To advance the global sustainable development agenda and uphold the emission reduction commitments of the Paris Agreement, this study is dedicated to exploring the potential of digital infrastructure construction in fostering carbon emission reductions. Drawing on panel data from 249 cities in China spanning the period from 2010 to 2021, we empirically analyze the impact, mechanisms, and heterogeneous effects of digital infrastructure construction on urban carbon emissions using a two-way fixed-effect model. Furthermore, we delve into the carbon-reducing effects of new-type digital infrastructure construction. The research findings indicate that digital infrastructure construction can significantly decrease urban carbon emissions; it achieves this by enhancing urban green innovation and heightening public environmental awareness, thereby further reducing urban carbon emissions. In city samples located in western regions, with higher government fiscal expenditures and better foundations for new energy utilization, the promotional effect of digital infrastructure construction on urban carbon emission reductions is more pronounced. Additionally, new-type digital infrastructure construction demonstrates a significant reduction in urban carbon emissions, and where new-type digital infrastructure is well developed, the carbon-reducing effect of digital infrastructure is even more evident. This study deepens our understanding of the mechanisms through which digitization empowers carbon emission reductions and the regional variations involved, providing empirical evidence for governments to formulate differentiated policies on digital infrastructure construction and carbon emission reductions. In future research, we plan to expand the scope of our investigation to more countries and regions globally; concurrently, we will conduct an in-depth analysis of the long-term effects of digital infrastructure construction on carbon emissions.

Understanding how comprehensive transportation network resilience emerges from complex causal interactions is essential for developing adaptive and sustainable regional transportation systems. Addressing the inability of conventional regression approaches to capture configurational effects among multiple factors, this study applies fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify pathways leading to high transportation network resilience in the Chengdu–Chongqing region. Using 209 city-year observations from 19 cities during 2014–2024, this study considers resilience as the outcome condition and incorporates ten antecedent conditions into the configurational framework. After direct calibration, necessity analysis, sufficiency analysis, and robustness tests are conducted. The results show that: (1) no single condition is necessary for achieving high resilience, confirming its configurational nature; (2) three equivalent pathways are identified: an economic foundation and digital infrastructure-supported pathway, an industrial–fiscal–governance collaborative low-risk pathway, and a fiscal–digital governance compensatory pathway under economic constraints. These pathways achieve an overall solution consistency of 0.9543 and coverage of 0.4223; (3) spatial structures significantly shape resilience outcomes, with the absence of high network dominance and low dual-core dependence consistently emerging as key conditions; (4) robustness tests confirm the stability of the configurations; and (5) differentiated strategies should be developed according to cities’ resource endowments and spatial constraints. This study advances resilience research by revealing configurational mechanisms and provides policy implications for transportation resilience governance in the Chengdu–Chongqing region and beyond.