The urban–rural relationships in China are experiencing a dual structure period, balancing an urban–rural development period and coordinated urban–rural development period, and urban–rural integrated development has become the current strategy. Urban–rural integrated development has become an important measure to address the unbalanced development between urban and rural areas. Despite proactive explorations by governments at various levels to promote integrated urban–rural development, the anticipated outcomes remain difficult to achieve due to multiple constraints, such as inefficient flow of production factors and unequal provision of basic public services between urban and rural areas. There is an urgent need to re-examine how to advance deeper urban–rural integration from the perspective of collaborative governance. Taking the Yangtze River Delta region as a case study, this research reviews related policy documents, official texts, and development plans regarding urban–rural integrated development, social (urban–rural community) collaborative governance, and urban development at the central and regional levels in recent years. Meanwhile, this study interviews experts in the field of public administration and government officials, and visits the experimental area and demonstration area of integrated development in the Yangtze River Delta region. Through grounded theory method and multi-level coding, concepts, initial categories, main categories are clear, and six core categories in total are identified: policy planning capability, public participation, participation of non-governmental organization, openness of government information, supervision and evaluation, and implementation capacity. This bottom-up construction of the theoretical framework serves as an extension and enrichment of collaborative governance theory. Based on the six core elements identified through the research, the Yangtze River Delta region may implement targeted policy adjustments across these dimensions to enhance the effectiveness of collaborative governance, and it may provide referential insights for urban–rural development practices in other regions.

Exploring the management efficiency of construction and demolition waste (CDW) and the spatial correlation network across regions in China is essential for promoting sustainable development and optimizing resource allocation. This study utilizes an improved three-stage SBM-DEA model and social network analysis to examine the management efficiency of CDW across 30 regions in China from 2010 to 2020. Research findings indicate that from 2010 to 2020, China’s CDW management efficiency improved, with a clear spatial gradient observed across regions. The eastern regions performed better than the western, northeastern, and central areas. Key factors affecting CDW management efficiency include economic development, infrastructure expansion, government policies, and technological progress. Economic growth was negatively associated with redundancy in labor and machinery, while infrastructure development correlated positively with labor, machinery, and capital redundancy. In some areas, government policies contributed to excessive capital investment, increasing redundancy. Technological progress helped reduce labor and machinery redundancy but had a minimal impact on capital redundancy. The spatial correlation network of CDW management demonstrated a “small-world” structure, maintaining stability in network density, relatedness, and hierarchy, though the network efficiency showed a downward trend. Beijing, Henan, and Xinjiang stood out as key nodes in the network, performing strongly in various centrality measures.

The pronounced urban–rural dualistic structure in China has given rise to the imperative for urban–rural integrated development. Coordinating urban and rural development and promoting urban–rural integrated development are pivotal to China’s new-type urbanization, rural revitalization, and the advancement of common prosperity in the new era. Meanwhile, collaborative governance issues arising in the process of urban–rural integrated development have emerged as a significant research perspective. This study takes the Yangtze River Delta region as its research area and employs structural equation modeling to conduct an empirical investigation into the collaborative governance performance of urban–rural integrated development. Results implied that, public participation, participation of non-governmental organizations, policy-planning capacity, government information disclosure and policy implementation capacity, exert significant effects on collaborative governance performance; the hypothesized significant effect of monitoring and evaluation is not confirmed. Based on the empirical findings, this study analyzes the various influencing pathways and proposes corresponding policy recommendations for collaborative governance practices in urban–rural integrated development within the Yangtze River Delta region.

Traditional community governance has been challenged by problems such as the mismatch of needs and insufficient public participation, which has led to the emergence of urban smart communities. Urban smart communities, as the core unit of smart city construction, are characterized by a large population, high density, and high mobility. This study systematically screened 100 articles on smart community governance published during 2014–2024 from the Web of Science database. VOSviewer and CiteSpace were used to conduct a bibliometric and visualization analysis exploring the research hotspots. In combination, the systematic literature review and bibliometrics shed light on four main themes: the application of smart technologies, the forms of public participation, the factors of sustainability, and the impact of community resilience. Identifying the formation, development, and evolution of smart community governance increases the understanding of scholars, suggests future research directions, and provides governance pathways for managers as well as more inclusive policies for policymakers.