Resilient design, as a strategy to address various disruptions and pressures, remains poorly understood among the public, which hinders its effectiveness. This study aims to explore how physical elements in urban form, environmental stimuli, and individual attributes influence public perception of resilient design characteristics. A video questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate these perceptions. Results indicate that physical elements—such as road signs, social service facilities, road infrastructure, accessibility to the center, accessible green spaces, diversified activity areas, and disability facilities—negatively impact public perception of resilient design. Conversely, environmental stimuli, including fast/slow, qualitative/quantitative, and short-term changes, positively influence these perceptions. Additionally, the findings reveal that older individuals, those with lower levels of education, and individuals who have had contact with the area for less than three years exhibit weaker perceptions of resilient design characteristics. The study proposes strategies for optimizing resilient design from the perspectives of physical elements and environmental stimuli, while also recommending that future research focus on groups with limited perceptions of resilient design characteristics.

Resilient design contributes to sustainable urban development. This study investigates the public perception of a public space with resilient design characteristics and explores the effectiveness of these characteristics. In-depth interviews with 14 participants and on-site tours were conducted. This study also conducted a thematic analysis of the public perception of urban resilient design characteristics based on the landscape perception theory. It found four themes related to resilient design perception – meanings of place; function and needs; space form and use patterns; and it also revealed the relationships between the characteristics. The insights optimise the consideration of resilient design and have important significance for resilient design in cities. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .

Urban resilient design is a crucial strategy in urban sustainable development, which needs to be understood by the public. However, misunderstandings surrounding resilient design often impede its effective implementation and impact. This study explores public perceptions of urban resilient design characteristics and the factors influencing such perceptions. Through interviews and mental mapping of 14 participants between the ages of 18 and 65, the study was analysed based on landscape perception theory, combined with mental mapping and field interviews. Our findings reveal personalised painting mechanisms influenced by subjective factors and explore participants’ experiences and feelings in depicting natural and built elements, as well as route reviews. The results highlight how participants’ perception of resilient design manifested itself in the routes and key elements they described, with subjective factors such as age, identity and familiarity playing a key role. Moreover, the study describes how experience shapes public perceptions of robustness, adaptability, redundancy, efficiency, and connectivity, while familiarity influences perceptions of diversity and modularity. Based on these insights, the study proposes strategies to optimise resilient design characteristics, which have important implications for promoting sustainable urban development.

Resilient urban design is vital for community renewal; however, a systematic understanding of how public perceptions shape its outcomes is absent from the literature. This review synthesizes evidence on public responses to examine their facilitative and constraining roles in renewal processes. The findings highlight five core public perceptions: healing and relaxation, basic livelihood security, sense of place, equity of opportunity, and empowerment. Furthermore, the study identifies 12 key strategies for achieving positive resilient urban design outcomes. The review ultimately provides policymakers with a human-centered framework for integrating resilient design into community renewal.