SDG 11‐Aligned Sustainable Cities Under Environmental Pressure: Distributional Evidence on Green, Digital and Policy Transitions in OECD Countries

ABSTRACT Urban air pollution remains a major challenge for sustainable urban development and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11). This study examines the heterogeneous associations between green technology diffusion, renewable energy consumption, digitalization, environmental policy stringency, income level, government effectiveness, and PM2.5 concentrations across 30 OECD countries during 2000–2023. The analysis employs Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) with country fixed effects, complemented by two‐way fixed‐effects estimation with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors and Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel Granger causality tests. The MMQR results reveal substantial distributional heterogeneity. Renewable energy consumption shows a consistently negative and statistically significant association across all conditional pollution quantiles, while digitalization is negatively associated with pollution primarily at higher quantiles. In contrast, patent‐based green technology diffusion and environmental policy stringency indicate positive associations over different parts of the conditional distribution. Income level and government effectiveness show no statistically significant quantile‐specific associations. The Driscoll–Kraay estimates provide complementary evidence on average relationships but do not directly validate quantile heterogeneity. Additional sensitivity analyses indicate that some associations vary across model specifications. These findings provide distributional evidence relevant to SDG 11, particularly Target 11.6, while highlighting the need for cautious interpretation of observational relationships and context‐sensitive urban sustainability policies.