Analyzing urban space resilience: Human mobility pulses in Auckland’s urban hotspots through the lens of COVID-19

Urban resilience has become an increasingly critical theme in contemporary urban discourse, particularly in light of disruptions that alter everyday routines. This study examines how urban hotspots in Auckland, New Zealand – one of the world’s most stringently locked-down cities – were impacted by and recovered from COVID-19, using the recovery of human mobility pulses as a way to assess their resilience. We define urban hotspots as vibrant places that attract both dense (high-frequency) and diverse (multi-origin) visitor flows. Using 85.53 million mobile location data points from approximately 3 million users in 2020, we identified these urban hotspots using a threshold-based approach combining grids above the median visitor density and the first-quartile Shannon Diversity Index. We then developed a recovery ratio to measure the extent to which visitor flows (in terms of frequency and origin diversity) returned to pre-lockdown levels across 26 bi-weekly periods spanning the year 2020. Our findings reveal that, while essential services, such as supermarkets and healthcare facilities, remained active, urban parks demonstrated high and stable recovery, functioning as vital public infrastructure during lockdowns. Overall, these results suggest that planning policies should prioritize both the expansion and spatial accessibility of green spaces to strengthen urban adaptability in times of crisis.