Based on the theory of system dynamics, we investigated the factors influencing the trust relationship between owners and PMC contractors in a Chinese management scenario, and proposed effective management strategies to increase the level of trust between the two parties. In the early stages of PMC project implementation, calculative trust between the owner and the PMC contractor predominated, while relational trust predominated in the middle and late stages. The applicability of the PMC model and the control configuration between the owner and the PMC contractor are also vital factors influencing the trust level. Principal determinants of calculative trust are the management capability and reputation of the PMC contractor, the sufficiency of the owner’s authorization, and the efficacy of the owner’s supervisory measures. There are four factors that influence relational trust, in order of decreasing influence: the sufficiency of the owner’s authorization, the effectiveness of the owner’s supervisory measures, the social similarity between the owner and PMC contractor, and the management capability and reputation of the PMC contractor. The research can be used as a guide for enhancing PMC project management performance and achieving PMC project success.

As China is the largest developing country and the country with the largest volume of smart city construction, the Chinese government has promulgated a series of policies to develop smart cities vigorously. Thus, the understanding of smart city policies from the perspective of policy science theory is helpful in achieving a full understanding of the development stage and evolution path of smart cities and improving the implementation of smart city policies. In this study, text content mining and quantitative empirical analysis are used to investigate the structure and function of China’s smart city policy. The results demonstrate that China’s smart city policy has largely realized the evolutionary process of the policy keynote from “taking” to “giving” and the policy subject from “single” to “pluralistic”. The organizational structure has gradually turned from “multidisciplinary” to “cooperative governance”. The analysis results indicate that the policy guidance for smart cities should focus on the positive interaction between social needs and urban development regulations. It is also important to enhance citizen participation and redefine the role of the government in the development of smart cities.

The Project Management Contracting (PMC) project espouses a non-confrontational cooperation model. This paper employs a dynamic Bayesian network approach, grounded in social exchange theory, to construct a dynamic model of the evolution of trust levels between owners and PMC contractors. The findings of the study suggest that the trust level between the owner and the PMC contractor is primarily influenced by the extent of calculative and relational trust. Furthermore, the reciprocal behaviours and contractual flexibility emerge as the key drivers of both calculative and relational trust. Furthermore, reciprocal behaviours exert a more pronounced influence on the advancement of relational trust, whereas contract flexibility exerts a more pronounced influence on the advancement of calculative trust. Additionally, the level of calculative trust is higher at the outset of project implementation, with the generation of calculative trust subsequently leading to the generation of relational trust in the middle and later stages. In the middle and later stages of the project, the importance of relational trust increases, reaching a point where it surpasses that of calculative trust. Furthermore, the decline of relational trust has a greater negative impact on the overall trust level than calculative trust. The results of the research can provide theoretical guidance for the construction body to solve the problem of a low level of trust in the process of PMC project implementation.

With the rapid advancement of urbanization in China, the issue of imbalanced regional distribution of EFI has become increasingly prominent, given its role as a core component of ecological civilization construction. To scientifically identify spatial disparities in environmental facility development across China’s urban agglomerations, this study examines 138 cities within China’s ten major urban agglomerations. By constructing a multidimensional comprehensive evaluation index system, and employing entropy weighting, the Dagum Gini coefficient, kernel density estimation, and the spatial β-convergence model, this study systematically analyzes regional differences in China’s EFI development levels from 2014 to 2024. This study found that the overall level of EFI in China exhibits a gradient pattern, characterized by “higher in the east and lower in the west, stronger in the south and weaker in the north.” The Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta regions consistently rank in the top tier, while the Central Plains and Guanzhong regions lag significantly behind. Regional disparities follow an inverted U-shaped trend, widening initially and then narrowing, with the gaps primarily stemming from interregional interactions. Spatial agglomeration is evident among urban agglomerations, and late-developing regions such as Chengdu–Chongqing and the Middle Yangtze River region are converging at a relatively rapid pace. Based on these findings, it is recommended to strengthen cross-regional coordination mechanisms, implement differentiated development strategies, and accelerate the transition to smart infrastructure to promote the balanced and coordinated development of EFI, thereby supporting high-quality, green, and low-carbon regional development.

Limited by traditional construction project management ideas and systems, the implementation of the PMC model in China still has serious problems such as opposition and frequent conflicts. How to reveal the causes of organizational conflicts and explore the key mechanism of the implementation of the PMC model from the system perspective are urgent problems to be solved. Based on the idea of engineering system view, this paper abstracts the PMC project participants with self-organizing characteristics of the organizational management system, in which the internal structure is closely related, and defines the connotation of synergy and synergistic evolution of the PMC project organizational management system. Using the Cucker–Smale model to describe the group movement, the hierarchical system and the acceleration efficiency function of the project legal person’s free will are constructed, and the structure, movement, and development law of the system itself are emphasized to simulate the ordered evolution trend of PMC project organizational management system and reveal the intrinsic causes of conflicts in PMC project and the key mechanisms of the PMC model application. The results show that first, the intensity of information communication between PMC subjects has a significant positive contribution to the orderliness of the organizational management system; second, too much acceleration of the project legal person’s free will causes group chaos in the system, while too little slows down the group stabilization time, which has a negative impact on cost and schedule; third, the more the organizational structure of PMC contractors tends to the whole-process integrated control, the more it can drive the group to gather in an orderly manner and form a synergistic control mode combining self-organization and other organizations; and fourth, the implementation of the PMC model should focus on eliminating the traditional institutional and conceptual barriers, forming a project management model with integrated control of the whole process of the PMC project contractor and effective macro supervision of the project legal person. The research results of this paper revealed the intrinsic causes of conflicts in PMC projects and the key mechanisms of PMC model application; it can help solve the confrontational situation of PMC project participants, promote the development of the PMC model, and give full play to the investment benefits.