Digital and Culture: Towards More Resilient Urban Community Governance

Abstract

Urban communities are characterized by significant population size, high density, and strong mobility. While we might enjoy the dividends of rapid modernization, there are nonetheless variable and frequent public crises that occur. Modernization’s problems are gradually emerging, and the traditional risk prevention logic that relies on administrative “rigidity” has begun to be widely challenged. Traditional urban communities depend on institutional, structural, and spatial aspects to improve community resilience. Because big data has become popular, attention has begun to be paid to digital empowerment and community resilience. However, the emergence of problems such as “digital paradox” and “digital ethics” in the digital realm itself has prompted calls for cultural resilience to continue to rise. Therefore, urgently needed resolutions are required to questions regarding the resilience of traditional communities, the construction of digital and cultural resilience, the relationship between digital and cultural resilience, and the manner in which cultural resilience is coordinated to solve the problem of digital resilience. A quantitative analysis of 350 questionnaires from five urban communities found that these communities’ institutional, spatial, and structural dimensions are the driving factors for improving resilience. In contrast, the cultural and digital dimensions are constraints. Therefore, the question of how to coordinate the cultural and digital factors represented by traditional and modern societies in order to compensate for the shortcomings in resilience construction is that which future urban communities must consider. The authors of this study believe that digital empowerment is needed to open up the “first mile” of resilient communities, that cultural empowerment is required to break down the “blocks in the middle” of resilient communities, and that digital and cultural coupling is needed to link the “last mile” of resilient communities. One must use culture to compensate for the shortcomings of digital resilience and digital to pay for the failures of cultural resilience before one can move towards more resilient urban community governance.

1. Introduction

With the acceleration of the modernization process, while people enjoy the dividends of modernization, such as industrialization, informatization, and urbanization, they also face problems, such as risk accumulation and risk expansion. The world is entering a period of great uncertainty and the “Uka Age” of complexity and ambiguity [1]. The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the 2014 Ebola virus, and the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic are examples of “low probability and high impact” events that occur frequently, and risk has become a keyword in modernization. “Living in modern society is living in the crater of civilization” [2]. Cities are characterized by significant population sizes, high density, and strong mobility [3]. Rapid urbanization continues to highlight its internal heterogeneity. Cities often show significant vulnerability to “low probability” events [4].

As the focus of social governance shifts downward, communities, as the nerve endings that perceive risks, have become the first line of both risk breeding and of risk resolution [5]. The status of the “double front-line” makes communities, as “micro-cells” of urban residents’ living communities and “micro-units” of social networks, a key field for preventing and resolving significant risks [6]. Urban communities’ resilience level has become vital to grassroots stability and residents’ sense of gain, happiness, and security and is a practical issue that urban governance must face head on [7].

Traditional community resilience construction mainly involves improving relevant systems, optimizing relevant processes, and building emergency spaces to provide a buffer for public crisis events. In the era of big data, the passive emergency model that relies solely on “rigid” administrative power can no longer meet the needs of the times. It has become the norm to introduce big data and cloud computing technologies to improve the resilience of urban governance. Words such as “digital empowerment” [8], “smart governance” [9], and “smart community” [10] have become new academic terms widely cited by scholars in different fields. Relying on digital technology’s quantifiable, optimizable, and visual features is changing traditional urban communities’ daily management and risk governance [11]. Typical cases are emerging one after another. Digital community construction has become the mainstream of community resilience building since the COVID-19 epidemic.

However, with the advance of practice, problems in digital community construction have become increasingly apparent, and “information islands”, “data barriers”, “efficiency paradox”, and “digital ethics” have gradually attracted attention [12]. The blind pursuit of the digitalization of urban communities has begun to be questioned and calls for a return to the essence of value continue to rise [13]. This is because cities use industrialization as their development logic, which is inconsistent with the cultural development logic of rural areas, and “strangers” have become a prominent feature of urban communities. Community residents truly feel the indifference of modernization. This focus on the residents, the main body of urban communities, is undoubtedly correct. Gradually constructing the “soft” capabilities of the community through the excavation of cultural symbols, creating a community atmosphere, and forming a governance community in which everyone is responsible, fulfilled, and happy has become a new direction for the construction of resilient communities [14]. In this regard, how do the components of traditional community resilience play a role in modern urban communities? Given the current predicament of resilience construction of urban communities, the key is digital technology or cultural construction. How does one build digital resilience and cultural resilience? What is the relationship between digital resilience and cultural resilience? and how does one coordinate cultural resilience in such a way as to solve the problem of digital resilience? These are all questions that need to be answered.

