As a pivotal instrument for optimizing resource allocation in the post-incremental era， urban renewal plays a cornerstone role in fostering and advancing new quality productive forces. Utilizing panel data from China's Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies spanning 2015 to 2024， this study empirically examines the impact of urban renewal policies on corporate new quality productive forces and its underlying mechanisms from the perspective of resource reallocation effects， employing a Difference-in-Differences model. The findings reveal that urban renewal significantly enhances the level of corporate new quality productive forces. Specifically， technological innovation， digitalization enhancement， and labor productivity surges emerge as vital pathways through which urban renewal drives the formation of new quality productive forces via resource reallocation. Moreover， the empowering role of urban renewal demonstrates significant resource endowment dependence： the promotional effect is more pronounced in regions with robust fiscal capacity， the eastern region， as well as among state-owned enterprises and large-scale firms. Based on these conclusions， policy recommendations are formulated to provide empirical evidence and strategic insights for transforming urban renewal governance， achieving balanced factor allocation， and facilitating the high-quality development of new quality productive forces.

Based on the theory of technological affordances， this paper constructs the analytical framework of “situation trigger–actor action–function feedback”. Taking the practice of Town B in City H from “one-code-for-one-purpose” to “one-code-for-all-uses” as a case study， it reveals the practical manifestations， generative logic and potential risks of the deepening application of digital technology in urban grassroots governance.The study finds that with the deepening application of digital technology in urban grassroots governance， the governance positioning， governance scope and governance model of digital technology in grassroots governance have changed accordingly.The generative logic of the deepening application of digital technology in urban grassroots governance includes the dynamic trigger mechanism under situational transition and demand shaping， the action response mechanism under actor agency and scheme refinement， and the result feedback mechanism under function output and technology supply.Notably， the deepening application of digital technology in urban grassroots governance entails potential risks such as incompatibility of governance scenarios， excessive technological domination and the dissolution of subject values.The research conclusions help to enhance the understanding of the state of technology application in urban grassroots governance and promote attention to technological secondary suspension.

Taking the establishment of national supercomputing centers as a quasi-natural experiment， this study employs a multi-period difference-in-differences （DID） and qualitative comparative analysis （QCA） approach to explore the impact of computing power infrastructure construction on urban entrepreneurial activity and its mechanisms. The findings reveal that the construction of computing power infrastructure significantly enhances urban entrepreneurial activity， and this conclusion remains valid after various robustness tests. Moreover， this effect is more pronounced in cities with high market potential， in the central and western regions， and in cities with high resource misallocation. Mechanism tests show that the construction of computing power infrastructure can systematically enhance urban entrepreneurial activity through the innovation supply and demand empowerment effect， governance optimization effect， and human capital reorganization effect. From a configuration perspective， there are three paths for computing power infrastructure construction to empower urban entrepreneurial activity： a technology-financial dual-driven type， a talent-ecosystem endogenous type， and a factor-governance collaborative type. The research conclusions provide theoretical explanations and empirical evidence for the layout of computing power infrastructure and the activation of urban entrepreneurial activity.

Taking the "Weilinli" platform in Community B， Wuhan City as a case， this study reveals the practical manifestations and formation mechanisms of "technocracy suspension" in mega-city community governance. The findings indicate that "technocracy suspension" in mega-city communities is specifically characterized by involution of subject capacity， solidification of participation barriers， suspension of data resources， and obscuration of public values. Its formation stems from the incompatible tension between technical attributes and the governance scenario of mega-city communities， namely the contradiction between the reductionist attribute of technology and the "ultra-heterogeneous" governance demands， the disembeddedness between technocratic instrumentalism and the "ultra-complex" governance structure， the tension between rigid technical constraints and the "ultra-dynamic" governance scenarios， and the deviation between technical instrumental rationality and the people-centered governance philosophy. Accordingly， remediation strategies for "technocracy adaptation" are proposed from the dimensions of subject capacity， participation structure， data scenarios and value concepts. This research helps deepen the understanding of the causes of the "technocracy suspension" phenomenon and provides references for promoting the quality and efficiency improvement of digital governance in mega-cities.

