Micro-resilience assessment tool for living streets: Development, testing, and application in Chinese Jiangnan’s small and medium-sized cities

Improving micro-resilience in living streets enhances the daily quality of life for residents and contributes to the city’s overall resilience. However, current research on urban resilience primarily focuses on macro-scale and large cities, neglecting the unique resilience needs of small and medium-sized cities, especially in close-to-daily life scenarios. This study assessed the specific manifestations of resilience deficiencies in typical living streets within the Chinese Jiangnan region’s small and medium-sized cities and conducted an in-depth review of relevant literature across related dimensions, extracting and drafting a theoretical living streets resilience framework. A resilience assessment tool, ESO (Environment-Social-Operation), was developed based on this framework and refined through two Delphi surveys with experts and practitioners. The final actionable assessment framework included eight secondary and 37 tertiary indicators. A pilot test of the tool was conducted on 16 streets in 4 cities, yielding an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.81 (95% CI = 0.69–0.90), demonstrating the tool’s robustness and feasibility. This tool considers built-environment factors and social-function elements. It provides a systematic tool for enhancing resilience in living streets in small and medium-sized cities, offering guidance and decision-making support for urban renewal and management practices that enhance resilience at both micro and indirectly promoted macro levels.