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This paper uses the panel data of 245 cities in China from 2005 to 2020 to build an ambient air pollution index to measure ambient air quality. Taking China's national smart city pilot as a quasiexperiment, the impact of smart city construction on urban ambient air quality and its impact path is tested by using the multi-period double difference method. The research results show that the construction of smart cities has significantly improved the urban ambient air quality, and with the improvement of the level of smart city construction, the degree of improvement in urban ambient air quality shows a positive fluctuation trend. The mechanism test results show that the construction of smart cities improves urban ambient air quality by enhancing the level of technological innovation and marketization in the city. Heterogeneity testing shows that the ambient air quality improvement effects of smart city construction vary depending on the size of the city's population and the geographical location of the city. Furthermore, the moderating effect test shows that financial autonomy and industrial structure upgrading have a positive moderating effect on the improvement of ambient air quality in smart cities, while local government environmental regulation intensity has a reverse moderating effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]