Resilience-vulnerability balance to urban flooding: A case study in a densely populated coastal city in China

City areas experiencing disproportionate vulnerability levels to urban flooding events have attracted attention. Resilience is widely accepted as a strategy for reducing the risks of vulnerability and maintaining sustainable development. This research conceptualized vulnerability to hazard and exposure, and resilience to adaptation to urban flooding and explores their associations from a spatial balance perspective. The hazard of urban flooding was evaluated by hydrographic models, whereas exposure and adaptation were examined by indexes. Shenzhen, a densely populated socialist Chinese city, was selected as the case city. Results revealed that districts in the marginalized areas of Shenzhen experience high vulnerability to urban flooding because of poor geographic factors, immature drainage systems of urban villages, and the influx of rural migrants with sensible populations driven by high housing prices in urban center. The situation is becoming increasingly serious because of strong spatial mismatch between vulnerability and resilience with urban overutilization and the rural underutilization of adaptation resource allocation. Social segregation on adaptation resource occurs for public service provision in a marketization situation instead of socialism. Therefore, exploring the mechanisms of the spatial imbalance between vulnerability and resilience in socialist city, such as Shenzhen is necessary for reducing such impacts in future research. [Display omitted] •Integration of the perspective of adaptive systems into vulnerability research.•Spatial imbalance between vulnerability and resilience exits in Shenzhen.•Urban overutilization and rural underutilization of adaptation resource allocation.•Resilience is a pathway to reduce vulnerability for city under rapid urbanization.