps: 1) identification, 2) screening, 3) eligibility, and 4) inclusion. Each step is outlined below, and correspondingly illustrated in the flowchart shown in
Figure 1.
Identification: An extensive search was conducted through Scopus and Google Scholar databases using the terms "Social" OR "Community" AND "Resilience", resulting in a large pool of literature, 25,000 Google Scholar and 62,209 Scopus, providing a vast base for initial consideration.
Screening – The literature review was refined by limiting to the subject areas most closely aligned to BGI and urban planning, including social science, engineering, environmental science, and multidisciplinary studies, the English language, and journals relating to disaster, risk, and sustainable resilient cities and communities; 3356 articles were identified.
Eligibility – The titles of the 3356 articles were screened to narrow the search for the most relevant articles on social resilience. The title and abstracts of articles that do not relate to social or community resilience, disaster, or sustainability were excluded. 175 articles were identified for further review.
Inclusion – The abstracts of the 175 articles were reviewed, and 23 articles were selected based on content with abstracts referencing health, wellbeing, and/or sustainability are prioritized. A detailed review of the full texts specifically identified two notable frameworks that were particularly important to the development of the BGI Social Resilience Framework. The first, proposed by Saja et al. [
1], is distinguished by its comprehensive synthesis of existing frameworks, clear organizational structured for operationalization, and breadth of themes that can be applied to the BGI context making it a robust template for the new framework. The second framework by Kwok et al. [
21] is distinguished by its use of practitioner perspectives, utilizing practitioner perspectives, which incorporate subjective insights essential for capturing the nuanced, context-specific experiences crucial to developing practical and effective resilience strategies. Together these two enrich the new framework with both wide-ranging theoretical foundations and practical grounded insights through the less used subjective lens. They are summarized with critical learnings for application to the BGI context.
2.2. Phase 2: Adapting Social Resilience Characteristics and Indicators to the BGI Context
The second phase primarily focused on adapting social resilience characteristics and indicators to the BGI context, drawing upon the foundational work of Saja et al. [
1] and Kwok et al. [
21], alongside other frameworks identified in the comprehensive review of related literature. Additionally, the process was enriched by incorporating insights from current BGI practices and literature. This phase was pivotal in refining and customizing the framework to ensure it was theoretically sound and practically relevant to BGI environments.
As a part of the adaptation process, characteristics and indicators are embedded in key dimensions of social resilience such as social values, social capital, social structure, and social equity, as detailed in the 5S framework by Saja et al. [
1]. These dimensions are essential for developing comprehensive resilience strategies, making the 5S framework an ideal foundational template for the BGI Social Resilience Framework. The selection of characteristics and indicators was informed by those shared between the works of Saja et al. [
1] and Kwok et al. [
21], as well as additional insights from the literature review. This approach ensured a balance of common and uniquely relevant elements. The criteria for choosing specific characteristics were further refined based on their relevance to urban BGI settings, their scalability at the community level, and their potential to enhance the understanding a broader conceptualization of social resilience, thereby expanding its application beyond traditional disaster resilience contexts.
The selection and adaptation effort aims to bridge theoretical research with practical application, emphasizing characteristics and indicators that are particularly relevant to urban BGI contexts and social systems with a special focus on fostering community-scale social dimensions and prioritizing aspects of wellbeing and equity.
2.3. Phase 3: Developing the BGI Social Resilience Framework
This phase synthesized insights from Phases 1 and 2, to develop a new BGI Social Resilience Framework. The newly developed framework utilizes the organizational structure outlined in the 5S framework by Saja et al. [
1] and enhances it with the community-centric perspectives from the practitioner framework by Kwok et al. [
21]. The integration of these foundational frameworks facilitates a comprehensive approach, incorporating both the broad thematic synthesis of social resilience indicators from the 5S framework and the nuanced, subjective insights into community dynamics and perceptions from the practitioner framework. This blend ensures that the BGI Social Resilience Framework not only adheres to a structured methodological approach but also remains deeply rooted in the realities and values of community experiences.
