Modeling socio-spatial resilience of public engagement with urban spaces

Abstract

As urbanization continues to advance, Public Open Spaces (POS) have become an essential part of daily life. In the face of increasingly frequent crises such as natural disasters, pandemics, and socioeconomic upheavals, these spaces play a crucial role in maintaining the basic functions of cities and enhancing the well-being of urban residents. However, the current research on how the public perception of POS affects urban resilience rarely involves the analysis of the resistance and recovery capabilities of public in the face of disasters. Using geotagged social media big data, this paper focuses on investigating the visitation frequency, sentiment analysis, and Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) in Western China accross the COVID-19 pandemic era and its recovery. Based on the analysis, we calculated sentiment scores and created a CES dictionary to characterize public perception. We thenemployed a PLS-SEM model to analyze the social, economic, and environmental factors influencing public sentiment toward POS. The results show that public crises lead to significant declines and fluctuations in visitation frequency and sentiment, and also alter public CES behavioral patterns. Moreover, the sentiment recovery capacity enhances the sentiment resistance capacity. High-quality urban ecological and cultural environments, healthcare infrastructure, and active social media discussions contribute to public resilience, while higher urbanization rates and population densities have the opposite effect. Additionally, during the pandemic, public interest in recreational CES was stronger than in other periods. Such public-based research provides a more comprehensive understanding of urban resilience, and offers opportunities to improve resilience policies and enhance public well-being.