Uneven urban resilience across economic sectors revealed by satellite nighttime lights

Abstract

Abstract Urban resilience is critical in the context of global disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, yet recovery processes are rarely uniform across urban economies. How resilience varies across economic sectors and geographical contexts, and the extent to which it is structured by business essentiality, remain poorly understood at the global scale. Here, we use the COVID-19 lockdowns as a natural experiment and analyze monthly satellite-derived nighttime light trajectories for 105 city–sector combinations across 48 global cities between 2018 and 2023. We identify four archetypal sectoral trajectories capturing distinct resilience responses and two dominant dimensions associated with their variation: economic essentiality and sectoral structure. These trajectories are strongly structured by essentiality, with resilient trajectories concentrated in essential sectors, whereas Chronic Decline is disproportionately associated with non-essential sectors, particularly in Europe. A pronounced geographic divergence is also evident: cities in Latin America and Asia more frequently exhibit Resilient or Full Recovery trajectories, whereas European cities show widespread and persistent declines. The observed resilience trajectories vary systematically across cities and sectors, reflecting geographically contingent, sector-specific patterns associated with essentiality. Our findings suggest that city-level resilience assessments may overlook persistent sectoral differences and highlight the value of sector-sensitive assessments of urban resilience.