Based on this, the study divides the resilience dimensions of urban communities based on the modern background and the new security pattern. This includes not only traditional resilience, such as institutions and structures, but also new resilience dimensions, such as digital and cultural resilience. It is then able, finally, to form an urban community resilience assessment framework. The mathematical model of AHP-FCE was comprehensively used in order to evaluate. The Delphi method and expert comparison matrix confirmed the indicator weights. The Likert scale quantified the perceptual indicators. Adding objective quantitative indicators reduced the influence of subjective human factors on the results. Based on the evaluation results, strategies for improving the resilience of future urban communities are proposed in order to guide their resilience construction.

2. Literature Review

Since the COVID-19 epidemic, the need to improve community resilience in order to enhance the ability to prevent and resolve significant risks has increasingly become a consensus in urban governance research [15]. Resilio derives from the Latin “Resilio”, which means “go back to original ways”. In the mid-19th century, with the evolution of the industrial revolution, toughness was first introduced into the field of physics in order to represent the ability of materials to absorb energy during plastic deformation and fracture [16]. Resilience was then extended to the field of ecology to characterize the stable state of ecosystems [17]. The concept of resilience has been expanded from engineering resilience to ecological resilience, paying more attention to a system’s “repair ability” through self-repair to form one or more new stable states rather than just maintaining the original stable state. This has created the conditions for the gradual expansion of the concept of resilience into the social sciences since the 1990s [18]. In social science, the concept of resilience has not been unified. For example, in psychology, resilience is defined as a psychological mechanism for recovery and growth under pressure, which refers to effective coping and adaptation in the face of loss, difficulty, or adversity [19].

International scholars’ research on community resilience has focused mainly on three aspects. First, about the concept of community resilience, some scholars believe that it is the process and ability to constantly change and adapt [20], others believe that it is the ability to maintain stable operation [21], and others believe that it is a series of capabilities related to resilience and responsiveness [22]. In addition, the United Nations Office for Disaster Reduction combines the above three concepts. It defines resilience as the ability of a system, community, or society exposed to a disaster to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt, transform, and recover from the impact of a disaster in a timely and effective manner, including through risk management, and to maintain and restore necessary infrastructure and its functioning. Secondly, there is a concern for the evaluation dimension of community resilience. Some scholars classify this based on system components. For example, the composition of resilience is divided into four dimensions: technology, organization, society, and economy [23], while capital is divided into four resilience components: culture, economy, material, and human [24]. Some scholars also classify community resilience based on community resources and capacities, such as community relations, risk and vulnerability levels, emergency procedures, and the availability of community resources [25]. Based on external factors, some scholars have divided the assessment dimension of community resilience into eight parts: education, economy, environment, policy and governance, health, infrastructure, society and culture, and disaster risk management [26], while others have divided it into four parts: transportation, energy, health, and social economy [27]. Finally, there is research, from a qualitative point of view, on the evaluation methods of community resilience, including the framework and element description methods [28]. From a quantitative point of view, there are the scoring method, the comprehensive index method, the function model method, and the mixed method [29].

The research results on the resilience of urban communities in China can be divided into three stages: “learning from experience, imitating, and becoming conscious” [30]. The “learning from experience” stage mainly introduces the concept of community resilience [31] and the existing evaluation system [32]. The “imitating” stage explains Chinese issues based on social capital [33] and complex systems theories [34]. The “consciousness” stage promotes the localization of concepts, such as the introduction of integration theory [35] and human heart theory [36], which provide a new perspective for the development of community resilience. Specifically, Chinese scholars’ research on community resilience focuses mainly on three aspects. First, research on community resilience construction. For example, scholars put forward specific suggestions for improving community resilience from four aspects: society, environment, system, and the individual [37]. Based on actual cases, some scholars have analyzed the components of resilient communities and proposed to increase community resilience by strengthening the construction of emergency facilities and even emergency places around communities [38]. The second aspect is the study of community resilience evaluation, introducing mature assessment models from abroad in order to design an evaluation framework for urban communities, including versatility, redundancy, ecological and social diversity, effective network links, and adaptability [39]. An evaluation framework for new community design should include facility environment, member-owned resources, institutional and organizational environment, financial and public services, and social capital [40]. Finally, there is research on the influencing factors of community resilience. Some scholars have pointed out that the factors that influence community resilience include not only the physical level but also the psychological aspects of community residents [41]. Some scholars have also pointed out that community capital and community vulnerability are also important factors affecting community resilience [32]. The research of these scholars is undoubtedly of great significance. Nevertheless, to a large extent, this cannot be appropriately applied to the digital society and selectively ignores the cultural dimension of community resilience enhancement, which needs to be further expanded.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Sample Sources

The authors of the study chose Chengdu as the sample location based mainly on the following considerations. Chengdu is not only the central city in western China but also the economic core city of Chengdu and Chongqing. Chengdu has taken the lead in establishing urban and rural community development governance committees in the western region and is at the forefront of community construction in the country. In addition, as a new first-tier city, Chengdu is experiencing rapid urbanization, continuous inflow of population, and complex economic, social, and cultural complexities. It is a gathering place of contradictions in modernization construction and is a remarkable example. To ensure the scientific nature of the sampling, the study was based on the community situation in Chengdu and randomly selected the Sihe, Zhonghai, Xingfu, Shuangnan, and Yixin communities as sample communities (Figure 1 and

Table 1. Sample situation of urban community resilience measurements.

