Shaping Sustainable Urban Development: Spatiotemporal Evolution and Drivers of Newly Established Digital Enterprises in Hangzhou, China

As a key driver of sustainable urban development, the digital economy transforms urban spatial structures through novel organizational forms such as digital enterprises. Understanding the spatiotemporal distribution of these enterprises is crucial for fostering equitable and efficient urban growth. Focusing on Hangzhou, a leading digital city in China, this study applies kernel density estimation, the standard deviational ellipse, and the nearest neighbor index to analyze the evolution patterns of newly established digital enterprises (NDEs) from 2010 to 2020. It further integrates geodetector and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to uncover the drivers behind their spatial differentiation. The results indicate that: (1) The spatial pattern of NDEs evolved from “single-core diffusion” to a “dual-core with multi-center and axial contiguous” structure, yet the density gap between cores and peripheral counties persisted. (2) NDEs exhibited increasing spatial agglomeration over time. (3) Global drivers: the nighttime light index exerts the strongest positive effect, while land costs and population density show negative effects, reflecting cost-squeeze and decentralized locational preferences. (4) Locally, bus accessibility, innovation level and science-education-culture level, display strong spatial heterogeneity; innovation level has very high positive coefficients in innovation poles but negative effects in ecologically sensitive or deindustrialized areas, revealing an “innovation multiplier effect” alongside resource misallocation risks. These findings provide empirical evidence of how digital economy actors spatially manifest, offering insights for urban planners and policymakers to leverage digital growth for guiding sustainable spatial restructuring, enhancing resource allocation efficiency, and promoting balanced regional development.