To uncover the mechanisms through which the digital business environment affects urban entrepreneurial vitality， this study uses city-level panel data for China from 2013 to 2022 and conducts empirical analysis based on a two-way fixed effects model. The results show that improving the digital business environment significantly promotes urban entrepreneurial vitality. This effect operates mainly by stimulating regional innovation， reducing， and improving the financing environment， and is further strengthened by local endowments of human capital and educational resources. The entrepreneurial effect of the digital business environment exhibits diminishing marginal returns， while the digital and traditional business environments are complementary. Compared with the traditional business environment， the digital business environment demonstrates clear comparative advantages in promoting innovation， reducing institutional transaction costs， and optimizing financing conditions. Based on these findings， this study proposes policy implications aimed at enriching the theoretical understanding of the relationship between the digital business environment and entrepreneurship， and at providing decision-making references for enhancing regional entrepreneurial vitality and institutional innovation.

Consensus cohesion in the transformation of old communities is a key variable that affects the effectiveness of transformation and sustainable community governance. Using the grounded theory method， the in-depth interviews， policy texts and community internal documents of 12 typical communities in Beijing are coded and analyzed. The study finds that consensus cohesion begins with the structural dilemma of psychological exclusion， trust deficit and weak rule effectiveness， and forms an infrastructure through the reshaping of neighborhood emotional relations and the support of organizational resources. Through in-depth consultation and integration of multiple interest demands， institutionalized transformation results are spawned. This achievement relies on the trust construction mechanism to realize the transition from interpersonal trust to institutional trust. The research reveals the evolution process of stakeholders through conflict， adjustment， consultation and integration， and finally reaching consensus， and provides a new analytical framework for community governance research in urban renewal.

The governance of community violation construction is related to the quality and level of the modernization of grass-roots governance system and governance capacity. Based on an analytical framework based on multiple institutional logic， this paper analyzes the generation logic of construction violation phenomena and its governance dilemmas in H Community， Y City， Sichuan Province. The study found that in community construction violation governance， the government follows the administrative-bureaucratic logic， developers follow the market-capital logic， construction violation owners follow the individual-rational logic， rights advocates follow the community-contract logic， property companies follow the intermediary-operating logic， and the five logics are mutually constrained and there are tensions. The occurrence of community construction violation phenomena is the result of the interaction of market-capital logic， administrative-bureaucratic logic， and individual-rational logic， reflecting the deep contradiction between the expansion of individual interests and the maintenance of public order in the context of rapid urbanization. The deep roots of community violation governance dilemmas lie in the structural incompatibility of multiple institutional logic within the same governance field： differentiated interest claims among various entities lead to violation governance facing a stalemate. Based on this， the key to community violation governance lies in promoting collaborative governance， defining rule boundaries through the construction of authoritative-presented negotiation platforms， optimizing interest-compliant enforcement systems to resolve logical conflicts， and perfecting the supervisory closed loop of the fusion of jurisprudence and common sense.

New energy policies constitute an institutional guarantee for the safe and orderly reduction and substitution of urban fossil energy consumption， and the New Energy Demonstration City Policy （NEP） provides vital support for addressing the dilemmas of urban fossil energy consumption. Based on the panel data of 278 cities in China from 2006 to 2024， this paper integrates scale reduction， intensity efficiency improvement， and structural substitution into a unified analytical framework， and systematically evaluates the multi-dimensional effects and mechanisms of NEP on urban fossil energy consumption. The results show that NEP effectively restrains the total volume and intensity of fossil energy consumption in pilot cities， and accelerates the substitution of fossil energy. Further mechanism analysis reveals that NEP suppresses fossil energy consumption by stimulating green technological innovation， strengthening environmental regulation constraints， and optimizing financial service support. Heterogeneous effects exist due to differences in urban resource endowments， industrial structures， and digital infrastructure construction. The coordinated implementation of the Low-Carbon City Pilot Policy and NEP produces synergistic emission reduction effects on fossil energy consumption. The findings provide theoretical references and policy implications for promoting green energy transition and alleviating fossil energy consumption constraints through pilot policy schemes.

