Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
JOURNAL OF RISK RESEARCH, cilt.29, ss.1-16, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
Enhancing urban resilience requires identifying spatially disadvantaged social groups and formulating planning and policy decisions. While social vulnerability analyses in the literature are typically conducted at the provincial and district levels, studies at the neighborhood scale remain relatively limited. This study applies the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) model to examine differences in social vulnerability between urban and rural areas at the neighborhood level. Using population data, factor groups were derived through Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for 38 neighborhoods—comprising both rural and urban areas—located in the Sarıyer district of Istanbul, a metropolitan city. The analysis identified two primary factor groups—Vulnerable Population Groups and Population Density and Educational Status—based on nine selected variables. Although the prevailing view in the literature suggests that rural areas tend to be more vulnerable than urban areas, the findings of this study indicate that rural neighborhoods may, in some cases, be less vulnerable than their urban counterparts. While rural neighborhoods in the northern part of the district generally exhibit lower levels of vulnerability, urban neighborhoods in the southern part display moderate to high levels of vulnerability. Importantly, the fact that the most vulnerable and the most resilient neighborhoods differ across factor groups highlights that each neighborhood has distinct structural characteristics and varying susceptibility to different risks. Moreover, identifying vulnerabilities at the neighborhood level enables the prioritization of critical areas in urban planning processes.