Spatiotemporal evolution and driving mechanism of urban resilience at the county level: Evidence from the Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration
研究了2010-2022年山东半岛城市群136个县的韧性时空变化，发现韧性呈波动上升、东高西低格局，经济活力是主要驱动力，为区域规划提供参考。
Against the backdrop of global climate change and rising uncertainty, the resilience of urban agglomerations, as the core of regional development, is critical to national security. This study investigates the spatiotemporal evolution and driving mechanisms of urban resilience in 136 counties of the Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration from 2010 to 2022. We constructed an urban resilience evaluation system and employed methods such as the entropy-weighted TOPSIS model, kernel density estimation. The main findings are: (1) Urban resilience showed a fluctuating upward trend, with a moderating growth rate. Development across dimensions is imbalanced; the economic dimension is the primary contributor, while the ecological dimension has recently shown rapid growth. (2) Spatially, resilience exhibits a gradient differentiation pattern of “higher in the east and north, and lower in the west and south”, forming four high-resilience county clusters with strong spillover effects. The level of coupling and coordination among the various subsystems of urban resilience has steadily improved. Positive spatial autocorrelation is significant, with clusters being predominantly “high-high” (expanding) and “low-low” (stable). (3) The dynamic evolution of urban resilience shows path dependence and club convergence. The transitions of urban resilience are stable and gradual, with few leapfrog breakthroughs. A significant spatial spillover effect exists: “high-level neighborhoods promote upward mobility in resilience levels, while low-level neighborhoods reinforce development lock-in”. (4) Spatiotemporal differentiation is driven by multiple factors. Economic vitality is dominant, while the natural environment, urban scale and people’s living standards are key supports. Factor interactions are predominantly enhancing, especially those involving economic vitality. The effects of different factors varied substantially across time and space. These findings provide empirical support for optimizing urban planning, helping the western counties of the study area break free from the “low-low” lock-in and promoting coordinated regional resilience improvement.