The Impact of Smart City Policies on City Resilience: An Evaluation of 282 Chinese Cities

• Published in: Sustainability Vol. 16; no. 19; p. 8669
• Main Authors: Feng, Yahong, Wang, Jie, Zhang, Tianlun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2024
• Subjects: Analysis; Cities and towns; Coronaviruses; Data envelopment analysis; Disaster recovery; Ecological balance; Ecology; Emergency preparedness; Epidemics; Evaluation; Infrastructure; Innovations; Literature reviews; Smart cities; Sustainable development; Sustainable urban development; Technology application; Tsunamis; Urban development; China; United States > US
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su16198669

This study uses four dimensions, namely social resilience, economic resilience, infrastructure resilience, and ecological resilience, to construct an index system for urban resilience. The subject data came from the panel data of 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2020. We selected a multiperiod double-difference model to study the effects of smart city pilot policies on macro-urban resilience. By conducting parallel-trend tests and selecting appropriate robustness tests, this study drew the following relevant conclusion: smart city pilot policies can have a positive effect on the urban resilience level. These policies exert their influence by facilitating industrial structure upgrading, which plays a partial mediating role. Considering different city area distributions and city scales, smart city pilot policies can have significant heterogeneity in their enhancement of urban resilience. The effect is pronounced in the “east > central > west” states and is more likely to have a significant impact on small- and medium-sized cities. Therefore, promoting the scope of smart city pilots, strengthening the intermediary role of industrial structure upgrading, and implementing differentiated policies for different regions and city sizes are important for sustainable urban development.