Innovation-driven cities: Reconciling economic growth and ecological sustainability

IF 10.5 1区工程技术 Q1 CONSTRUCTION & BUILDING TECHNOLOGY Sustainable Cities and Society Pub Date : 2025-02-19 DOI:10.1016/j.scs.2025.106230

Fei Chen , Liling Zhu , Huiqiang Zhang , Yi Li

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Abstract

The innovative city pilot policy (ICPP) presents new solutions to balance economic growth with environmental protection. This paper treats the ICPP as a quasi-natural experiment and employs staggered difference-in-differences (DID) and spatial DID methods to examine its impact on green total factor productivity (GTFP) and its spatial spillover effects from 2008 to 2022. It further analyzes the policy's mechanisms and heterogeneity. The research results indicate that (i) ICPP significantly increased GTFP in pilot cities, accelerating green development by 4.3 % while alleviating environmental issues such as air pollution. (ii) By constructing a moderating effect model, the analysis reveals that the ICPP positively influences GTFP through the moderation of green technological innovation, government support, and intellectual property (IP) protection. (iii) Heterogeneity analysis reveals that while university-based research significantly promotes development, its impact is limited by innovation challenges. Government environmental support increases GTFP, and its effect is more pronounced in regions under greater pollution pressure, where the shift to low-carbon industries presents greater opportunities for improvement.

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来源期刊

Sustainable Cities and Society Social Sciences-Geography, Planning and Development

CiteScore

22.00

自引率

13.70%

发文量

810

审稿时长

27 days

期刊介绍： Sustainable Cities and Society (SCS) is an international journal that focuses on fundamental and applied research to promote environmentally sustainable and socially resilient cities. The journal welcomes cross-cutting, multi-disciplinary research in various areas, including: 1. Smart cities and resilient environments; 2. Alternative/clean energy sources, energy distribution, distributed energy generation, and energy demand reduction/management; 3. Monitoring and improving air quality in built environment and cities (e.g., healthy built environment and air quality management); 4. Energy efficient, low/zero carbon, and green buildings/communities; 5. Climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban environments; 6. Green infrastructure and BMPs; 7. Environmental Footprint accounting and management; 8. Urban agriculture and forestry; 9. ICT, smart grid and intelligent infrastructure; 10. Urban design/planning, regulations, legislation, certification, economics, and policy; 11. Social aspects, impacts and resiliency of cities; 12. Behavior monitoring, analysis and change within urban communities; 13. Health monitoring and improvement; 14. Nexus issues related to sustainable cities and societies; 15. Smart city governance; 16. Decision Support Systems for trade-off and uncertainty analysis for improved management of cities and society; 17. Big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence applications and case studies; 18. Critical infrastructure protection, including security, privacy, forensics, and reliability issues of cyber-physical systems. 19. Water footprint reduction and urban water distribution, harvesting, treatment, reuse and management; 20. Waste reduction and recycling; 21. Wastewater collection, treatment and recycling; 22. Smart, clean and healthy transportation systems and infrastructure;