Urban Vulnerability Assessment in Rapid Urbanization Areas: A Case Study of Villages-in-City in Shenzhen

This research chooses Shenzhen as the sample area and makes a comprehensive assessment of urban vulnerability by using an advanced tool named the Integrated Environmental Assessment Process at city-level of China. The assessment is composed of two parts, including: (1) assessing the two aspects of urban vulnerability comprehensively based on the analysis of status and origin of villages-in-city under the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework; (2) proposing an action plan to cope with urban vulnerability under the present policy framework. According to the case study of rapid urbanization process, the author finds that urban vulnerability in the rapid urbanization areas contains two aspects: one is the regional frangibility resulted from the existence of a large number of villages-in-city, the other one is the vulnerability of low-income groups who live in villages-in-city.