Community Name	Basic Situation
Sihe	Sihe community is located on Huayang street, Tianfu new district, with an area of 3.3 square kilometers and a permanent population of more than 30,000.
Zhonghai	Zhonghai community is located on Hezuo street, in the high-tech zone. It covers an area of 8.25 square kilometers and has a permanent population of more than 42,000.
Xingfu	Xingfu community is located on Sansheng street, Jinjiang district, with an area of 2 square kilometers and a permanent population of less than 10,000.
Shuangnan	Shuangnan community is located on Jiangxi street, Wuhou district. It has an area of about 0.65 square kilometers and a permanent population of less than 10,000.
Yixin	Yixin community is located on Huayang street, Tianfu new district, with an area of about 6.3 square kilometers and a permanent population of about 5000.

).

3.2. Dimension Selection

As an essential part of the national security macro strategy, grassroots security is closely related to the “new security pattern”. As an essential theoretical domain for understanding grassroots security, community resilience is also critical for constructing a “new security pattern [42]”. This “new security pattern” originates from China’s consideration of overall development and security. It is a systematic summary of the relationship between the two. It is also a rational judgment made on the realistic situation of accelerated modernization.

In recent years, “exceptions” and “normality” have begun to coexist, and the normalization of risks has become a social consensus. In addition, the “superposition effect”, “spillover effect”, “multiply effect”, etc., have been highlighted, and the trend of risk compounding is becoming increasingly significant [43]. As a rising star in modernization, China’s unique model of sudden modernization makes social risks different from western modernization, showing unique territorial characteristics [44]. Against this background, the “new security pattern” was proposed. In practice, “the new security pattern protects the new development pattern”, and the “new security pattern” has become China’s action guide to prevent and resolve significant risks.

Unlike the traditional security concept, the “new security pattern” is based on a rational understanding of risk complexity and has unique risk recognition and disposal logic. The first is systemicity. Unlike the fragmented, scattered, and isolated risk governance logic, the “new security pattern” emphasizes a systematic and holistic perspective on risk and sustainable development issues [45]. The second is subjectivity. Unlike the traditional value pursuit of “responding to society”, the “new security pattern” is people centered. It tries to break the traditional passive participation model of residents, give full play to residents’ enthusiasm and initiative, and participate in the construction of a national security system [46]. Finally, there is contingency. Unlike traditional risk response, which emphasizes emergency plans before risks, emergency management during risks, and emergency learning logic after risks, the “new security pattern” is based on a flexible, dynamic, and adjustable governance logic. It opposes rigid ideas in risk management and responds more actively to modern risks [30].

As a result, the “new security pattern” has changed from passive adaptation to system contingency in terms of governance logic, the governance structure has changed from loose connections to multiple integrations, the governance value has changed from “rigid” intervention to active participation, and the governance method has changed from resource dispersion to resource sharing. Combined with the theoretical connotation of the “new security pattern”, urban community resilience can be deconstructed into institutional, structural, spatial, digital, and cultural resilience.

3.3. Indicator Selection

The study follows the theoretical guidance provided by the “new security pattern” for urban community resilience construction and designs a resilience assessment framework based on five dimensions: institutional resilience, structural resilience, spatial resilience, digital resilience, and cultural resilience. In the index layer extraction, the study selected 163 policy texts from the past ten years, including the 14th Five-Year Plan for the National Economy, the 14th Five-Year Plan for Public Services, and the 14th Five-Year Plan for Urban and Rural Community Planning, as research samples, using Nvivo 20 software. This was coded in such a way as to extract relevant urban community resilience indicators [47]. In addition, existing research literature at home and abroad was also sorted, and 17 index-level indicators concerning community resilience indicator models such as DRO, BRIC, CCRAM, and CART were extracted [48]. Combined with the “new security pattern” classification, the indicators are classified into various dimensions in order to form an urban community resilience assessment system (Figure 2).