As urban development shifts to the stage of stock improvement and quality enhancement， optimizing the scale structure of “production-living-ecological” space has become a core issue for high-quality development. This study constructs a theoretical analytical framework of “ecological scale constraint - functional proportional adaptation - internal structure coordination” and reveals the underlying contradictions in China’s urban spatial structure based on multi-source spatial data. The results show that the main contradiction of “production-living-ecological” space in Chinese cities has shifted comprehensively from total scale shortage to structural proportional imbalance. Although ecological space maintains the bottom line of scale control， its overall quality remains low. At the macro level， construction space exhibits imbalanced supporting space and a differentiated production-residence structure； at the micro level， it falls into internal structural mismatch and a disconnection between service supply and demand at the micro level. Accordingly， a progressive optimization paradigm of “locking scale boundaries - correcting macro proportions - restructuring internal structure” is proposed. Furthermore， from the perspective of precise governance， it is suggested to accelerate the standard transformation of key structural indicators and the construction of a quantitative support foundation， so as to provide a scientific basis for promoting the transformation of spatial governance from empirical judgment to precise quantification.

The intelligent transformation of grassroots governance is a key path to enhance governance efficiency and promote the modernization of national governance. However， the imbalance of technological empowerment has created new barriers to participation， which hinders the achievement of diverse governance and precise service goals. By reviewing relevant literature and analyzing the governance model of the "root database" in Ordos， a collaborative framework for resolving participation barriers between "demand-driven" and "technology-embedded" is constructed.The practical mechanism of demand-driven governance follows the progressive logic of demand consensus， demand symbiosis， and demand co-increase； the technology-embedded path relies on the coordinated efforts of three empowerment mechanisms： agile response， flexible governance， and buffering mechanisms.Demand-driven provides value guidance and resource foundation for technology embedding， while technology embedding provides practical paths for demand satisfaction through localization adaptation. At the same time， there is a risk of decreased response efficiency in demand-driven development， and there is a risk of imbalanced adaptability in technology embedding. Measures such as strengthening cross-departmental collaboration， enhancing grassroots demand conversion capabilities， optimizing participation channels， and promoting technology to take root in practice need to be taken to address this issue.

Focusing on 19 megacities and super-large cities designated as pilot areas for the new round of urban village renovation in 2023， this study constructs a "goal-tool" alignment analytical framework. It quantitatively examines the evolutionary characteristics of the urban village renovation policy system from two dimensions—policy intervention mechanisms and implementation stages—and evaluates the alignment between current policy instruments and the multidimensional policy objectives in this new phase. The findings reveal that the policy system for urban village renovation has undergone three developmental stages： local experimentation， system refinement， and high-level coordination. Throughout this evolution， policy instruments have consistently favored environmental tools， with a distinct shift from a focus on mid-term implementation to an increased emphasis on preliminary planning. A certain degree of misalignment persists between the existing policy instruments and the multidimensional policy goals. Future efforts should be directed towards establishing a policy framework for urban village renovation guided by people-centric values， facilitated by the integration of control and delegation， and supported by long-term operational sustainability， in response to the composite goals of this new round of renovation.

Winning the battle against key core technologies is a crucial measure to enable China to seize the commanding heights of technological development under the current “technology blockade” external environment. This paper constructs a market access index using geographical distance and GDP data， and examines its impact on key core technological innovation based on panel data of 280 prefecture-level cities. The results show that market access promoting key core technological innovation. After a series of robustness tests and endogeneity tests， the above conclusion remains valid. Mechanism tests show that market access enhances regional key core technological innovation levels by deepening specialized division of labor and improving resource allocation efficiency. The innovation incentive effect of market access is more significant in northern cities， regions with a lower level of intellectual property protection， and regions with a lower level of digital infrastructure construction. In addition， optimizing product export channels and leveraging the enabling role of fiscal education and science expenditures can help further exert the positive impact of market access on key core technological innovation environmental pollution is not conducive to creating a favorable innovation ecosystem and hinders the incentive effect of market access on key core technological innovation. This paper not only provides a theoretical explanation for strengthening key core technological innovation through market access， but also offers a theoretical basis and practical support for relying on the construction of a unified national market and fully releasing the advantages of an extremely large market scale to enhance innovation efficiency.

