Coupling Coordination Relationship and Dynamic Response between Urbanization and Urban Resilience: Case of Yangtze River Delta

In the context of rapid urbanization, urban resilience, as a new way of thinking to seek solutions to urban risk crises, has become an important direction and a new development trend in the continued acceleration of urbanization. This study takes the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) as the study object, establishes a comprehensive evaluation index system of urbanization and urban resilience from a multi-dimensional perspective based on the improved entropy value method, and uses the coupling coordination degree (CCD) model, the kernel density estimation method, and the exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) method to investigate the spatio-temporal evolution trends of the CCD level of urbanization and urban resilience. Further, the dynamic response relationship of the coupling between the two systems is revealed by the PVAR model. The study results are shown as follows: (1) The urbanization level and the urban resilience level show a box-shaped clustering of overall urbanization values and urban resilience values, with a widening absolute gap between extreme value cities. (2) The kernel density estimates of CCD values for urbanization and urban resilience show an upward trend in the overall level of CCD, with regional integration replacing multi-level differentiation. (3) The level of CCD shows a continuous upward trend in terms of the spatial distribution characteristics of CCD, and the high-class area shows regional integration. (4) The spatial agglomeration trend of CCD continues to develop, reaching a region-wide hot spot agglomeration. (5) The PVAR model indicates that there is a dynamic response relationship between the urbanization system and the urban resilience system. Finally, based on the above research results, this study gives policy recommendations for the coordination and sustainable development of the urbanization system and the urban resilience system, providing some academic references for the relevant departments in the YRD to accelerate urbanization, enhance the urban resilience level, and promote regional integration.