Under the “new security pattern”, urban community resilience construction requires attention to traditional institutional, structural, and spatial resilience as well as the important role of digital and cultural resilience. As a derivative concept of management resilience, institutional resilience emphasizes beginning from the process theory perspective, eliminating existing “risk stocks”, curbing potential “risk increments”, and achieving prevention through institutional presets and arrangements for the entire risk process [49]. Institutional resilience is the unity of the party building leading mechanism, the autonomous and strong base mechanism, the rule of law guarantee mechanism, and the moral education mechanism. Structural resilience is the relationship arrangement between governance subjects, which ensures that, while taking advantage of the procedural advantages of the bureaucratic structure, it can also demonstrate polycentric characteristics and ensure structural redundancy in the community resilience governance field [50]. Spatial resilience emphasizes mainly the layout of the spatial environment and is an external influencing factor of resilience construction [51]. Digital resilience can also be called technological resilience, which refers to the reliance on modern technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence to enhance the ability to communicate and integrate resources. At the same time, ethical issues brought about by intelligence should also be avoided [52]. Cultural resilience or value resilience is a return to the governance subject. This is because the governance subject can quickly anchor common values when dealing with uncertain risks and independently participate in risk response under the guidance of this value, which is leading and guiding [53].

3.4. Model Construction

The selection of community resilience assessment methods must be scientific and feasible. Scientificity means that the method choice must conform to theoretical logic, and feasibility means that the model must refer to an actual situation [54]. At present, scholars have mainly used gray correlation models [55], principal component analysis [56], etc., to evaluate community resilience, which means they use more objective quantitative indicators to measure community resilience. This method undoubtedly has its advantages but ignoring the humanistic factors of the community, as a community of residents, and relying solely on cold, objective data measurement has its inherent disadvantages [57]. Moreover, returning to the origin of value under the “new security pattern” also requires more mobilization of people’s subjective initiative in constructing urban community resilience.

Based on the above conclusion, the analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy comprehensive analysis method were selected for research. The hierarchical analysis method introduces perceptual factors into the theoretical construction dimension, maintains the proportion of quantitative data measurements, and makes the fuzzy comprehensive analysis method more objective. That is, while the fuzzy hierarchical evaluation model respects objective quantitative data, it also respects the influence of human subjective factors. Combining qualitative and quantitative indicators, while considering the complex quantitative indicators of urban community resilience construction and the soft qualitative indicators such as community culture is more in line with the value pursuit of urban community resilience construction under the “new security pattern”.

Satty TL has proposed the analytical hierarchy process, which decomposes an evaluation object according to different levels. The target layer is the final direction of evaluation, the criterion layer is the decomposition of goals, and the indicator layer is the specific evaluation indicators, which are promoted layer by layer [58]. The key to implementing the AHP lies in the weighting of indicators. Commonly used weighting methods include expert comparison matrix, factor analysis, principal component analysis, etc. [59]. Considering scientificity and feasibility, the research is based on the support of the “Xinmin Think Tank”, which uses an expert comparison matrix to weight indicators and combines the Delphi method to obtain the final weight result.

The spatial, structural, and cultural resilience dimensions in the assessment model are second-order matrix structures with natural consistency. The criterion-level consistency ratio CR is 0.017, and the consistency ratio CR of institutional resilience and digital resilience are 0.010 and 0.052, respectively (Table 1). In general, if the CR value of the consistency ratio is less than 0.1, then the judgment matrix consistency test passes [60]. All indicators meet this standard. The consistency test passes, and the results are credible. The weights of the criterion-level indicators are 0.3678, 0.1805, 0.0965, 0.1480, and 0.2072, respectively. The weights of the other indicators are shown in

Table 2. Consistency test results of the urban community resilience assessment system.

Project	Maximum Characteristic Root	CI	RI	CR	Consistency Test Results	Index Weight
Criterion layer matrix	5.075	0.019	1.120	0.017	Pass	0.367; 0.1805; 0.0965; 0.1480; 0.2072
Institutional resilience matrix	4.028	0.009	0.890	0.010	Pass	0.5017; 0.3190; 0.0896; 0.0896
Cultural resilience matrix	2.000	0.000	0.000	\	Pass	0.2500; 0.7500
Structural resilience matrix	2.000	0.000	0.000	\	Pass	0.8333; 0.1667
Spatial resilience matrix	2.000	0.000	0.000	\	Pass	0.5000; 0.5000
Digital resilience matrix	3.054	0.027	0.520	0.052	Pass	0.6851; 0.0935; 0.2214

.

The fuzzy comprehensive analysis method is the most widely used quantitative processing method for qualitative data. It can transform qualitative indicators that are difficult to measure into quantitative data that can be calculated. The most representative one is Zadeh LA’s calculation logic. Simply put, the key to the fuzzy comprehensive analysis method is in the construction of an evaluation matrix R based on the questionnaire data recovered from the index system. Combined with the weight matrix W of the AHP, the membership matrix UW of the corresponding dimension can be calculated. The fuzzy comprehensive analysis method comment set V = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] is introduced and, when multiplied by UW, the evaluation results of the corresponding dimensions can be obtained [61].

