Search Results (1,794)

Does patent-based breakthrough technological innovation (KI) continually improve urban–rural common prosperity, or does its marginal relationship reverse beyond a sample-specific empirical turning point? Employing a balanced panel of 266 Chinese cities from 2011 to 2020, this study operationalizes KI via patent textual similarity (incorporating a 5-year forward and backward window) and substantiates an inverted U-shaped relationship with urban–rural common prosperity via the Lind–Mehlum test, with the estimated turning point located at the 34.7th percentile of the observed KI distribution. These baseline dynamics remain robust across lagged specifications, winsorization, sample restrictions, and double machine learning; IV estimates corroborate a similar nonlinear shape, although exclusion–restriction diagnostics are mixed. Transmission-channel results are stage-dependent: the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem exhibits a positive indirect association at low KI and a negative one at high KI, while non-farm employment absorption uncovers pronounced positive transmission, concentrated at low KI. Digital financial inclusion and informatization significantly modify the conditional KI–CP relationship, whereas the joint moderation test for industrial chain resilience is not statistically significant. Furthermore, spatial diagnostics and SDM estimates reveal significant spatial dependence and a robust positive indirect effect of KI across cities, despite limited regional heterogeneity. These findings underscore the importance of considering innovation intensity together with the conditions governing the distribution and diffusion of innovation gains. Full article

Urban sustainability is a critical objective for rapidly growing cities in the Gulf region, particularly in balancing environmental protection, social equity, economic development, and effective governance. Riyadh has undergone extensive urban expansion, producing diverse neighbourhoods ranging from high-income, modern master-planned communities to older and denser middle to low-income areas. These socio-spatial shifts prompt questions about whether sustainability performance differs across neighbourhoods with different resident income profiles and whether wealthier neighbourhoods necessarily exhibit higher sustainability performance. This study investigates the relationship between resident income level and urban sustainability in Riyadh by comparing the sustainability profiles of high-income and middle-income neighbourhoods using a multidimensional framework. Quantitative indicators derived from international sustainability assessment models were applied to the Riyadh context. The methodology integrated expert-based weighting, neighbourhood-level indicator assessment, and Sustainability Index calculations to evaluate performance. The findings show that the high-income neighbourhood achieved a higher overall Sustainability Index, mainly due to stronger environmental and social quality. However, the middle-income neighbourhood demonstrated notable sustainability potential through economic resilience, civic engagement, and community participation. The study concludes that differences in neighbourhood sustainability profiles are associated not only with resident income level, but also with urban form, behaviour, governance, and resource-use characteristics. Full article

Urban green space supply (UGSS) is a core component of territorial spatial planning, and the advancement of the park city initiative has been temporally associated with a systematic transformation. Differentiation in UGSS is a comprehensive issue concerning ecological environment, public welfare, and high-quality urban development, and it is closely related to the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11.7. This study employs a comprehensive approach combining spatiotemporal dynamic analysis (Mann–Kendall trend test and Theil–Sen slope estimation), differentiation measures (Gini coefficient and Theil index), and the explainable machine learning SHAP model to conduct a large-sample empirical analysis of 1760 towns in China from 2015 to 2024. The findings show the following: First, park city construction corresponds to notable spatiotemporal evolution of UGSS in China’s towns, with approximately 85% of towns showing a significant rise. Second, park city construction coincides with a reduction in differentiation in both the outcomes and processes of UGSS in China’s towns, with both the Gini coefficient and Theil index declining to varying degrees. An analysis of the Theil index further confirms that the observed changes in the Theil index are more pronounced in disadvantaged towns, and the differentiation in UGSS originates more from intra-regional disparities than from inter-regional gaps. Third, the differentiation in UGSS shows deep structural correlates, with the associations of socio-economic and natural ecological factors exhibiting various complex nonlinear associations such as inverted U-shape, arc shape, U-shape, and wave shape. These associations are specifically manifested as mixed directionality of associations, hierarchical intensity of associations, threshold-based evolutionary pathways, geographic spatial heterogeneity, and interactive relationships among factors. This study recommends that the policy design of park city construction and green space system planning should promptly establish a new model combining situational response, threshold management, and collaborative governance. The nonlinear and interpretable analytical paradigm constructed in this study holds significant value for achieving precise supply and equitable sharing of green space resources. Full article