To address the need for a methodologically robust tool that can guide the operationalization of BGI for social resilience, this phase introduces an innovative fourth tier to the framework. This tier provides specific guidance on measurement tools and techniques, reflecting the integrated insights from both foundational frameworks. It aims to operationalize the framework within the BGI context (Phase 2) by identifying and outlining methods that can measure the interplay between BGI attributes and social resilience dimensions effectively. This addition marks a significant advancement, offering a methodologically sound and contextually relevant tool for planning and developing BGI with a focus on enhancing social resilience across diverse urban communities.
Furthermore, this phase ensures the BGI Social Resilience Framework is tailored to address broader resilience concepts, including sustainability and wellbeing, reflecting the unique advantages BGI offers in urban environments. By focusing on both the structural and cognitive aspects of social systems, ranging from demographics and accessibility to community perceptions and engagement, the framework bridges the gap between physical BGI features and the community's social dynamics. This dual focus underscores the framework's holistic approach, emphasizing how BGI's physical infrastructure and social cohesion work together to foster resilient communities.
This methodological approach not only enhances the BGI Social Resilience Framework's operationalization, but sets a new precedent for comprehensive, evidence-based planning tools that can be used to adaptively respond to the complexities of urban social resilience.
4. Development of the BGI Social Resilience Framework
4.1. Introduction and Conceptual Groundwork for the BGI Framework
The BGI Social Resilience Framework as depicted in
Figure 9 represents a novel approach to fostering social resilience through urban blue-green infrastructure. The framework builds upon of Saja et al. [
1] and the practitioner framework of by Kwok et al. [
21], enriched through a comprehensive synthesis of the existing literature (Phase 1). The new framework intricately weaves together important BGI characteristics and indicators (Phase 2), while addressing the challenges and complexities outlined in Phase 1. Ultimately, the BGI Social Resilience Framework offers a customized blueprint for enhancing urban social resilience through the strategic application of BGI.
The BGI Social Resilience Framework's structural architecture is founded on the 5S framework's [
1] three-tiered approach of dimensions, characteristics, and indicators. However, it expands upon this model’s structure by establishing connections between the dimensions to enhance the framework’s robustness and depth. These relationships facilitate the introduction of a fourth tier dedicated to guiding measurement methodologies, thereby enhancing the framework's applicability in BGI. The BGI Social Resilience Framework aligns with the practitioner framework’s structural (physical) and cognitive (values) conceptualization and its emphasis on the subjective dimensions.
The BGI Social Resilience Framework is inherently adaptable, featuring context-specific indicators, ensuring relevance and applicability across diverse urban settings and demographics. These indicators reflect BGI attributes that are subjective, such as preferred practices and perceptions specific to people across a range of demographics. The indicators are also spatial capturing BGI distribution, accessibility, and safety within communities to assess equity. This contextual adaptability allows the framework to address the subtilities of place and community dynamics, providing a nuanced assessment of BGI's contribution to social resilience. It also helps to clarify the concept by anchoring it in specific, measurable terms specifically applicable to BGI, thereby reducing ambiguity. By capturing diverse preferences and spatial equity, the framework is tailored to help understand the diverse needs of communities enabling it to provide targeted insights for robust resilience urban planning.
The BGI Social Resilience Framework stands apart in its specificity to the BGI context and its community-centric scale, emphasizing not just the physicality and connectivity of spaces but also the interplay of community values, practices, and the demographics of those who engage with these spaces. Unlike these influencing frameworks, the BGI Social Resilience Framework moves beyond a disaster centric view with a stronger emphasis on broader concepts of resilience such as sustainability and wellbeing, reflecting the inherent social advantages of BGI. By encompassing a broad scope of resilience that includes proactive community wellbeing, the framework prepares communities with the necessary tools and capabilities, ensuring that when challenges or disturbances arise, they possess the resilience to withstand and recover effectively, covering the entire disturbance cycle.