It is worth mentioning that, since the fuzzy comprehensive analysis method’s comment set is on a five-point scale, the final results need to be percentized in order to better present the final evaluation results. In addition, the research introduces objective quantitative indicators using a 0 or 1 assignment method. The definition of the review set V is collected and 0 is assigned to 1, which is the worst, with 1 assigned to 5, which is the best [62].

3.5. Research Implementation

Based on the evaluation model, researchers divided the questionnaire into objective evaluation questionnaires and subjective evaluation questionnaires. The objective evaluation questionnaire is conducted by “looking at the materials”, the evaluators give the results directly. The subjective questionnaire uses convenience sampling to conduct random interviews with community residents. In the final study, 350 questionnaires were collected, all valid. Further reliability and validity analyses were conducted on the returned questionnaire data. The results show that the coefficient was 0.660, more significant than 0.6, and that the KMO value of deleting the constant items was 0.850, more critical than 0.8. The questionnaire had high reliability and validity and could be used for further analysis.

According to the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process operation logic and based on the questionnaire results, the criterion layer evaluation matrix A is constructed, and institutional resilience B₁, cultural resilience B₂, structural resilience B₃, spatial resilience B₄, and digital resilience B₅ are introduced in to the indicator layer evaluation matrix. The weights WA, WB₁, WB₂, WB₃, WB₄, and WB₅ are used to calculate the community resilience membership degrees UWB1, UWB2, UWB3, UWB4, and UWB5, and the comment set V is introduced to obtain the settlement results as in Equations (1)–(5).

UWB₁ = [0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 1.0000],

(1)

UWB₂ = [0.0000 0.1079 0.4050 0.3200 0.1671],

(2)

UWB₃ = [0.0071 0.1467 0.1538 0.2657 0.4267],

(3)

UWB₄ = [0.0000 0.1357 0.1471 0.4014 0.3157],

(4)

UWB₅ = [0.0273 0.0785 0.2588 0.5401 0.0954],

(5)

The membership matrix UWA is obtained based on the membership results of each indicator in the criterion layer to the indicator layer. Introducing the criterion layer weight WA = [0.3678 0.1805 0.0965 0.1480 0.2072] and the comment set V = [1 2 3 4 5], the final score of target layer A is 4.1834, with a score rate of 83.67%. The detailed results are shown in the picture below (Figure 3).

4. Results

4.1. Target Layer Data Analysis

Judging from the urban community resilience assessment results, the overall urban community resilience score is 4.1834, with a scoring rate of 83.67%, which is located in the [80, 85) score rate range. The level of resilience is relatively high. Among the assessed dimensions, institutional resilience is a significant pulling factor, with an institutional resilience score of 5.0000 and a scoring rate of 100%. This is followed by structural resilience and spatial resilience. Although the score rates are not as reasonable as institutional resilience, the score rates are both in [75, 80), which is close to the overall assessment level. The scores of digital resilience and cultural resilience are low, 71.96% and 70.93%, respectively, located at [70, 75), and are prominent shortcomings in urban community resilience construction (Figure 3).

4.2. Criterion Layer Data Analysis

The study then collects statistics on the specific value assignments of the dimensions, such as institutional resilience, cultural resilience, structural resilience, spatial resilience, and digital resilience, in order to determine the particular influencing factors of each indicator layer. If a vector represents the final result, the institutional resilience dimension can be ignored because it only results in a value of 5, which is the best state. The result of cultural resilience is [3 4 5 2 1], the result of structural resilience is [5 4 3 2 1], the result of spatial resilience is [4 5 3 2 1], and the result of digital resilience is [4 3 2 5 1]. Judging from this result, the top two results of structural and spatial toughness are both 4 and 5, respectively, which are relatively strong. Cultural resilience and digital resilience are 4 and 3, respectively, and are relatively weak. From an internal perspective of cultural resilience and digital resilience, those with a cultural resilience value of 3 ranked first, and those with a digital resilience value of 4 ranked first. The shortcomings of cultural resilience are more pronounced (Figure 4).

4.3. Indicator Layer Data Analysis

When expanding cultural resilience and digital resilience, we can find that, in cultural resilience, the vector of each assignment of community commitment is [0 38 132 113 67], and the proportion of assignments of 4 and above is more than half, about 52%. The vector of community atmosphere creation assignments is [0 37 171 109 33], and the proportion of assignments of 3 and below is also more than half, about 60%. This shows that, although community commitment and community atmosphere creation are both low in the cultural resilience sector, the current shortcomings in community atmosphere creation are more prominent and require more attention. In digital resilience, the data security assignment vector is [1 5 96 236 12], the information barrier assignment vector is [0 89 109 84 68], and the refined application assignment vector is [40 71 66 88 85]. Judging from this result, data barriers have existed for a long time, and data security has also received widespread attention. Still, the most severe problem is the use of data. In refined applications, the number of assigned values 1, 2, and 3 are 40, 71, and 66, respectively, and the proportion of assigned values 1 and 2 is as high as 32%, a critical issue that requires urgent attention (Figure 5).