The coupling coordination of urbanization and urban resilience is a key issue for achieving sustainable urban development. Taking 49 prefecture-level and above cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and the Pearl River Delta (PRD) —China’s three major coastal urban agglomerations—as research objects, this paper constructs an evaluation index system for urbanization and urban resilience, and employs the CRITIC–entropy weight composite method, the coupling coordination degree model and kernel density estimation to measure the evolutionary characteristics of coupling coordination between urbanization and urban resilience in the three agglomerations during 2013–2023, and further identifies the key influencing factors using a panel fixed-effects model. The results show that (1) the coupling coordination degree of the three urban agglomerations increased continuously, with the PRD taking the lead in 2023 (0.6650), the YRD ranking second (0.6315) and the BTH ranking third (0.5627); however, their coupling coordination paths diverged markedly, specifically manifesting as a catch-up convergence pattern in the BTH, a balanced advancement pattern in the YRD and a polarization-divergence pattern in the PRD. (2) Opening-up and digital economy development are robust positive drivers of the coupling coordination level, and their positive effects are largely universal across regions; urban population agglomeration and government intervention constitute significant negative constraints, among which the inhibitory effect of government intervention exhibits genuine regional heterogeneity, being most prominent in the YRD, followed by the PRD, while failing the significance test in the BTH; technological innovation fails to pass the significance test; the full-sample effect of spatial structure is insignificant, but its influence exhibits significant regional heterogeneity, with a significantly positive association in the PRD. This study systematically reveals the regional differentiation rules governing the synergistic evolution of urbanization and resilience in the three urban agglomerations, providing empirical support for differentiated policies to promote the deep integrated development of urbanization and urban resilience. Full article

To address the overlapping risks and weak agricultural resilience in karst underdeveloped mountainous areas, this study examines 110 new-type rural collective economy projects in Hechi City, Guangxi. Grounded theory is used to qualitatively identify risk factors. The analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation are then combined to quantify risk indicator weights and overall risk intensity, clarify how various risks constrain agricultural resilience, and construct risk control pathways to enhance resilience. Findings reveal that risks fall into four categories—systemic, external environmental, operational and management, and financial and capital risks—encompassing ten secondary dimensions. The overall risk level is moderate but clearly stratified. Market price, capital recovery, operational and sales, investment decision-making, and internal governance are relatively high-risk dimensions. Specifically, policy support risk carries the greatest relative importance weight, while natural disaster risk has the lowest current intensity. Guided by prioritizing relatively high-risk areas for targeted reinforcement and routinely consolidating moderate risks, this paper proposes a three-dimensional strategy: targeted risk control, routine foundation consolidation, and multi-dimensional safeguards. This provides theoretical support and practical reference for precise risk governance and synergistic agricultural resilience enhancement in ecologically fragile karst regions. Full article

Open government data is a key institutional arrangement in market-oriented data factor reforms. Using the staggered rollout of city-level government data platforms in China as a quasi-natural experiment and panel data of listed manufacturing firms (2011–2024), we employ a staggered difference-in-differences design to examine the effect of open government data on firms’ resource allocation efficiency. We find that government data platforms significantly reduce resource misallocation, a result robust to propensity score matching, exclusion of concurrent policy shocks, and double machine learning. Channel-level tests do not find statistically significant transmission through government transparency, firm digital innovation, or fiscal subsidy reallocation. Directional identification shows that the effect operates primarily as a corrective force on capital-overallocated firms by curbing inefficient investment, rather than as a relief effect on constrained firms, and is more pronounced in high-digital-intensity industries, smaller cities, and regions with lower digital development. By reducing the wasteful use of capital, labour, and energy and improving the information environment in factor markets, open government data offers a low-cost, institutionalized instrument for reconciling productivity growth with sustainable resource use, with direct relevance to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Full article