4.2. Synthesizing Concepts, Application Contexts, and Measurement Types
4.2.1 Conceptualization
The BGI Social Resilience Framework is constructed around cognitive and structural elements relating to social systems. Although other conceptualizations identified in the literature exist, the BGI Social Resilience Framework encompasses structural and cognitive characteristics to bridge the gap between the tangible aspects of BGI and the community's perceptions and engagements with these spaces. This approach clarifies the impact of BGI on social resilience. Specifically, this approach underscores the importance of integrating the organic complexity of the physical environment with the social fabric needed to foster community resilience.
Within the BGI Social Resilience Framework, structural characteristics pertain to demographics & walkability and fair access & inclusiveness. These characteristics are quantifiable and relate to the physical characteristics of BGI. These dimensions are critical for the practical support of a community's resilience and support the measurement of tangible elements such as BGI resource size, distribution, and access. This framework’s cognitive characteristics, perception & practice and connections & engagement, provide insights into how communities interact with and value BGI. These characteristics enhance understanding of social trust, community engagement, and place attachment, which are key elements essential for the social cohesion and collective efficacy required for a community to thrive.
Additional attributes from the other conceptualizations identified in the literature review are incorporated into the BGI Social Resilience Framework. This framework integrates capital-based and socially interconnected dimensions, acknowledging them as fundamental to social resilience. While it does not quantify coping, adaptation, and transformation directly, these processes are inherently captured within the social capital, values, and equity dimensions, all of which are recognized as crucial for resilience. [
28,
118,
119,
120]. Furthermore, the framework emphasizes the critical role of social relationships and practices in facilitating integration across diverse communities, thereby reinforcing the significance of these social ties in the overarching story of community resilience.
4.2.2. Application Context
The BGI Social Resilience Framework specifically targets the urban context, prioritizing community-level resilience as its primary focus because BGI inherently serves as a communal space. The framework’s scope extends from disaster-centric issues to include broader concepts of resilience, such as sustainability and wellbeing, emphasizing the social benefits inherent in BGI. The framework prioritizes understanding how BGI's values and perceptions correlate with aspects of community life, such as social capital, over assessing BGI's role in enhancing skills and preparedness for risk management or facilitating community decision-making processes, often highlighted in disaster-oriented frameworks [
1,
21,
27]. Additionally, it focuses on equity in accessing BGI as a continuous asset for sustainable health and wellbeing rather than as a resource allocated post-disaster or as a temporary mobilization space [
170,
171,
172]. Consequently, this framework addresses the broader challenges of urbanization, climate change, and social fragmentation with a more comprehensive approach to understanding social resilience in BGI.
4.2.3. Measurement Type
The BGI Social Resilience Framework utilizes an indicator method for measuring social resilience. This method is most used in social resilience frameworks [
27,
61] and is the preferred approach of agencies and practitioners [
1]. The indicator method is best suited for measuring the attributes and understanding the interrelationships between dimensions identified in the new framework.
The indicators within the framework are categorized to align with those outlined in the literature: outcome, process and normative [
68,
1]. The diversity of indicators within the framework reflects a versatile methodology that can adapt to the specificities of different BGI contexts. This adaptability is crucial for the framework's applicability in diverse urban settings, enabling it to provide actionable insights into the interrelationships between BGI features and social resilience dynamics.
The specific roles and contributions of each indicator category within the new framework are outlined below:
Outcome indicators directly measure the attributes of BGI that are of practical significance to the community. The pedestrian shed serves as an indicator, characterized by the presence of pedestrian infrastructure and the walking distance required to reach BGI. Alongside this, the safety indicator evaluates the security conditions along walking routes to BGI, focusing on aspects that contribute to community wellbeing. Additionally, the topography indicator documents the physical features of the landscape, which influence the usability and accessibility of these paths. Size, distribution, and use type are indicators that gauge equitable access to BGI and ensure it effectively serves the community. Coupled with these, the population profile provides demographic insights that are essential for targeted enhancements in BGI planning, allowing for a comprehensive assessment of equity.
