Rapid urbanization has increased haze pollution, affecting the health of elderly people. This study uses low-carbon city (LCC) data and examines the effects of LCCs on improving the health of elderly residents. Our main purpose is to explore the following question: Can the new urbanization model presented by the LCC alleviate haze pollution and enhance the health of middle-aged and elderly people? This study uses data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and the 2012 LCC pilot to explore whether the LCC can alleviate haze pollution and improve elderly people’s health. The study found that the building of LCCs can reduce blood pressure, improve vital capacity, decrease obesity, and improve memory levels, including short-term and long-term memory. The building of LCCs also reduces the probability of being exposed to haze pollution by increasing the city’s green total factor productivity and the use of green technologies. The study concludes that elderly people received health dividends as a result of the enhancement of living conditions, transportation, and medical support in the LCCs.

As a driving force behind urban sustainable development, enterprise innovation has become an increasingly important issue in the digital economy. In this context, a financing model called intellectual property pledge financing (IPPF) has been widely implemented, potentially promoting innovation output in developed countries. However, for countries with relatively low levels of intellectual property (IP) protection, the impact of IPPF on enterprise innovation is divergent, as it may lead to patent signal failure. China’s implementation of IPPF since 2008 provides an ideal quasi-natural experiment for researching IPPF in such countries. Using panel data of China’s listed companies from 2007 to 2017, we employ the staggered Difference-in-Differences (DID) method to examine the impact of IPPF on enterprise innovation. The results demonstrate a significantly positive impact overall, with a more pronounced effect in urban areas characterized by high intellectual property protection and digitalization. Various robust tests, including event study, Bacon decomposition, and propensity score matching (PSM), were conducted. Additionally, our findings suggest that IPPF facilitates enterprise innovation by expanding external credit resources and optimizing internal management from the perspective of open innovation (OI). It signals banks and investors to provide favorable credit support externally, helps alleviate managerial myopia, and increases manager risk preference internally. These results offer empirical evidence and suggestions for promoting IPPF as a means to stimulate enterprise innovation and achieve urban economic sustainable development.