Abstract: City serves as a key hub for cultivating new quality productive forces and advancing Chinese modernization and its social functions run well if it draws forces from the innovative resources and talent support from universities. Universities and cities, based on their unique and rich innovative genes, maintain balance and development amid dynamic changes, forming an organic ecosystem with mutual feedback. From the perspective of the organizational ecology theory, the sustainable development of universities and cities is a process of holistic evolution, resource sharing, and mutualistic symbiosis among organic entities within an innovation ecosystem. In addressing issues such as limited interactive freedom, uncertainty in cooperation risks, and the over-reliance on indicator-based governance models during the integration of universities and cities for innovation, universities should optimize innovation organizational mechanisms to promote urban upgrading and development, and gather powerful momentum for industrial transformation and upgrading, thus advancing the co-creation of value for the sustainable development of both sides. The sustainable development of universities and cities should be achieved through strategies such as cultivating high-quality ecological organizations, shaping loosely-coupled innovation communities, and establishing a contractual framework for sound governance, thus collaboratively building a resilient, inclusive, and digitally empowered organizational ecosystem.

Key words: university, urban sustainable development, innovative genes, university-city integration and innovation, organizational ecology