Process indicators observe the ongoing interactions within BGI, offering a window into the active engagement and social processes that BGI facilitates. These indicators include networks that reflect social interconnections, trust & reciprocity which indicate the strength of community relationships, social cohesion, which measures community unity, and participation which quantifies the level of community involvement in BGI activities.
Normative indicators reflect the community’s values, guiding BGI engagement. Valued attributes serve as a key indicator, highlighting how BGI aligns with the community's core values and preferences. Practice/use metrics reveal the alignment of BGI with cultural and lifestyle values, while information communication assesses engagement in knowledge exchange. These indicators embody the community's ethos, informing BGI policies and practices that resonate with their shared vision for a resilient society.
4.2.1. Summary
Table 2 delineates the incorporation of various conceptualizations and methodologies into the BGI Social Resilience Framework. It summarizes the justification of the selection of specific conceptual and methodological elements were selected, detailing their relevance and applicability in the BGI context. Furthermore, the table indicates the foundational and influential sources from the literature review, including the 5S and practitioner frameworks, that are instrumental in shaping the dimensions of the newly developed BGI Social Resilience Framework. This table serves as a bridge, articulating how established frameworks and new insights from the literature have converged to form the underpinnings of the BGI-focused approach to social resilience.
4.3. Integrating Tools and Insights through Methodologies
In their subsequent study, Saja et al. [
61] emphasizes the importance of identifying specific tools for measuring resilience indicators, introducing an additional tier in the BGI Social Resilience Framework organizational structure. This fourth tier encompasses diverse methodological approaches that elucidate the tangible and intangible social dimensions of BGI. This expanded framework employs qualitative and quantitative methods to understand community interactions and physical infrastructure of BGI. Through this mixed methodological approach, the framework offers a robust mechanism for evaluating the role of BGI in fostering social resilience, combining the depth of qualitative insights with the precision of quantitative spatial analysis.
In the qualitative domain, characteristics and indicators tied to social values and social capital capture the subjective experiences of individuals. Surveys are particularly valuable in this regard, providing a direct avenue for gathering nuanced insights into perceptions, preferences, and practices within BGI spaces [
22,
98,
173]. These tools enable qualitative data collection, offering a window into how community members engage with and value their green spaces, thereby contributing to a comprehensive understanding of BGI’s impact on social resilience. This perspective aligns with the view of parks and green spaces as cultural landscapes co-created by their users, stewards, and 'ecosystem engineers,' highlighting the reciprocal relationship between communities and their environment and the importance of recognizing these spaces as dynamic and participatory realms of social resilience [
174,
175].
In contrast, the quantitative aspect of the methodology focuses on the spatial and physical characteristics of BGI, employing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyses data on the size, distribution, and accessibility of these spaces GIS-based methods are often used to facilitate a systematic and objective measurement of BGI attributes within a spatial context [
102,
176,
177,
178].This spatial approach is critical for sustainable urban planning, allowing for the visualization of BGI distribution across different community areas to identify areas of inequity and guide targeted interventions to ensure equitable access to BGI for all community members.
The integration of qualitative insights with quantitative spatial analysis underscores the framework's adaptability and practical applicability. By offering a variety of methodological tools, the framework accommodates the complexity of human-nature interactions within BGI spaces, facilitating empirical research that can guide urban planners in creating spaces that are both equitably accessible to the community and reflective of community-driven values and needs.