In the context of the global implementation of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), urban green development serves as a core practical pathway to advance SDG8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), and SDG15 (Life on Land). This study constructed a three-dimensional evaluation framework encompassing the green economy, green ecology, and green society, and utilized panel data from 282 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2009 to 2021. By integrating the CRITIC weighting method, spatial autocorrelation, the Standard Deviational Ellipse (SDE) approach, and the Dagum Gini decomposition, we systematically quantified multi-scale spatiotemporal evolution and disparity patterns at the national scale, as well as across four major economic zones and five core urban agglomerations. Nationwide, the composite green development index rose from 0.422 to 0.522 (+23.70%), while the overall Dagum Gini coefficient declined from 0.072 to 0.053 (−26.39%), with the spatial center of gravity gradually shifting toward the southwest. Eastern China persistently maintained the highest development level; Western China achieved the fastest cumulative growth (26.43%), and Northeastern China lagged behind with the lowest growth rate (20.10%). Among five major urban agglomerations, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD) shared an identical average score of 0.582, whereas the Chengdu–Chongqing (CC) agglomeration recorded the highest growth of 33.07%. This research contributes multi-scale empirical evidence for localized SDG implementation in China and provides differentiated policy insights for cross-regional green transition governance. Full article

Urban floods pose an escalating threat to sustainable urban development, particularly in densely populated regions where demographic heterogeneity and differential responses to warnings shape flood vulnerability. However, the existing flood risk assessments of humans often neglect age-specific susceptibility and education-dependent behavioral responses. This study develops an agent-based flood risk model (AFRM) that couples the agent model with a hydrodynamic model to support sustainable urban flood management. Human agents are characterized by spatial distributions derived from population heatmap data, daily mobility patterns governed by a probabilistic finite-state machine, age-differentiated vulnerability thresholds (minors, adults, and seniors), and education-dependent probabilities of responding to warnings. The AFRM is established by integrating human agents and the urban flood process based on the NetLogo platform. Subsequently, the study assesses the dynamic human flood risk under various return periods, and explores the effects of age structures and early warning on urban flood risk assessment. Taking the Huayuan Road area of Zhengzhou City, China as a case study, the results demonstrate the following: (1) the AFRM achieves reasonable accuracy, with 7.17% mean absolute percentage errors across all risk levels; (2) neglecting age structures underestimates the flood risk assessment by 18% to 29%, as minors and seniors exhibit a higher susceptibility to flooding; and (3) early warnings reduced the medium- and high-risk exposure by 45% to 58%, highlighting the potential of warning lead time strategies to enhance urban flood resilience. This research provides the support for urban flood safety and sustainable development in a changing climate. Full article

The equitable allocation of health resources is fundamental to building healthy cities and advancing sustainable regional development. Using panel data for 122 county-level units in Hunan Province, China, from 2011 to 2022, this study constructs an evaluation index system for healthcare resource allocation and applies trend surface analysis, spatial autocorrelation, the Dagum Gini coefficient, and geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) to examine the spatiotemporal evolution, equity, and driving factors of health resource allocation. The results show the following. (1) The level of health resource allocation in Hunan Province rose steadily, with the composite score increasing by 74%, yet a persistent spatial pattern of higher allocation in the east and north than in the west and south remained; hot spots clustered in Changsha, while cold spots concentrated in parts of Southern Hunan and Western Hunan. (2) Regional disparities narrowed gradually, and the Dagum decomposition identified transvariation density as the dominant source of inequality, with an average contribution of 53.58%, exceeding intra-group and inter-group differences. (3) The effects of the drivers exhibited marked spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Per capita GDP promoted health resource allocation mainly in developed regions, while urbanization exerted stronger positive effects in less-developed regions. The positive effect of per capita disposable income gradually shifted from less-developed to developed regions over time, and population density generally showed a positive effect, with stronger influences concentrated in the Greater Western Hunan region. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how regional disparities and heterogeneous driving mechanisms shape health resource allocation, providing evidence for more adaptive and equitable healthcare governance. Full article

