Urban Renewal as a Pathway to Resilience: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from China’s Old Residential Community Renovation Program

Enhancing urban resilience has become a central objective of sustainable urban development, yet there is limited information on whether urban renewal can effectively contribute to this goal. In this study, we investigated whether urban renewal enhanced urban resilience by exploiting China’s 2017 pilot policy for the renovation projects of old residential communities as a quasi-natural experiment. Drawing on panel data for 286 prefecture-level- and-above cities from 2010 to 2021, we adopted a difference-in-differences method to estimate the causal impact of urban renewal. The results show that urban renewal significantly improves urban resilience, although the overall magnitude of the effect is modest. Mechanism analyses indicate that this effect operates through three interrelated channels: upgraded physical infrastructure, stronger local government attention, and enhanced technological innovation. Heterogeneity analyses further reveal that the resilience effects are stronger in eastern China, larger cities, fiscally stronger cities, and cities located within urban agglomerations. These findings suggest that urban renewal can serve as a meaningful pathway for resilience enhancement, but its effectiveness depends on local institutional and resource conditions. Overall, the study provides city-level empirical evidence of how spatial governance interventions can support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 11 and promote more resilient urban development.