4.4. Result Analysis

The above results are the composite results of multiple reasons. From an overall perspective, urban communities rely on the development of cities and have inherent advantages in resources, talents, information, etc., and community governance practices begin in urban communities. In addition, with the boost of public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 epidemic, urban communities’ resilience has risen to a relatively high level [63]. From the perspective of institutional resilience, Chengdu took the lead in establishing a community governance committee, and relevant systems, mechanisms, and processes are becoming more and more perfect. The study’s institutional assessment of urban communities shows that all institutional factors are present, and that institutional resilience is a significant advantage of urban communities [64]. From the perspective of structural and spatial resilience, although there are still shortcomings, the structure of urban community organizations and spaces can maintain the essential operation of the community system when responding to external pressures, shocks, or continuous changes [65].

Unlike the previous three dimensions, digital and cultural resilience are relatively weak links in urban communities, among which cultural resilience is particularly prominent. Digital resilience has made progress along with the development of technology. Especially since the COVID-19 epidemic, the developments of health codes, personnel flow surveys, etc., have promoted the rapid popularization of digital technology in communities and have empowered daily management. Thus far, all communities in Chengdu have established data collection, processing, and usage platforms, and some communities also have data centers for community services. However, with digital technology, data security and barrier issues have become essential factors that affect digital resilience [66]. Urban communities are different from rural areas because of their industrial development logic. Urban communities are societies of strangers [67]. Therefore, there are significant problems when undertaking cultural construction in unfamiliar environments. The evaluation results show that community atmosphere creation and commitment scored low, which is closely related to the urban community itself.

5. Discussion

The core of comprehensively deepening reform is to grasp not only the starting point, but also the process and the end point. This leads to the discussion of “the first mile”, “the middle block”, and the “last mile” [68]. In urban community resilience management, urban communities are both the “last mile” of government administration and the “first mile” of public service. The “middle block” must be broken to connect the two properly [69]. Simply put, modern digital technology provides good convenience for community resilience building, making risk prediction and prevention more accurate and measurable. It has also pioneered urban community resilience building, achieving the “first mile”. As an essential component of soft governance, cultural resilience is achieved by creating a community atmosphere, constructing common values, and unifying community emotions. Cultural resilience is more like glue, with the goal of co-construction, co-governance, and sharing, and is the key to overcoming practical obstacles in building urban community resilience. Coupling means that there is mutual dependence, mutual influence, and mutual restriction between various parts of the system [70]. The coupling of digital and culture requires both digital and culture, integrating culture into digital and embedding digital into the culture, thus linking the “last mile” of resilient governance in urban communities.

5.1. Digital Empowerment Opens up the “First Mile” of Resilient Communities

Since the construction of urban communities in China was officially launched in 1990, and after more than 30 years of development, significant progress has been made in constructing basic hardware facilities and software-enabled governance. Especially since the COVID-19 epidemic, communities have withstood the test and have evolved into an integral part of China’s unique institutional advantages, becoming an important starting point for the modernization of grassroots governance [71]. In recent years, under the background of the fourth industrial revolution, there has also been the impact of new globalization and, with it, society’s comprehensive transformation and development. As the central space where scientific and technological progress and urban governance are intertwined, smart city foundations, future community exploration, and intelligent community construction have become hot spots [72]. As early as 2014, the Ministry of Housing and Urban–Rural Development had promulgated the “Intelligent Community Construction Guidelines”, which clearly defined intelligent communities and planned out mid-term and long-term goals. This guideline clarifies the essential difference between community management informatization and digital communities. Community management informatization mainly starts from the tool dimension, emphasizing the application of modern information technology to community management and services. Digital communities abandon instrumentalism but use information technology to fundamentally change traditional communities and create new community governance and service models.

The resilience of the digital community is more complex. It refers to the use of modern technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and AI platforms as the means for the digital empowerment of community resilience as a basic orientation, for the full-cycle management concept as the response logic and the combination of peace and war as the response mechanism. These are combined into a risk governance mechanism with which to promote the community’s ability to better prevent and resolve risks [73]. What needs to be clear is that digital resilience is not a simple superposition of numbers and resilience but a deep integration. It is resilience construction based on digital communities and on digital governance that is based on resilient communities. Broken down, digital focuses on improving efficiency through refined management, while resilience focuses on resilient performance under risk conditions so as to ensure the safety of residents. The infrastructure built by digital communities and the massive amounts of data collected can significantly build resilience. Correspondingly, the logic and concepts implemented in building resilient communities also guide the prospects of digital community building. The future community resilience must be the organic coexistence of “digits” under daily operations and “resilience” under risk conditions, that is, the “combination of peace and war” in the time dimension and the “soft and hard interaction” in the space dimension [74].