The construction of digital economy networks has injected new momentum into the development of a unified national market and has become a critical foundation for smoothing domestic economic circulation. Using city-level data from 2011-2020，from the perspective of network centrality， this study systematically examines how a city’s position within the digital economy network influences its regional market potential. The results show that enhancing a city’s degree centrality in the digital economy network significantly boosts its regional market potential， a finding that remains robust after a series of robustness tests. This effect is primarily driven by the strengthening of market integration and technology spillover effects. Moreover， the facilitating effect exhibits no significant gradient differences across geographical regions or city types， indicating strong generalizability. Based on these findings， policy recommendations are proposed to optimize urban network positioning， jointly unlock domestic market potential， and accelerate the construction of a leading digital nation.

High-quality development of metropolitan areas is a core component of coordinated regional development in contemporary China. This paper decomposes the high-quality development of metropolitan areas into five key dimensions: transportation integration, technological collaborative innovation, industrial quality and efficiency improvement, equitable public services, and environmental pollution control. A multidimensional measurement index system for assessing the level of high-quality development in China's metropolitan areas is constructed, followed by an empirical evaluation of 21 nationally designated metropolitan areas from 2013 to 2023. The results show that the high-quality development index of China's metropolitan areas has been steadily increasing, indicating an overall positive trend. However, the development pattern exhibits significant tiered differentiation. Regionally, the development levels of metropolitan areas are unbalanced, presenting a spatial pattern characterized by “continued leadership of the eastern region, accelerated catch-up in the western region, steady progress in the central region, and lagging development in the northeast region.” Furthermore, development levels vary across the five dimensions, with each dimension displaying internal disparities. Based on these findings, policy recommendations are proposed to enhance the high-quality development of metropolitan areas in China.

Taking the construction of ultra-high voltage projects （UHVP） as a quasi-natural experiment， this paper investigates the impact of new energy infrastructure development on urban energy mismatch using panel data of Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2023. The study finds that UHVP construction has significantly mitigated urban energy mismatch. Mechanism analysis shows that it reduces mismatch through three paths： reducing the spatial flow cost of energy， promoting industrial agglomeration， and strengthening regional coordinated development. In terms of spatial spillover， the mitigation effect has significant spatial spillover characteristics， with a spillover boundary of about 300 kilometers. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the mitigation effect is mainly reflected in cities in the eastern and central regions and those with concentrated energy mismatch types； in the western region， due to the lack of industrial lock-in and cross-regional compensation mechanisms， UHVP construction has instead exacerbated the mismatch problem in areas with insufficient energy. Based on this， it is proposed to accurately optimize the spatial layout of UHVP， innovate cross-regional institutional design， strengthen regional empowerment， and promote the coordinated development of UHV project construction and regional energy allocation optimization in a classified manner.

The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee proposed advancing the citizenization of agricultural migrant population and implementing a system where basic public services are provided based on household registration at the place of permanent residence. Based on data on the fiscal costs and benefits of the citizenization of agricultural migrant population from 2019 to 2023， this study forecasts the fiscal costs and benefits of this process by the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan period in 2030 and assesses the impact of the citizenization of agricultural migrant population in China’s seven megacities on the local governments of their places of permanent residence.The assessment reveals that citizenization of agricultural migrant population generates net fiscal gains for their places of permanent residence， and the higher the proportion of agricultural migrant population in the resident population， the greater their contribution to local tax revenue. At the same time， agricultural migrant population plays a significant role in promoting the balance of revenues and expenditures in local social pension insurance funds. Furthermore， as the coverage of basic public services for agricultural migrant population expands， the fiscal costs of their citizenization for the places of permanent residence will rise rapidly； However， once these costs reach a certain level， they will gradually decline， and the net fiscal benefits derived by the places of permanent residence from citizenization will also gradually increase accordingly. Based on these findings， policy recommendations are proposed to provide decision-making references for local governments in advancing the citizenization of agricultural migrant population and implementing systems for providing basic public services to those who register permanent residency.

