Toughen the cities: Does urban renovation policy affect urban resilience?——Evidence from ecological restoration and urban repair cities in China

Urban resilience denotes the capacity of cities to endure and rebound from natural and anthropogenic disturbances,which represents a critical concern in the context of escalating climate extremes and prevalent public health crises. A targeted focus on enhancing urban resilience plays an indispensable role in facilitating the sustainable, healthy, and long-term development of cities. Based on data of Chinese cities at and above the prefecture-level spanning 2008 to 2020, this paper adopts the Principal Component Analysis-Random Forest(PCA-RF) model to measure urban resilience in China. The staggered difference-in-differences method is then applied to empirically examine the impact of the "Ecological Restoration and Urban Repair Cities"(ERUR) policy on urban resilience. Results indicate that the implementation of the ERUR policy contributes to an annual 7% increase in urban resilience, with this conclusion remaining valid under a series of robustness tests. Meanwhile, mechanism analysis further identifies green innovation, green total factor productivity, and industrial structure upgrading as key drivers underpinning the improvement of urban resilience. Additionally, extended analysis verifies the existence of spillover effects associated with the ERUR policy. Drawing on the above empirical findings, this paper puts forward targeted policy recommendations for enhancing urban resilience.