The key to building digital resilience is to improve relevant systems and regulations so as to ensure the legality of data acquisition, scientific storage, and ease of use. In addition, it is necessary to break down the “data barriers” between vertical superiors and subordinates and between horizontal departments and departments, put an end to “information islands”, and transform data from “storing” to “using”. In the context of digital communities, the “use” of “use it” is not simply “use” but “refined application”. Specifically, the first step is to build an intelligent identification and early warning system for urban community risks. We can conduct intelligent identification, dynamic detection, and the real-time early warning of potential risk sources in the community through advanced computer technologies such as the internet of things, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. The second is to do an excellent job of “subtraction”, which includes two major categories. The first of these is to reduce the number of different forms of data platforms, to open data blockages; revitalize information resources inside and outside the community; achieve multi-level, all-round real-time sharing; and reduce the waste of public resources. The second is to reduce diversified data collection and usage ports, effectively reduce the burden on the grassroots, integrate functions to improve residents’ practicality, and eliminate the “digital paradox”. Finally, the construction of digital communities cannot be separated from the support of talent. It is necessary to focus on technical training, form a normalized learning mechanism, and comprehensively strengthen the thinking and capabilities of community personnel in digital governance in the context of digital resilience building.

5.2. Cultural Empowerment Solves the “Middle Block” in Resilient Communities

Community culture is the core value when building community resilience, and residents’ first response to emergencies is closely related to community culture [75]. Community residents with high cohesion and centripetal force tend to trust the community when facing crisis events, and, conversely, they tend to rely on individuals or families. As urban grassroots micro-units, urban communities are essential carriers of culture and important activity spaces for cultural cultivation. The importance of creating community cultural spaces in improving community resilience is self-evident [76]. The “Regulations on Representatives of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” promulgated by UNESCO stipulates the meaning of cultural space, which describes physical spaces, places, and locations with cultural significance or nature. Within the scope of an urban community, it can be understood broadly as a spatial carrier for various cultural life activities of urban community residents. Specifically, it includes various public cultural service facilities, such as community libraries, community cultural centers, comprehensive activity centers, etc., and various cultural business venues, such as universities for the elderly and community training classes [77]. As essential places for information dissemination and cultural experience for community residents, these artistic spaces can become a “magnifying glass” for emergencies and a “dissipation place” for panic and have great potential for improving community resilience.

Cultural space not only strengthens the sense of belonging and identity of community residents at the emotional and cognitive levels but also enhances the community’s resilience at the behavioral and ability levels, providing profound cultural support for the community’s sustainable development [78]. The advantage of creating a community cultural space is first reflected in the way that it provides an important social platform for community residents and promotes mutual connections and cooperation among them. This kind of social connection not only strengthens the community’s social network but also helps form a closer community, thus improving the community’s ability to collaborate and self-organize. Secondly, cultural space, as a communication medium for cultural identity, helps deepen residents’ sense of identity within the community. By providing a place for cultural experience, residents can have a deeper understanding and knowledge of the community’s cultural heritage, thereby forming a sense of community and enhancing cohesion within the community. In addition, cultural spaces also provide community residents with a place for learning and innovation. In these spaces, residents can participate in various cultural activities, stimulate creativity, and cultivate innovation capabilities, making the community more capable of adapting to changes. Based on this, the community must further strengthen cultural the empowering effect of a space by establishing diversified cultural venues, carrying out cultural inheritance projects, holding cultural activities, and supporting art and creative entrepreneurship.

First, communities can take measures to build multi-functional cultural venues, such as setting up cultural centers, art galleries, and community theaters. These places should adapt to various cultural activities, including exhibitions, performances, workshops, etc., to create a diverse and open cultural space and stimulate residents’ artistic interests. Second, communities can promote and pass on local traditional culture by encouraging residents to participate in cultural inheritance projects. This helps to improve residents’ sense of identity with the community and injects historical depth into the community, forming a continuation of cultural traditions and enhancing community cohesion. Third, regularly holding various cultural activities is the key to improving the efficiency of artistic space. Communities can plan concerts, art exhibitions, literary salons, and other activities to attract residents’ active participation. This helps promote cultural exchanges within the community, improves residents’ social skills, and creates a platform for the community to share cultural experiences. Additionally, communities can support arts and creative entrepreneurship. By providing resource support, such as studios and creative incubators, we encourage artists and creative practitioners to develop within the community and to integrate their works with community culture to promote the prosperity of community art and creativity. By building rich and colorful cultural spaces, communities can better adapt to social, economic, and environmental changes, enhance their resilience, and become more sustainable.

