Climate change and rapid urbanization bring natural and anthropogenetic disturbance to the urban ecosystem, damaging the sustainability and resilience of cities. Evaluation of urban ecological resilience and an investigation of its impact mechanisms are of great importance to sustainable urban management. Therefore, taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration (BTHUA) region in China as a study area, this study builds an evaluation index to assess urban ecological resilience and its spatial patterns with the resilience surrogate of net primary production during 2000–2020. The evaluation index is constructed from two dimensions, including the sensitivity and adaptability of urban ecosystems, to capture the two key mechanisms of resilience, namely resistance and recovery. Resilience-influencing factors including biophysical and socio-economic variables are analyzed with the multiple linear regression model. The results show that during 2000–2020, the spatial pattern of urban ecological resilience in the BTHUA is characterized by high resilience in the northwest and relatively low resilience in the southeast. High resilience areas account for 40% of the whole region, mainly contributed by Zhangjiakou and Chengde city in Hebei Province, which is consistent with the function orientation of the BTH region in its coordinated development. Along with urbanization in this region, ecological resilience decreases with increased population and increases with GDP growth; this indicates that, although population expansion uses resources, causes pollution and reduces vegetation coverage, with economic growth and technological progress, the negative ecological impact could be mitigated, and the coordinated development of social economy and ecological environment could eventually be reached. Our findings are consistent with mainstream theories examining the ecological impact of socio-economic development such as the Environmental Kuznets Curve, Porter Hypothesis, and Ecological Modernization theories, and provide significant references for future urbanization, carbon neutrality, resilience building, and urban ecological management in China.

The urban–rural system is an economically, socially, and environmentally interlinked space, which requires the integration of industry, space, and population. To achieve sustainable and coordinated development between urban and rural systems, dynamic land use change within the urban–rural system and the ecological and social consequences need to be clarified. This study uses system resilience to evaluate such an impact and explores the impact of land use change, especially land conversion induced by urbanization on regional development through the lens of urban–rural resilience. The empirical case is based on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration (BTHUA) in China from 2000 to 2020 when there was rapid urbanization in this region. The results show that along with urbanization in the BTHUA, urban–rural resilience is high in urban core areas and low in peripheral areas. From the urban core to the rural outskirts, there is a general trend that comprehensive resilience decreases with decreased social resilience and increased ecological resilience in this region. Specifically, at the city level, comprehensive resilience decreases sharply from the urban center to its 3–5 km buffer zone and then remains relatively stable in the rural regions. A similar trend goes for social resilience at the city level, while ecological resilience increases sharply from the urban center to its 1–3 km buffer zone, and then remains relatively stable in the rural regions in this region, except for cities in the west and south of Hebei. This study contributes to the conceptualization and measurement of urban–rural resilience in the urban–rural system with empirical findings revealing the impact of rapid urbanization on urban–rural resilience over the last twenty years in the BTHUA in China. In addition, the spatial heterogeneity results could be used for policy reference to make targeted resilience strategies in the study region.

Urban resilience, as an emerging research focus in urban studies, is the capability of an urban system to adapt to the uncertainties and disturbances faced by modern cities. Numerical characterization of an urban system’s resilience can be performed with urban resilience indicators. Moreover, as cities evolve with intensive socio-economic interactions, the performances of urban indicators are heavily dependent on the scale of these interactions; these relationships are conceptualized as urban scaling laws. Therefore, this study explores the scaling patterns of urban resilience, analyzing the scaling relationship between different resilience indicators and urban population size, as well as the spatial–temporal evolutions of the scaling patterns. The empirical case is based on 267 prefectural-level cities in China. The results show resilience indicators demonstrate scaling patterns on both spatial and temporal scales. Moreover, the scale-adjusted metropolitan indicator (SAMI) differs from the commonly used per capita indicator. Therefore, the scale needs to be considered when assessing urban resilience performance. Findings in this study indicate that moderate scale enhances resilience, enriching urban resilience theorization and urban scaling laws application. The empirical results in the case study also provide a reference for future urban resilience planning and management.