Optimizing the spatial configuration of the marine industry is pivotal for driving the green transition of coastal cities. Using high-resolution geospatial data on micro-level marine-related enterprises， this study employs kernel density estimation to precisely measure urban marine industrial spatial agglomeration at the city level， constructs a green economic efficiency indicator that integrates both land and sea dimensions， and empirically examines the nonlinear relationship between agglomeration and green efficiency as well as its underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal a statistically significant inverted U-shaped relationship between marine industrial agglomeration and green economic efficiency， with pronounced sectoral heterogeneity. The inflection point occurs earlier for the secondary industry， while the tertiary industry has a higher sustainable threshold， and the effect of the primary industry is not significant. Mechanism analyses indicate that scale effects， blue technology effects， and spatial allocation effects are important transmission channels， but their patterns differ markedly across industries. Further moderation effect tests show that government attention to marine economic policy steepens the inverted U-shaped curve by intensifying the marginal diminishing effect in the later stage of agglomeration， whereas digital economic development flattens the curve by alleviating congestion costs. Based on these findings， this study proposes micro-level empirical evidence to overcome the limitations of land-based agglomeration theories and offer decision-making references for formulating differentiated marine spatial governance policies.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 15 young “weekend couples” in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and using grounded theory coding, this study examines how spatiotemporal constraints in megacities reshape same-city intimate relationships. The findings show that this relationship form does not indicate weakened emotional investment, but rather represents an adaptive arrangement shaped by the combined effects of housing costs, job-housing separation, cross-district commuting, long working hours, and risks associated with occupational mobility. Megacities amplify spatial, temporal, and emotional uncertainties, leading same-city romantic relationships to develop a pattern of “semi-long-distance separation on weekdays and concentrated compensation on weekends.” Young couples sustain relational continuity through “disembodied presence” during the workweek, “embodied compensation” on weekends, trust management, and the postponement of conflict, while forming an active compromise through the preservation of private space, the postponement of cohabitation, and low-binding relationship arrangements. The study suggests that the romantic and marital difficulties faced by young people should not be simply attributed to changes in values, but should be understood in relation to structural conditions such as housing costs, labor rhythms, job-housing structures, and urban life support.

Amid external uncertainties and multiple internal development pressures, enhancing urban economic resilience in China represents a critical pillar of urban sustainable development and transformation, as well as an inherent requirement for high-quality economic development. Using a panel dataset of 277 Chinese cities at or above the prefecture level for the period 2012-2023, this study employs Double Machine Learning to investigate the impact effect and transmission channels of green finance in empowering urban economic resilience. Empirical findings reveal that green finance exerts a significantly positive effect on urban economic resilience, a conclusion that remains robust following multiple robustness checks and endogeneity treatment. Moreover, green technology innovation and industrial structure ecologicalization constitute the core transmission channels through which green finance enhances urban economic resilience. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that this enhancing effect is more salient in non-resource-based cities, central cities, and municipalities with stronger government intervention. Accordingly, efforts should be systematically directed toward strengthening green finance development, facilitating the transmission channels of green technology innovation and industrial structure ecologicalization, and implementing differentiated strategies tailored to urban heterogeneity, so as to effectively enhance urban economic resilience.

Based on city-level data in China from 2010 to 2024, this paper constructs comprehensive indices of financial openness and new quality productive force development, investigating the impact of financial openness on new quality productive forces and its underlying mechanisms. The study finds that financial openness significantly promotes the development of new quality productive forces. When decomposed, both capital flow intensity and financial sector openness contribute positively to new quality productivity, with the latter exhibiting a stronger effect. From the perspective of resource allocation, financial openness facilitates market integration and optimizes the efficiency of factor allocation, thereby driving the development of new quality productivity. From the perspective of innovation-driven growth, financial openness fosters urban innovation capacity and supports breakthroughs in key core technologies, leading to substantial productivity leaps. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that the effect of financial openness is particularly pronounced in regions with stringent financial regulation and well-established legal systems, and is more prominent in cities with abundant human capital, well-functioning data factor markets, and extensive applications of industrial robots. The findings provide empirical evidence and policy implications for deepening financial reform and opening-up, nurturing and developing new quality productivity, and promoting high-quality economic development.

