Abstract
The construction of transportation infrastructure is an important driving force to promote the sustainable development of Chinese cities. However, the "extensive" and "extensive" urban development mode restricts the sustainable development of Chinese cities. This paper establishes a theoretical hypothesis that transport infrastructure construction affects urban sustainable development, uses the panel data of Chinese cities from 2006 to 2021 to empirically analyze the impact and mechanism of transport infrastructure construction on urban sustainable development, and explores the heterogeneity caused by differences in sample regions and time intervals. The results show that: (1) Baseline regression shows that transport infrastructure construction can significantly promote the improvement of urban sustainable development, and the robustness test using alternative variables and the endogeneity test of instrumental variables support the baseline estimate results. (2) The results of heterogeneity analysis show that the improvement effect of transport infrastructure construction on large-scale cities is greater than that on small-scale cities, the improvement effect of transport infrastructure construction on central and western regions is greater than that on eastern regions, and the improvement effect of transport infrastructure construction on provincial capitals is greater than that on non-provincial capitals. (3) The results of the transmission mechanism show that the improvement of transportation infrastructure construction can promote sustainable urban development by promoting technological innovation and employment scale upgrading. This study further evaluates the economic effects of transportation infrastructure construction and provides empirical evidence for improving urban sustainable development.