Climate risk increasingly threatens regional industrial chain resilience, while artificial intelligence (AI) offers new tools for mitigating its effects. Using panel data for 167 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2008 to 2023, this study examines the impact of climate risk on regional industrial chain resilience and the moderating role of AI. Climate risk significantly weakens resilience, whereas AI mitigates this adverse effect. Both effects are significant in eastern, northeastern, and coastal regions and in large and industrial cities. AI’s moderating role is more pronounced in cities with lower AI development, while heat and drought cause greater damage. The mechanism analysis shows that climate risk significantly inhibits industrial structure upgrading, total factor productivity, and industrial co-agglomeration. AI can alleviate these negative effects. Climate risk also generates negative cross-regional spillovers, whereas AI produces positive moderating spillovers. Both effects are concentrated within the first three years after a shock. These findings clarify how climate risk propagates through industrial chains and demonstrate AI’s value in risk governance, highlighting the need for timely and context-specific deployment of intelligent technologies. Full article

Public Fire Emergency Literacy (PFEL) is a critical determinant that fundamentally shapes individual survivability and the efficacy of societal safety governance—particularly amid intensifying fire risks characterized by growing complexity and destructive potential. Traditional single-perspective or linear analytical frameworks fail to capture PFEL’s multi-causal and configurational nature. To address this gap, this study integrates the Emergency Management Life Cycle Theory with the WSR system approach to measure PFEL across 36 major Chinese cities using 3872 survey responses and explores its multidimensional attributes and generative mechanisms via multiple methods (Delphi technique, entropy weighting, GIS spatial analysis, multiple regression, fsQCA). Key findings: (1) PFEL exhibits a pronounced cognition precedes capability gap with marked demographic heterogeneity; (2) PFEL displays a distinct “Central > Northeast > East > West” hierarchical gradient and notable spatial disequilibrium—core cities in the Central region (e.g., Wuhan and Zhengzhou) outperform traditional first-tier metropolises in the East; (3) physical infrastructure, organizational management, and individual cognition jointly shape PFEL with significant regional heterogeneity—participation in emergency training emerges as the most potent driver; (4) configurational path analysis indicates that PFEL is determined by a complex conjunctive causal mechanism formed by the combined effects of physical facilities, organizational management and individual initiative. Policy implications cover strengthened public emergency response capacity, differentiated policies, and multi-factor collaborative governance. The findings offer theoretical references and practical guidance for improving public resilience systems and emergency resource allocation. Full article

China’s smart-city and green-transition policies have made digital-green integration an important pathway for improving urban ecological resilience. This study examines whether digital-green integration enhances urban ecological resilience, through which channels this effect occurs, and under what regional conditions it becomes more pronounced. The analysis uses a balanced panel of 510 observations for 30 Chinese provincial-level regions from 2005 to 2021, compiled from national and provincial statistical yearbooks. An indicator system encompassing resistance, recovery, and renewal is used to assess urban ecological resilience, and the composite index is calculated using the entropy-weighting method. Digital–green integration is captured by a coupling coordination index linking digital infrastructure with green finance. Its effect is estimated within a two-way fixed-effects framework, with additional tests used to assess the robustness of the findings and explore the underlying mechanisms, moderating conditions, and regional differences. The results show that: (1) digital–green integration significantly enhances urban ecological resilience, with its effect concentrated primarily in the recovery dimension; (2) industrial-structure upgrading and improvements in energy efficiency serve as important transmission channels, while better traffic infrastructure further strengthens this positive relationship; and (3) the effect is more pronounced in provinces with lower levels of urbanization and stronger environmental regulation. Governments should promote digital-green integration to support industrial-structure upgrading and energy-efficiency improvement, thereby strengthening cities’ capacity to recover from ecological shocks. Greater support should be directed to less urbanized regions, while areas with weaker environmental regulation should improve disclosure, verification, and enforcement. Future research could employ city-level data and spatial econometric models to examine the magnitude, geographic reach, and transmission mechanisms of cross-regional spillovers. Full article

