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New urbanization plays an important role in China's regional economic growth and green transformation. In this stage of high-quality economic development, the effect of the government-led new urbanization policy on reducing pollution and carbon emissions needs to be verified. Based on the data of 180 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2020, this paper built a difference-indifferences model from the two dimensions of ' pollution' and ' carbon emission' to empirically test the effect of the reduction of pollution and carbon emissions in new urbanization and its influencing mechanisms. The results showed that: (J) The new urbanization construction had a significant effect of reducing pollution and carbon emissions, which was characterized by its annual increase. The conclusion was still robust after validity and robustness tests. © Based on the ' location-feature-scale' dimensional urban heterogeneity, the effect of the reduction of pollution and carbon emissions was more significant in the samples of eastern cities, non-resource-based cities, cities with high human capital, and larger cities. Quantile estimation results showed that this effect in the new urbanization construction was increasing marginally. © Mechanism analysis showed that the new urbanization construction could not only directly promote the reduction of pollution and carbon emissions, but also effectively promote this reduction by fostering the overall upgrading of industrial structure, service structure, and performance-based technological innovation. However, the impact of input-based technological innovation on this reduction was not obvious. This article offers new ideas for the next stage of regional pollution control in China. It is suggested that the government should promote the synergy between the new urbanization and the reduction of pollution and carbon emissions and release the dividends of the new urbanization in regional green development in a more effective way with the help of industrial structure upgrading and performance-based technological innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]