Revitalizing oil-gas resource-based cities: Unveiling spatial heterogeneity and life cycle dynamics of sustainable development capacity

Against the backdrop of China’s energy transition and its “dual-carbon” goals, the sustainable development of oil–gas resource-based cities has emerged as a critical issue for safeguarding national energy security and promoting regionally balanced development. This study innovatively extends the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) framework to systematically assess the sustainability of 14 representative oil–gas resource-based cities in China, revealing the spatial heterogeneity of their sustainable development capacity and the evolutionary dynamics of their capital structures across different life-cycle stages. By comparing cities across regions and development phases, the study underscores the importance of targeted policy design and resource governance. Furthermore, it broadens the applicability of the IWI framework, providing a replicable analytical pathway for various types of resource-based cities and sectoral studies. Given that many resource-based cities in developing countries face substantial sustainability challenges, this research offers valuable theoretical and practical insights into global sustainable development pathways for resource-dependent urban systems.

Enhancing sustainable development capacity is a prerequisite for the transformation and upgrading of oil–gas resource-based cities. Previous studies have primarily focused on development status, transition processes, and policy impacts, while few have integrated economic, social, and environmental dimensions into a unified analytical framework to systematically examine internal heterogeneity. The results of this study demonstrate pronounced spatial differences in inclusive wealth among the 14 sample cities, forming four distinct regional clusters.
• Eastern cities exhibit high agglomeration of human capital and produced capital, with more optimized capital structures and the strongest sustainability performance.
• Central cities share similar capital structures but show significant disparities in inclusive wealth levels.
• Northeast cities, despite possessing abundant renewable natural capital, are constrained by relatively weak human and produced capital, thereby limiting overall wealth accumulation.
• Western cities are characterized by rich natural capital but low capital agglomeration, leading to weaker economic development models and insufficient wealth accumulation.

The study further examines heterogeneity in inclusive wealth, capital structures, and industrial composition across different life-cycle stages of oil–gas resource-based cities.
• Regenerative cities exhibit the highest wealth performance, having shifted their development momentum from natural resource dependence to human and produced capital.
• Grown-up cities show the second-highest performance, supported by robust resource endowments and relatively stable socioeconomic development.
• Growing cities are still in an upward resource exploitation phase with strong resource potential; however, their industrial structure remains resource-intensive, human capital accumulation is limited, and sustainability challenges coexist with opportunities.
• Decessionary cities perform the worst, constrained by insufficient human and produced capital, and still lack endogenous drivers for transition.

Fig. 2. (a) Inner capital structure of OGRBCs in different life cycles; (b) Inner industrial structure of OGRBCs in different life cycles, with color and shape indicating different life cycles and areas of the cities, respectively. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

Fig. 3. (a) The GDP and growth rate of OGRBCs every five years in the past decade (unit: billion yuan); (b) Changes in average GDP for OGRBCs categorized by life cycles over the last decade (unit: billion yuan).

Given the essential role of oil and natural gas in ensuring energy security in the foreseeable future, the sustainable development of China’s oil–gas resource-based cities represents an urgent policy concern. For grow-up and growing cities, it is crucial to adopt long-term strategic planning for sustainability as early as possible, capturing low-cost windows for restructuring and avoiding the “resource curse” associated with delayed transitions.
By contrast, recessionary and regenerative cities face more region-specific challenges:
• Recessionary cities require strengthened external policy intervention, enhanced capital investment, and strategic development of modern services and high-tech industries to rebuild endogenous growth capacity through talent, technology, and financial inflows.
• Regenerative cities should maximize synergies among human, produced, and natural capital, optimize land-use allocation, and enhance wealth agglomeration efficiency to advance toward innovation-driven and high-quality development pathways.

Integrating spatial characteristics and life-cycle dynamics, this study also discusses the coordination between resource extraction cycles and urban construction cycles. The findings highlight the feasibility of cultivating diversified industrial structures and advancing innovation-driven development—offering policy insights not only for China but also for resource-based cities globally.

Fig. 4. (a) Individual welfare; (b) Human and produced capital productivity; (c) Industrial structure; (d) Resource endowment; (e) Non-renewable and renewable natural capital productivity.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development identifies 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and cities play an indispensable role in achieving them. The Shanghai Key Laboratory of Urban Design and Urban Science (UDUS Lab) is actively collaborating with universities and institutions worldwide to address emerging challenges in urban development, exploring transformation pathways for different types of cities. Social–ecological coordination in ecologically sensitive regions has become a key frontier in both sustainability science and urban studies. Complex and dynamic social–ecological challenges—particularly in rapidly growing megacities like Shanghai or in vulnerable coastal and deltaic regions—require continuous monitoring and timely assessment to support decision-making for China’s vision of “harmonious coexistence between humans and nature” and for broader sustainable development at the regional and global levels.

This study was conducted through collaboration among Prof. Chenghe Guan and Prof. Ying Li from the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Urban Design and Urban Science, and Prof. Bo Zhang’s team from the School of Management, Xiamen University. The paper titled “Revitalizing oil-gas resource-based cities: Unveiling spatial heterogeneity and life cycle dynamics of sustainable development capacity” is published in Habitat International. The first author is Siwei Xi, a doctoral researcher at China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing).

The research was supported by the Major Program of Xiangjiang Laboratory (Grant No. 22XJ01008), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 72394405 and 72374175), the Shanghai Nature and Health Foundation (Grant No. 20230701 SNHF), Shanghai, China, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant no. 20720231063).

Reference:

Xi, S., Yan, K., Zhang, B., Li, Y., & Guan, C. (2025). Revitalizing oil-gas resource-based cities: Unveiling spatial heterogeneity and life cycle dynamics of sustainable development capacity. Habitat International, Article 103649. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103649