This study examines urban green infrastructure (UGI) branding as a governance practice shaped by institutional homogenization and strategic responses within China’s multi-level policy framework. Against the backdrop of global sustainability agendas, UGI branding is conceptualized as a policy-oriented, symbolically embedded instrument for communicating cities’ commitments to green development and climate resilience. Using an institutional “identity–label–image” framework, integrated with policy diffusion theory and multi-center regional development models, we systematically analyze historical brand-label data from 27 core cities in the Yangtze River Delta. Our findings reveal three key patterns: (1) brand diffusion follows dual pathways of mandatory and imitative homogenization, with evolutionary rhythms tied to five-year planning cycles, generating discernible “policy waves”; (2) within polycentric regional structures, core cities act as institutional “interpreters” and benchmarks, while peripheral cities pursue imitation-driven differentiation, reflecting complex dynamics of collaboration and competition; and (3) urban identities expressed through brand labels progressively align with substantive sustainability transitions, aiming to enhance regional competitiveness and upward recognition. We conclude that UGI branding constitutes a deep-seated mechanism of sustainable urban governance, offering a novel theoretical lens on China’s institutional logic of city branding and providing actionable insights for optimizing collaborative brand governance and integrated green infrastructure planning in urban agglomerations. Full article

Inter-provincial administrative boundary areas are particularly vulnerable to ineffective regional pollution governance because they are simultaneously affected by transboundary pollution diffusion and administrative fragmentation. Existing governance practices, however, continue to rely heavily on territorially based regulation and administrative coordination, while the potential of cross-regional green-technology collaboration to address boundary pollution has received insufficient attention. Using panel data for Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2023, this study systematically examines the impact of green innovation collaboration (GIC) on pollution control in areas along interprovincial administrative boundaries through two-way fixed-effects, instrumental-variable, Heckman two-step, and spatial Durbin models. The results show that, first, GIC significantly reduces pollution in these areas, and this finding remains robust across a range of robustness checks. GIC also generates significant spatial spillovers: while reducing local boundary pollution, it improves air quality in neighboring cities. Second, the heterogeneity analysis indicates that this effect is more pronounced in cities facing greater pollution-control pressure, lower fiscal pressure, and higher levels of openness. The regional results also reveal certain differences. Third, the mechanism analysis shows that cross-regional collaborative governance and industrial upgrading constitute two relatively independent parallel transmission pathways rather than a sequential chain, and their relative contributions vary with city conditions. These findings provide empirical evidence for improving interprovincial collaborative governance, facilitating the cross-regional diffusion of green technologies, and implementing differentiated environmental policies. Full article

From the perspective of coordinating development and security for high-quality development in border regions, this paper focuses on the adaptation relationship between development and security functions in the Yunnan–Guangxi border region. The study aims to characterize the spatiotemporal evolution and spatial differentiation of these two functions and identify distinct types of functional adaptation and their spatial characteristics. Based on the development–security linkage perspective, a regional functional evaluation system incorporating specialized indicators, such as border trade development and national territorial security, is constructed. The CRITIC method, a functional adaptation model, and spatial statistical methods are then employed to examine the spatiotemporal evolution of the development and security functions and their adaptation in the Yunnan–Guangxi border region from 2002 to 2022, followed by a classification of regional functional adaptation types. By integrating development and security functions into a unified analytical framework, this study extends the research perspective on regional functions and the development–security relationship in border areas and provides a reference for coordinating development and security and implementing differentiated spatial governance. The results indicate the following: ① The overall regional functional level of the Yunnan–Guangxi border region increased steadily, although the growth was characterized by distinct stages, with rapid growth in the early period followed by stabilization in the later period. Regional disparities first narrowed and then widened. Both the development and security functions increased from low to medium or high levels. Specifically, high-value areas of the development function were concentrated in inland hub cities, whereas those of the security function were distributed along the border. ② The overall adaptation between the development and security functions was favorable, with the adaptation index increasing slightly. The adaptation level in the Guangxi border region was higher than that in Yunnan, while the spatial distribution of adaptation types shifted from relative clustering to dispersion. ③ The county-level administrative units in the Yunnan–Guangxi border region were classified into five functional adaptation types. During the study period, the transitional upgrading type accounted for the largest proportion, and the overall spatial pattern was characterized by “advancement along the border while maintaining stability in the hinterland.” Therefore, differentiated guidance and governance strategies should be implemented according to the characteristics of each functional adaptation type to promote the dynamic coordination between development and security functions, thereby supporting spatial governance and functional improvement in border regions. Full article