4.4. Synthesizing Theory and Practice
The emergent discourse on BGI and social resilience presents a unique opportunity to craft a nuanced operational framework to better understand social resilience. In addition to the absence of unified frameworks outlined by Saja et al. [
1], social resilience frameworks remain highly theoretical, expansive, and contextually broad for direct case study application. Therefore, frameworks generally remain largely untested in empirical settings [
61]. Conversely, there is need to better integrate theoretical concepts and social system knowledge, and the concept of social resilience into the practice of urban planners and managers [
179]
While general social resilience frameworks predominantly remain within the realm of theory, a significant body of case study research has focused on operationalizing aspects of social resilience dimensions (such as capital, values, structure, and equity) specifically in the context of urban green spaces. These case studies underline the applicability of methods to operationalize the framework and emphasize the pertinence and specificity of the characteristics and indicators within the BGI Social Resilience Framework. Key case study examples that support framework attributes and methods include:
Survey studies to decipher subjective aspects of community engagement in greenspaces that support social relationships:
These case studies, grounded in empirical research, serve to validate the relevance of characteristics and indicators outlined in the BGI Social Resilience Framework and offer detailed methods for testing the framework in a case study setting.
In subsequent research, the BGI Social Resilience Framework is slated for empirical evaluation in Pōneke Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Utilizing GIS spatial analysis combined with social surveys, the methodology is designed to scrutinize both the equitable distribution and accessibility of BGI and detailed community perceptions and relationships regarding the utility of these spaces. This validation process aims to confirm the framework's utility in an authentic urban environment and contributes to the discourse on equitable BGI development. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to demonstrate how BGI can be customized to enhance social resilience within varied community landscapes, thereby informing sustainable urban development strategies that emphasize inclusivity and wellbeing of the community.
Empirical insights from this research, underpinned by a comprehensive theoretical framework, offer urban planners’ essential knowledge for incorporating BGI to enhance social resilience effectively. Through the application of this framework, planners can discern demographic preferences regarding BGI and evaluate the spatial accessibility of these spaces across various community segments. This methodical approach facilitates the equitable distribution of BGI, ensuring that planning and implementation address the diverse needs and preferences of different demographics, thus contributing to a more inclusive urban development.
5. Conclusion
The BGI Social Resilience Framework addresses the existing gap in the understanding and application of social resilience within BGI contexts while broadening the scope beyond a mere disaster perspective of resilience. It proposes a resilience approach where communities progress toward a more robust and interconnected future, leveraging studies that highlight the importance of social connections and the interaction between BGI's physical structures and the community's dynamic social landscape. It champions community unity, collaboration, and fairness, all of which are pivotal for communities to effectively manage, adapt, and innovate in the face of adversities [
102,
176,
177,
186].
The framework aligns with and actively supports UN SDG 11's vision for cities that are inclusive, safe, sustainable, and resilient, showcasing a forward-thinking approach to where and how urban development unfolds. Specifically, it directly addresses goal SDG 11.7, emphasizing the importance of providing safe, inclusive, and accessible green and public spaces. Indicators for this goal include the extent of green space, removing barriers to access, and increasing the number of people from different demographic groups, most notably women, children, older people, and people with disabilities accessing these spaces. This initiative serves as a pivotal step towards creating urban spaces that genuinely cater to the needs and wellbeing of all community members, setting a new standard for urban resilience and inclusivity.
The BGI Social Resilience Framework distinguishes itself by offering a comprehensive approach that merges strategic urban infrastructure planning with community social fabrics that reflect the unique characteristics and needs of communities. This forward-looking approach supports empirical research to ensure equitable and context-sensitive enhancement of social resilience, fundamentally incorporating it into urban life. By enabling urban planners to operationalize its methodologies, the framework aims to strategically enhance urban resilience by ensuring equitable access to BGI, an essential element for a city's resilience profile. It combines the physical and social dimensions of urban development, advocating for an integrated planning approach that prioritizes social wellbeing and environmental sustainability. Through its application, the framework assists in fostering resilient, inclusive, and adaptable urban environments, thereby reinforcing the vitality and sustainability of cities.