Integrating urban resilience, transformation and sustainability: A framework and empirical evidence from China's urban agglomerations

Amid the global wave of urbanization, urban development faces severe governance challenges. Cities must not only possess resilience to withstand shocks but also promote structural transformation to achieve long-term well-being and sustainability. However, whether these three dimensions can be promoted in a coordinated manner still requires weighing the complex pros and cons and forming a systematic understanding, which is currently unclear. Based on the social-ecological system theory, this paper constructs an analytical framework for urban resilience (UR), urban transformation (UT), and urban sustainability (US). This framework integrates resilience capabilities, transformation pathways, and sustainability goals, and is empirically analyzed in 19 urban agglomerations in China. We constructed a resilience-transformation-sustainability (RTS) measurement system, proposed a three-dimensional coupling coordination degree (CCD) model, combined with GINI coefficients to characterize spatial co-evolutionary features and spatial imbalance, and used structural equation modeling to identify its critical paths. The results show that between 2016 and 2023, UR, UT and US all improved, and their CCD increased from 0.786 to 0.819. However, the GINI coefficient results show that the CCD of most urban agglomerations RTS is spatially uneven (GINI coefficient > 0.3). By analyzing their interrelationships, we found that resilience is significantly and positively associated with transformation (β = 0.529, p < 0.001), which likewise shows a positive association with sustainability (β = 0.204, p = 0.001). Resilience also maintains a significant indirect relationship with sustainability through transformation (β = 0.212, p = 0.002). Our findings provide strong empirical evidence for the grand proposition of “coordinated regional development,” and our conclusions may contradict traditional understanding.