Delivering Sustainable Urban Growth: The Heterogeneous Effects and Mechanisms of Transforming Industrial Parks Into Eco‐Industrial Parks

ABSTRACT Eco‐industrial parks (EIPs) represent a strategic place‐based policy designed to reconcile industrial growth with environmental integrity, serving as a vital instrument for achieving sustainable development. While China has aggressively promoted the upgrading of traditional industrial zones into national‐level EIPs, the heterogeneous impacts of these transformations on urban green total factor productivity (GTFP) remain underexplored. This study addresses this gap by evaluating and comparing the upgrading effects across three distinct park typologies: national economic and technological development zones (ETDs), national high‐tech industrial development zones (HTDs), and other industrial parks (OIPs). Our findings demonstrate that the establishment of EIPs significantly enhances urban GTFP. However, the magnitude of this effect varies substantially depending on the evolutionary origin of the park: HTDs exhibit the strongest capacity to drive green growth, followed by ETDs, whereas OIPs demonstrate the weakest impact. Mechanism analysis reveals that the innovation‐driven effect is the paramount contributor to these GTFP gains—particularly within HTDs—surpassing both policy‐driven and structure‐driven channels. Furthermore, we identify positive spatial spillover effects extending within a 250–300 km radius, alongside temporal dynamics indicating that policy efficacy peaks 4–6 years post‐establishment. These findings provide insights for policymakers, suggesting that sustainable urban development strategies must prioritize regional innovation capabilities and tailor upgrading pathways to the specific attributes of existing industrial infrastructure.