Dynamic evolution of territorial space resilience and interaction with urbanization from the perspective of adaptive cycling: A case study of Jiangsu province

Against the backdrop of increasing challenges to the territorial space system due to uncertainty risks and traditional conflicts, a deep understanding of the territorial space resilience in order to promote the transformation of the social-ecological system is crucial to the realization of the overall development and security strategy. On the basis of clarifying the connotation of territorial space resilience, we select the counties in Jiangsu province as the case area, and use HP filter analysis, adaptive cycle theory and panel vector autoregression to explore the evolution characteristics of territorial space resilience in different adaptive cycle stages and its interaction with urbanization. Firstly, the fundamental components of territorial space resilience in a normalized scenario include natural resource endowment support, territorial space functional resistance, and territorial space flow transformation. The dynamic evolution of territorial space resilience follows the underlying logic of the adaptive cycle theory's "utilization, conservation, release, and reorganization" cycle. Different development characteristics emerge at each stage. Secondly, the level of territorial space resilience in Jiangsu province's counties gradually increased between 2000 and 2022. The internal ranking of resilience dimensions is as follows: territorial space functional resistance>territorial space flow transformation>natural resource endowment support. The resilience level can be divided into four stages: utilization (2000-2006), conservation (2007-2013), release (2014-2018), and reorganization (2019-2022). These stages exhibit evolutionary characteristics of increase-decrease-increase-decrease, with the overall Gini coefficient following the pattern: conservation>utilization>release>reorganization. Thirdly, urbanization and territorial space resilience interact with each other over the long term among county units in Jiangsu province, and the dynamic relationship between the variables is basically stable, showing a positive driving effect, but the degree of contribution rate varies among regions. When the level of urbanization is impacted by the level of territorial space resilience, the degree of influence shows the trend of enhancement-weakening-enhancement-weakening-stability, and the level of territorial space resilience shows the trend of decline-rise-stability when facing the impact of urbanization. The study provides scientific evidence and decision-making references to promote regional sustainable development in a positive spiral.