Digital Infrastructure on Urban Economic Resilience within the Yangtze River Economic Belt Perspective : Evidence from the "Smart City Pilot" Policy

Lu Chen; Zhihan Ran; Haotian Lu; Jiayi Wei

doi:10.54691/hrpyv973

Digital Infrastructure on Urban Economic Resilience within the Yangtze River Economic Belt Perspective : Evidence from the "Smart City Pilot" Policy

Lu Chen, Zhihan Ran, Haotian Lu, Jiayi Wei

Frontiers in Sustainable Development, (2026), Vol.6, No.3, pp.70-79

Published: March 29, 2026

DOI: 10.54691/hrpyv973

PDF: Download Full Text PDF

Abstract

In the rapid process of urbanization, various uncertainties threaten urban development, and how to enhance cities' absorption, resilience, adaptation, and learning capabilities is a pressing issue. Resilient cities, as an emerging paradigm for cities to cope with uncertainty risks, offer guidance for improving urban resilience and adaptability. This paper takes 107 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt as its research object, using "smart city pilot" cities as quasi-natural experiments to construct a multi-phase DID model to investigate whether and how digital infrastructure affects urban economic resilience. This paper intends to divide the Yangtze River Economic Belt into three major urban agglomerations: the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River urban agglomeration , and the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration, and study the heterogeneous impact of digital infrastructure on urban economic resilience in these three urban agglomerations . This paper aims to explore the mechanism of digital infrastructure 's role in sustainable urban development and provide policy recommendations on the relationship between digital infrastructure and urban economic resilience.

Keywords: Smart City Pilot Project; Yangtze River Economic Belt; Difference-of-Factory.

APA Citation: Lu Chen, Zhihan Ran, Haotian Lu, Jiayi Wei (2026). Digital Infrastructure on Urban Economic Resilience within the Yangtze River Economic Belt Perspective : Evidence from the "Smart City Pilot" Policy. Frontiers in Sustainable Development, 6(3), 70-79. https://doi.org/10.54691/hrpyv973

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