Spatial imbalance in urban innovation has become a critical bottleneck constraining the construction of an innovation-oriented country, and a single research perspective is insufficient to identify the driving forces of urban innovation in the digital economy era. Based on the panel data of 283 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2023, this paper empirically investigates the interactive effect of the digital economy and public services on urban innovation. The results show that, first, the digital economy and public services form a mutually complementary virtuous cycle that jointly promotes urban innovation. Specifically, three types of public services (medical care, education, and transportation infrastructure) exert both direct innovation-promoting effects and synergistic amplification effects. Second, the synergistic innovation effect presents significant heterogeneity across regions and administrative levels. In terms of regional heterogeneity, the synergistic effect between the digital economy and medical services is significant in eastern and central cities, while western cities can release innovation dividends through the dual coordination of medical care and transportation infrastructure. In terms of administrative hierarchy, provincial capitals and municipalities mainly rely on the synergy between the digital economy and transportation infrastructure, whereas ordinary prefecture-level cities depend on the coordination of digital economy, medical care, and education services. Third, public services impose differentiated threshold constraints on the innovation empowerment of the digital economy. Medical and transportation services show a double-threshold feature, and the innovation effect of the digital economy decreases with the improvement of public service levels. By contrast, education services present no significant threshold effect and exert weak nonlinear constraints on digital innovation. This study provides empirical evidence and policy references for alleviating regional innovation imbalance, implementing differentiated innovation support policies, and promoting the cross-regional sharing and optimal allocation of high-quality public resources.

Against the backdrop of dual-carbon targets and continuous urbanization, the impact of construction land expansion on urban ecosystems is extending beyond changes in carbon sink scale to include the maintenance, recovery, and stable operation of carbon sink functions. Based on panel data of Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2012 to 2023, this paper constructs an urban carbon sink resilience index using net primary productivity of vegetation and measures it along three dimensions: resistance, recovery, and stability. A two-way fixed-effects model is then used to examine the impact and mechanism of construction land expansion on urban carbon sink resilience. The study finds that: First, construction land expansion significantly weakens urban carbon sink resilience, negatively impacting all three dimensions: resistance, recovery, and stability, with a larger negative effect on the recovery dimension in terms of coefficient magnitude. Second, mechanism testing indicates that ecological space compression, intensified road penetration, and enhanced heat exposure are the main transmission pathways through which construction land expansion weakens urban carbon sink resilience. Third, the impact of construction land expansion exhibits a significant threshold effect; the marginal damage is stronger in the low-expansion stage. Further zoning analysis shows that low expansion does not necessarily correspond to high resilience, and cities with high expansion and low resilience are high-risk types requiring priority intervention. This study expands the research on the ecological effects of urban development from the perspective of carbon sink resilience, and also provides empirical evidence for territorial spatial use regulation, urban renewal, and resilience-oriented governance.

To examine how intergovernmental collaboration affects urban resilience, its distributional outcomes, and the role of digital infrastructure, this study uses a ten-year panel (2010—2019) and 603 cooperation agreements from the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and Pearl River Delta urban agglomerations. It constructs a two-layer, five-dimensional resilience index covering functional performance and governance support, and conducts empirical analyses through social network analysis and two-way fixed-effects models. Results show that collaboration significantly improves resilience and helps cities approach the annual benchmark; network centrality raises resilience and narrows the benchmark gap. Digital infrastructure strengthens the catch-up effect of collaboration and the structural returns to central positions, but its effectiveness depends on its fit with the collaboration network. The Yangtze River Delta's high-intensity, low-concentration polycentric network shows stronger compatibility and resilience effects. Resilience governance should coordinate collaboration intensity, network structure, and digital infrastructure to improve the conversion and balanced distribution of collaborative benefits.

Against the backdrop of high-quality development through regional integration, intergovernmental collaboration is pivotal to improving urban environmental governance performance. However, existing studies have insufficiently examined the interactive mechanism between collaborative behavior and the vertical “pressure-based system”. Using panel data for 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta from 2013 to 2023, this study constructs an index of intergovernmental collaborative behavior intensity along three dimensions—consultation, collaborative commitment, and joint implementation—and empirically tests its impact on urban environmental governance performance, with a particular focus on the moderating effect of performance pressure and its heterogeneity. The results show that intergovernmental collaborative behavior significantly improves urban environmental governance performance overall. Performance pressure positively moderates this relationship, indicating that such pressure strengthens the instrumental value of collaborative behavior. Moreover, the moderating effect is significantly context-dependent: it is evident only in cities with lower performance rankings and is not significant in leading cities, suggesting that the pressure-driven collaboration model primarily applies to “catch-up” cities. The findings provide valuable references for developing targeted classified collaborative governance strategies.

