Table 1 The dual impacts of ICT on urbanization.

Demographic urbanization

Skill Premium Enhancement: Creates demand for high-skilled workers while generating new employment sectors, thereby accelerating labor mobility (Qi et al. 2019).

Digital Exclusion: Perpetuates socioeconomic disparities through unequal technology access, limiting upward mobility for digitally marginalized populations (Tewathia et al. 2020).

Spatial urbanization

Planning Optimization: Enables data-driven urban design for sustainable form and functional organization (Bibri and Krogstie, 2017).

Spatial Disruption: Exacerbates regional disparities through uneven digital infrastructure distribution (Pick and Nishida 2015), while virtual space proliferation induces physical space redundancy (Ioannides et al. 2008).

Economic urbanization

Productivity Gains: Reduces transaction costs and enables new economic models through enhanced information flows (Kallal et al. 2021; Palvia et al. 2018).

Paradoxical Limitations: Introduces productivity paradoxes and information asymmetries that constrain economic performance (Cardona et al. 2013).