As one of China’s fundamental governance mechanisms, the policy pilot system has been integrated into the broader national strategy for modernizing state governance. From the perspective of vertical-horizontal relations, this study takes the municipal-level social governance modernization pilot in Sichuan Province as an empirical case to reveal the logic and mechanisms of benchmark competition in local governance.The study finds that the municipal pilot program has shifted from the traditional “apply first, accept and award later”model to a new approach of “construct first, apply later.”Evaluation criteria now include not only the absolute performance improvements before and after policy implementation in each locality, but also comparative performance across peer jurisdictions,thereby forming a competitive framework to identify qualified pilot sites.The mechanism involves the following elements:The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission establishes institutional frameworks through benchmark-setting, incentive-driven competition, and relative ranking systems, while local governments achieve effective adoption and dynamic adaptation of central governance objectives through top-down mobilization,bottom-up coordination, and differentiated operational approaches.The concept of benchmark competition offers a novel theoretical lens for understanding the internal logic of China’s policy pilot system. It helps reduce information asymmetries between upper- and lower-level governments, mitigates the institutional fragmentation caused by vertical-horizontal divides, and contributes to the formation of localized governance experiences under therubric of “governing the city to govern the country.”

The implementation of human-centered new urbanization is not only a key measure to achieve Chinese-style modernization, but also an important task for national development at this stage. Looking back on the development process, since modern times, China’s urbanization has experienced revolutionary urbanization with the joint force of workers and peasants as the main body, production-oriented urbanization with labor factors as the guide, rapid urbanization driven by economic construction, and governance-oriented urbanization with living needs as the scale. At present, the opportunities and challenges of new urbanization coexist, and there are still some practical problems, such as the superposition of multiple subject characteristics of urbanization and social transformation, the spatial separation of population in the promotion of “ four modernizations synchronization, ” and the relative lag of concept mobilization under the guidance of stress policy. In order to effectively promote the new urbanization with people as the core, it is urgent to give full play to the institutional and organizational advantages of the party’s overall leadership in the main dimension; in terms of value concept, adhere to the essential attributes and core position of the people’s city in the strategy; on the practical path, we actively explore the model innovation and discourse autonomy construction of Chinese-style urbanization construction.

Public data security, as an important issue, plays a crucial role in the construction of resilient cities. Through theoretical deconstruction and comparative analysis, the limitations of the traditional defense-oriented governance model in responding to dynamic risks are revealed. The research results show that the current public data security field is facing multiple challenges such as the resilience paradox, ethical conflicts, and the responsibility dilemma of multi-center governance. It is imperative to enhance the governance efficiency of public data security. By critically reconstructing the cognitive paradigms of ecological resilience and engineering resilience, and taking the concept of data resilience as the core to build dynamic adaptation, elastic recovery, and collaborative integration mechanisms, the public data security protection system can be transformed from a “compliance-based” to a “resilience-based” approach, thereby ensuring the efficient circulation and value release of data under the premise of security, and providing solid support for the construction of resilient cities. The reconstruction of governance solutions should be based on a three-dimensional coordinated path of technology, institutions, and the rule of law: strengthening the resilience foundation, enhancing the resilience of infrastructure; improving resilience mechanisms, establishing a dynamic adaptation system; reinforcing resilience guarantees, and perfecting the legal operation system. Based on the research conclusions, it is suggested that legislation should be deepened and standardization level should be improved, collaborative drill and evaluation mechanisms should be established, innovative models should be explored, and public participation should be expanded, so as to promote the modernization of the urban public data security governance system and governance capacity.

To reveal the internal mechanism of City Walk in optimizing space utilization, expanding demand and promoting consumption, based on the complex network analysis approach, and according to the trajectory data of City Walk tourists in Hong Kong, a City Walk network model containing four levels, namely sightseeing and entertainment, functional activation, catering facilities, and shopping facilities, is constructed. The research finds that: The network structure characteristics of various nodes are significantly different. Among them, traditional nodes such as the Avenue of Stars dominate the global network; activated nodes such as Tai Kwun realize interactive associations across all-level networks; consumption nodes such as Central Market gather intra-layer networks. The tourism flow presents the characteristics of a high traffic proportion in the core-peripheral area and balanced diffusion, effectively weakening the polarization effect dominated by traditional scenic spots, and providing a traffic penetration path for the urban secondary space through the formed “consumption-exploration” community. Moreover, The City Walk network has a synergy mechanism, including the structural complementarity, traffic predictability, and redundancy and anti-interference. The above results show that City Walk can effectively promote the multi-dimensional utilization of urban resources and the re-balance of space functions. Based on this, it is suggested that urban planning administrators should focus on City Walk models with high economic vitality and resilience levels, and promote the sustainable development of urban tourism by means of exploring local cultural resources and activating secondary consumption spaces.