China launched the Low-Carbon City Pilot program in 2010 to explore pathways for urban low-carbon transition and provide demonstrative experiences. To evaluate the actual performance of pilot cities against their planned targets, this study first comprehensively assesses pilot performance and then employs machine learning to construct carbon emission models for pilot cities, aiming to reconstruct the trajectories of target carbon intensity and total emissions and compare them with actual emission reduction outcomes during urban development. The results show that pilot cities generally performed better than the national average in controlling both carbon emissions intensity and total carbon emissions. However, only four pilot cities achieved carbon peaking as scheduled, while five cities had already exceeded their planned peak emission levels based on their observed maximum emissions. Substantial gaps generally remain between the actual emission-reduction outcomes of pilot cities and their planned targets, potentially resulting in an approximately 16% increase in peak carbon emissions relative to the planned levels and a delay in the timing of carbon peaking. These deviations may also place greater pressure on the low-carbon transition of cities nationwide in the next stage. This gap stems from the structural tension between economic growth and low-carbon transition and is further reinforced by the Giddens paradox. Future efforts should strengthen the rigid constraints of dual carbon controls, incorporate carbon reduction targets into local government performance evaluations, establish dynamic early-warning mechanisms for carbon emission trajectories, and differentiate emission reduction priorities according to cities' stages of carbon peaking, so as to promote convergence between actual emission reduction outcomes and planned targets and reduce uncertainty in the carbon peaking process.

Based on Beijing recruitment panel data of listed companies from 2016 to 2024, this study analyses the impact of listed companies’ level of artificial intelligence (AI) development on the number of job openings in Beijing. The results indicate that an increase in the level of AI development significantly boosts companies’ hiring volume in Beijing. Mechanism tests show that companies’ AI development significantly promotes the growth of job openings in Beijing through two channels: scale expansion and the creation of new tasks. Heterogeneity tests indicate that the positive effect of AI development levels on recruitment volumes in Beijing is more pronounced in the manufacturing sector, in eastern regions, and among non-state-owned enterprises. Further analysis reveals that corporate AI development significantly raises average employee compensation levels but does not have a significant impact on internal wage disparities within firms. Based on these findings, the study proposes recommendations such as strengthening national AI talent development and implementing differentiated approaches to industrial digital transformation. These recommendations provide a reference for exploring models that leverage AI to promote high-quality employment and for Beijing to play a leading and exemplary role in this regard.

Against the backdrop of the deep integration of globalization and informatization, transnational exchanges among cities have become increasingly frequent, and international exchange functions have gradually emerged as a key dimension for assessing a city’s level of internationalization and global influence. Following theoretical paradigms such as the world city and global city, the “international exchange center city”—as an urban development type characterized by comprehensive exchange capacity—still lacks systematic conceptual definition and theoretical elaboration. Building on a review of research on world cities, global cities, and international cities, this study proposes an analytical framework for “international exchange center cities,” and provides a systematic argument from the perspectives of conceptual connotations, functional mechanisms, and typological features. Taking Beijing as a case, the paper examines the formation mechanisms and practical pathways of its development as an international exchange center. The study finds that an international exchange center city emphasizes a city’s hub position within global exchange networks, with its core lying in the integrated aggregation of multidimensional exchange capacities. Beijing’s development as an international exchange center demonstrates a model combining national strategic guidance, major-event driven dynamics, and support from spatial carriers, offering important experience for understanding how China’s megacities participate in the global exchange system.

China’s urban development has shifted from large-scale incremental expansion toward quality-oriented regeneration of existing urban areas. As international research on urban regeneration has a relatively long history, a systematic review of its findings can provide valuable insights for China. Drawing on the Web of Science Core Collection, this study employs CiteSpace to conduct a bibliometric analysis of 1,528 publications on urban regeneration published between 2000 and 2025. The findings indicate that, viewed through the analytical lens of “investment in physical assets” and “investment in people”, the literature demonstrates a shared concern with the coordinated advancement of physical improvement and human development. Six major research themes are identified: the technological and ecological transformation of the built environment; institutional adaptation and housing security in housing regeneration; the financialization and political economy of urban regeneration; culture-led regeneration; impacts on health and well-being; and gentrification and spatial justice. Future research is expected to strengthen cross-thematic integration, causal mechanism analysis, and institutional comparison. International experience should be selectively adapted to China’s institutional context, particularly its land, housing, fiscal, and grassroots governance systems, to promote synergies between spatial improvement and residents’ well-being.

