How carbon emission reduction is going to affect urban resilience

In tackling climate change and promoting sustainable development, carbon emission reduction through means of cleaner production, circular economy and eco-innovation, etc., may lead to increased resilience of an urban system. This study aims to explore the impact of carbon emission reduction on urban resilience and its spatial-temporal characteristics with a sample of 267 prefectural-level cities from 2006 to 2019 in China. Firstly, this research conceptualizes urban resilience as economic prosperity, social wellbeing, cleaner environment and analyzes the impact mechanism of carbon emission reduction on these three dimensions. Then in the empirical analysis, the urban resilience assessment index is built to quantitatively evaluate urban resilience in Chinese cities and its spatial-temporal characteristics. Subsequently, the impact of carbon emission on urban resilience is investigated through geostatistical analysis. The results show that the urban resilience level in China shows significant spatiotemporal heterogeneity. High resilience cities are clustered in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Yangtze River Delta region and Pearl River Delta region, while lower resilience cities are in the northeast, northwest and southwest regions. Moreover, urban resilience in Chinese cities is mainly contributed by the economic subsystem. Over the study period, carbon emission reduction is positively related to urban resilience with high resilience and high carbon emission reduction agglomerated over space. Furthermore, the agglomeration effect increased from 2006 to 2019. These indicate that in the past fifteen years, urban resilience in Chinese cities is highly dependent on regional economic development which is still reliant on emission-intensive industries. The research provides important references for China's carbon emission reduction and resilience-building policies. Spatial heterogeneities need to be acknowledged to focus on key areas of emission reduction and resilience improvement in policymaking and implementation.