The central-local relationship has always been the focus of research on territorial spatial governance, but existing studies have focused on exploring the antagonistic dichotomy between the central and the local, neglecting the behavioral mechanisms of provincial governments in the synergy of central-local games. Based on the perspective of principal-agent and soft budget constraint theory, this paper innovatively constructs a systematic framework of “three stages + three levels” to analyze the “two-way soft constraint” vertical inter-governmental interaction mechanism of provincial governments in territorial spatial governance from the perspective of provincial governments’ behaviors. By tracking the implementation of land binding quota policy in Province F, it is found that the upward and downward soft constraint behaviors at the provincial level affect the implementation of the quota policy through target adaptation and autonomous power expansion, respectively, and that when the central government adopts an institutional design that decentralizes land control and strengthens accountability constraints, it helps to push provincial governments to play a coordinating role in the central-local relationship. In response to this, reforms in territorial space governance should be promoted through selective centralization, institutionalized decentralization, and improvements in the governance capability of provincial government.

Based on the identification of the emergence of popular cities and the challenges posed by the promotion of comprehensive tourism to the value of scenic spots, taking 51 western cities as examples, the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method is applied to reveal the hybrid dynamic structure of urban and scenic spot elements. The results show that: at present, the combination of scenic spots in the western cities is not good, which makes it difficult to drive the development of tourism in these cities, the hybrid structure of urban and scenic spots is the power source to promote the formation of the joint effect of urban and scenic spots in western cities of China, and the multi-functional aggregation of cities is conducive to the improvement of the joint effect. The combination of urban service functions of “scenic spot occurrence”, “connection + scenic spot occurrence”, “environment + connection + scenic spot occurrence”, “environment + scenic spot spatial distribution”, “environment + connection + scenic spot spatial distribution” and “environment + scenic spot occurrence” can form a higher city-scenic spot joint effect, and the probability increases with the increase of antecedent conditions. Urban functional advantages can dominate the formation of city-scenic joint effects, and improving urban service functions and optimizing the combination of scenic spots are the key indicators to enhance tourism in western cities.

Based on the person-environment (P-E) fit theory, this study uses data from the China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey in 2020 to construct multidimensional P-E fit indices. Using multilevel multinomial logistic models and moderation effect analysis, we examine how urban older adults’ P-E fit affects their intentions for old-age support. We also examine the moderating role of economic resources. The results show that the aging-in-place group is characterized by high P-E fit and low financial expenditure, the family-based care group exhibits low fit and limited assets, and the institutional care group shows low fit and high expenditure. The intention for old-age support is significantly shaped by the degree of P-E fit. Greater facility and service fit significantly increases older adults’ intention to age in place. Economic resources play a significant moderating role in how P-E fit influences elderly care preferences. Lack of property ownership weakens the positive effect of high facility and service fit on aging-in-place preference, while high expenditure levels strengthen the impact of service misfit on institutional care preference. This study reveals the heterogeneous needs of different elderly groups towards the neighborhood environment and their impact on old-age support intentions. Based on empirical findings, this paper discusses policy implications to contribute to the scientific foundation and practical strategies for building age-friendly cities.

Based on the panel data of 276 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2023, this paper uses instrumental variable regression to explore the impact mechanism of different forms of industrial land misallocation on the innovation level of enterprises, and whether fiscal expenditure can optimize these effects. It is found that industrial land price mismatch and supply mode mismatch will inhibit enterprise innovation, while structural mismatch will have a positive impact on enterprise innovation. Further analysis of the optimization effect of government fiscal expenditure shows that when the price of industrial land is mismatched, fiscal expenditure can have a significant positive impact on the level of enterprise innovation. Based on this, it is suggested that in the future policy formulation, the role and boundary of the government and the market should be further clarified, the land price should be dynamically optimized, the land supply structure should be adjusted, the regional differences should be fully considered, the allocation of industrial land resources should be adjusted, the structure of public financial expenditure should be optimized, and the dominant position of enterprises in scientific and technological innovation should be strengthened.

Under the binding constraints of the dual carbon goals (carbon peaking and carbon neutrality), the imperative to achieve coordinated economic-ecological development through innovation-driven strategies has emerged as a critical policy challenge. This study employs a reflective iteration methodology to construct a city-level economic complexity index, systematically investigating its impact on urban green development and underlying mechanisms. Key findings reveal: Enhanced economic complexity significantly promotes urban green economic development, with marginal effects exhibiting an increasing trend as complexity elevates. These results remain robust after addressing endogeneity through instrumental variable approaches, controlling policy interventions, and conducting multi-dimensional sensitivity analyses. Mechanism analysis demonstrates that the green effect of economic complexity originates from structural upgrading of urban innovation capacity, transmitted through a four-dimensional pathway: “innovation input intensification → output greening → value chain deepening → efficiency enhancement”, with effect intensity following a nonlinearly increasing pattern. Heterogeneity analysis identifies asymmetric marginal green effects across industrial sectors,and reveals stronger complexity-driven green upgrading effects in cities characterized by abundant venture capital, superior resource endowments, and intensive innovation-entrepreneurship policies. This research provides theoretical foundations and policy insights for optimizing urban innovation ecosystems, overcoming path dependence in green transition, and advancing high-quality development under the dual carbon paradigm.