Using panel data from 288 prefecture-level and higher cities in China between 2011 and 2024, this study employs a spatial Durbin model to empirically examine the local effects, spatial spillover effects, push-pull mechanisms, and transformation conditions of digital government development on basic public service equalization within local areas and neighboring regions. The findings indicate: first, digital government development significantly improves local levels of basic public service equalization and generates substantial positive spatial spillovers to neighboring areas, with the push mechanism dominating; second, spatial spillover effects exhibit a clear distance decay pattern as geographical distance increases, with an effective spillover boundary of approximately 400 kilometers; third, mechanism analysis reveals that economic development disparities exert a monotonic positive linear moderating effect on spatial spillovers, while digitalization gaps show an inverted U-shaped moderating effect; fourth, heterogeneity analysis shows that the overall effect is positive in eastern regions, whereas it is significantly negative in central and western regions. The study uncovers the conditional dependence of spatial spillovers from digital government development, providing empirical support for differentiated regional collaborative governance.

To identify the multiple pathways through which cities achieve carbon decoupling and how these pathways evolve over time, this study takes the 11 cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) over the 11th to the 14th Five-Year Plan periods as its sample. Five antecedent conditions—industrial restructuring, technological innovation capacity, greening of the energy mix, foreign direct investment (FDI) openness and digitalization—are derived bottom-up from a content analysis of 27 national, provincial and municipal low-carbon policy documents. Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) are then applied to identify the condition configurations associated with decoupling, and a quasi-panel design is used to trace how these configurations migrate across planning periods. The results show that none of the five conditions reaches the substantive necessity threshold; that three configurations—structural endowment, openness-technology spillover and endogenous collaborative transformation—each correspond to good decoupling, whereas manufacturing lock-in and growth lock-in constitute two distinct mechanisms of decoupling failure; that greening of the energy mix is the most frequent trigger of pathway upgrading, while industrial restructuring changes only gradually within a single period; and that the effect of FDI is contingent on local industrial structure and absorptive capacity. Urban carbon governance should therefore shift from integrated targets to differentiated pathways, matching policy instruments to each city's configuration and lock-in type, using energy decarbonization as the primary lever for pathway upgrading.

Building a digital industrial cluster rooted in the local production system is an important support to enhance economic resilience and hedge external uncertainty with the advantage of spatial agglomeration. Based on the data of 285 prefecture-level cities from 2001 to 2024, this paper discusses the influence of digital industrial cluster policy on economic resilience by using multi-period double difference method. It is found that the digital industrial cluster policy promotes economic resilience through knowledge spillover effect, digital infrastructure construction effect and digital technology innovation effect. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the pilot of digital industrial cluster has promoted the economic resilience of diversified agglomeration areas and eastern regions, and has a greater role in promoting the economic resilience of establishing national high-tech zone cities; The spillover effect of the pilot area on the economic resilience of surrounding cities is mainly reflected in the surrounding areas within 100 kilometers. The research conclusion is helpful to comprehensively evaluate the economic effect of localized production system constructed by large-scale industrial clusters, and at the same time, it provides rich policy suggestions on how to improve economic resilience in industrial cluster construction.

Enhancing coastal urban resilience to typhoon disasters is fundamental to supporting the high-quality development of the marine economy. From 55 Chinese coastal cities from 2011 to 2023, this paper employs OLS, Logit, RF and XGBoost to examine the impact of digitalization on typhoon disaster resilience. The results show that digitalization significantly enhances resilience, a finding that remains robust after endogenous treatment and a series of robustness checks. Inclusive green growth reinforces this resilience-enhancing effect, while cities with higher factor market misallocation exhibit greater room for improvement. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the effect is more pronounced in cities with strengthening resilience trends, hub-type cities, and cities with mature digitalization- resilience coupling; the effect is also stronger in northern cities than in southern cities. Network analysis reveals that the effect of digitalization on network centrality is not statistically significant, which may point to the coexistence of two mechanisms: "regionally coordinated reinforcement" and "locally self-reliant enhancement". Accordingly, digital disaster prevention should be advanced in stages, integrated with inclusive green development and optimal factor allocation, while its potential value for regional resilience governance deserves sustained attention.