Rapid urban growth and persistent dilapidated fabric in seismically active cities make joint assessment of risk and spatial resilience increasingly urgent. This study analyzes and zonate the spatial resilience of Kerman city, Iran, against earthquakes through an integrated framework combining seismic vulnerability, population exposure, spatial risk, and emergency shelter capacity. The study is applied in purpose and employs spatial multi-criteria analysis within a GIS environment, supported by fuzzy analytic hierarchy process weighting. Results show that approximately 49% of the city's population (257,780 people) resides in zones of high to complete seismic vulnerability, with the highest risk concentrated in the central core and eastern and southeastern districts. FAHP weighting indicates that spatial risk (weight = 0.62) contributes more strongly to resilience than shelter capacity (weight = 0.38). Based on the proposed Spatial Resilience Index, about 31% of the city's area falls into very-low and low resilience classes, while 46% falls into high and very-high classes. The estimated gap between shelter capacity and potential demand is approximately 41,204 people; the SRI map reveals a distinct center–periphery pattern, with the historic core—marked by physical deterioration, high population density, and limited response capacity—exhibiting the lowest resilience. By integrating risk and response capacity into a single measure and subjecting it to systematic sensitivity analysis, the proposed index addresses conceptual, methodological, and analytical gaps in the literature, offering a decision-support tool for prioritizing risk-reduction interventions, urban regeneration, and disaster-management resource allocation in historic, earthquake-prone cities