5.3. Digital and Cultural Coupling Link the “Last Mile” of Resilient Communities

In sociology, coupling is the interdependence and interaction between two or more systems. Strong coupling means that changes between systems will affect each other, forming a symbiotic relationship. On the contrary, weak coupling means that changes between systems are relatively independent. Coupling is different from accumulation. Accumulation is more mechanical and is addition, while coupling is more composite and is multiplication. Coupling emphasizes the interaction between systems, that is, how changes in one system affect another [79]. The coupling of “digital” and “culture” is reflected in their complementary and mutually reinforcing relationship. Community digital governance uses modern technology, data analysis, and other methods to improve the scientificity and efficiency of community decision-making. However, it may be difficult to truly meet residents’ needs without an understanding and respect for community culture. On the contrary, community culture creation emphasizes the inheritance and promotion of the community’s cultural traditions. Nevertheless, it lacks the support of modern technological means, resulting in limited cultural dissemination, and may fail to better meet the diverse needs of contemporary community residents. The coupling of digital and culture makes community construction more comprehensive and sustainable.

This coupling relationship makes digital governance and cultural creation intertwined and interdependent. Incorporating cultural factors into digital governance can better understand residents’ cultural expectations and improve the accuracy of governance. Introducing modern technological means into cultural creation can enhance the timeliness and breadth of cultural dissemination, allowing traditional culture to be better integrated into modern community life. The key to the coupling between the two is that modern digital technology must be integrated into cultural ethics, and community culture creation must rely on modern technological means to coordinate the coupling relationship between digital and culture. First, community digital governance must be integrated into cultural ethics; that is, residents’ privacy must be respected, data security must be ensured, and data must be prevented from being misused and abused. Secondly, community culture creation requires the use of modern technological means. Modern technological tools such as digital exhibitions, virtual community platforms, and social media spread and display community culture more vividly and innovatively, making culture more attractive and more accessible for their integration into residents’ daily lives. Finally, to achieve synergy between community digital governance and cultural creation, an interdisciplinary cooperation mechanism must also be established. As should the introduction of experts from different fields, such as sociology, information technology, and cultural studies, to participate in community construction and form a comprehensive management team to jointly promote the coupling of community digital governance and cultural creation and the community’s sustainable development.

6. Conclusions

The research is based on the “new security pattern”. It builds a theoretical framework of urban community resilience from the cultural, structural, spatial, institutional, and digital dimensions based on the characteristics of systemicity, subjectivity, and contingency. An urban community resilience assessment system is constructed based on the theoretical framework. The AHP-FCE evaluation mathematical model is formed by comprehensively citing the analytic hierarchy process and the fuzzy comprehensive analysis method. The Delphi method is introduced to collect hierarchical weights, the Likert scale is introduced to quantify the perceptual indicators, and the objective quantitative indicators are introduced to reduce the impact of subjective human factors on the results. This will answer the hypotheses and questions raised in the study in order to explore urban communities’ resilience components, provide guiding opinions in each category, promote complementarity of advantages and mutual learning of disadvantages, and jointly promote the sustainable development of urban communities.

The results show that traditional community resilience governance thinking adheres to administrative power’s “rigid” institutional logic and encounters significant problems in advancing modernization. In the resilience construction of modern urban communities, institutional arrangements, organizational structures, and spatial environments are constantly optimized along with economic and social development and have become prominent advantages in the resilience construction of urban communities. With the development of information technology and the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, the need for digital resilience has become a consensus in community resilience construction. Miniature program collections, the internet of things, cloud computing platforms, intelligent management systems, etc., are widely used. However, the problems of “data islands”, “data barriers”, and “data ethics” attached to digital dividends have emerged, and the digital paradox has become a hot topic. Cultural resilience needs to be improved in urban communities. Unlike rural areas, cities are characterized by high population mobility, heterogeneity, and complexity. This feature will inevitably make urban communities become a society of strangers. “People will not interact with each other until they grow old and die” seems to describe urban community residents. Digital resilience is at the forefront of community resilience and is a fundamental cornerstone. Cultural resilience belongs to the middle stream and plays the role of “adjustment” in adhesion. The coupling of the two is the best choice to deal with the contradiction between modern and traditional society. It is an advanced form of resilient community construction and the direction of future community construction.

The study also has some things that could be improved. First, although the selection of the research model should avoid the influence of human subjective factors as much as possible, the defects of the AHP-FCE model itself cannot be avoided. Second, the empirical analysis is only conducted in Chengdu and is limited by the team size. Relatively few communities are selected, and the sample size needs to be further expanded. Third, further research is needed on the specific situation after coupling digital resilience and cultural resilience. Nevertheless, this study introduces digital and cultural resilience into the framework of urban community resilience construction, determines the relationship between digital and urban resilience, and proposes targeted improvement suggestions, which have an essential guiding role in the development of urban resilience.