Spatiotemporal Evolution and Influencing Factors of Coupling Coordination Between Urbanization and Urban Resilience in Three Major Coastal Urban Agglomerations of China

The coupling coordination of urbanization and urban resilience is a key issue for achieving sustainable urban development. Taking 49 prefecture-level and above cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and the Pearl River Delta (PRD) —China’s three major coastal urban agglomerations—as research objects, this paper constructs an evaluation index system for urbanization and urban resilience, and employs the CRITIC–entropy weight composite method, the coupling coordination degree model and kernel density estimation to measure the evolutionary characteristics of coupling coordination between urbanization and urban resilience in the three agglomerations during 2013–2023, and further identifies the key influencing factors using a panel fixed-effects model. The results show that (1) the coupling coordination degree of the three urban agglomerations increased continuously, with the PRD taking the lead in 2023 (0.6650), the YRD ranking second (0.6315) and the BTH ranking third (0.5627); however, their coupling coordination paths diverged markedly, specifically manifesting as a catch-up convergence pattern in the BTH, a balanced advancement pattern in the YRD and a polarization-divergence pattern in the PRD. (2) Opening-up and digital economy development are robust positive drivers of the coupling coordination level, and their positive effects are largely universal across regions; urban population agglomeration and government intervention constitute significant negative constraints, among which the inhibitory effect of government intervention exhibits genuine regional heterogeneity, being most prominent in the YRD, followed by the PRD, while failing the significance test in the BTH; technological innovation fails to pass the significance test; the full-sample effect of spatial structure is insignificant, but its influence exhibits significant regional heterogeneity, with a significantly positive association in the PRD. This study systematically reveals the regional differentiation rules governing the synergistic evolution of urbanization and resilience in the three urban agglomerations, providing empirical support for differentiated policies to promote the deep integrated development of urbanization and urban resilience.