The Path to Urban Sustainability: Urban Intelligent Transformation and Green Development—Evidence from 286 Cities in China

Urban intelligence is reshaping urban innovation patterns, accelerating urban transformation, and significantly influencing green and sustainable development. By applying the non-radial directional distance function and an improved entropy method, this study measures the green development efficiency and levels across 286 Chinese cities from 2006 to 2020. The objectives of this study are twofold: first, to examine the impact of urban intelligence transformation on green development, and second, to investigate how urban intelligence influences common prosperity. The analysis employs a double/debiased machine learning model, with the “Smart City Pilot” policy as the focal point. The findings indicate that (1) urban intelligence transformation enhances both the level and efficiency of green development in Chinese cities; (2) this transformation fosters green development by driving urban innovation, upgrading industrial structures, and promoting green finance; and (3) the impact of urban intelligence varies across cities with different sizes, resource endowments, and marketization levels. Furthermore, the study constructs a common prosperity index to assess how urban intelligence contributes to residents’ well-being and social equity. The results suggest that urban intelligence transformation not only advances green development but also contributes to improving residents’ quality of life, thereby promoting a more equitable and prosperous society. These insights offer crucial policy guidance for China and other countries facing environmental and economic challenges in the digital age.