Abstract: Currently, the international and domestic environments are becoming complex and volatile. The development zone, as an open, dynamic, and complex system, may face a variety of uncertainty risks during the evolution process. There is an urgent need to seek new perspectives to carry out a comprehensive study. This study took the provincial-level and above development zones in Chang-Zhu-Tan urban agglomeration (CZTUA) as the research object. Coupled theories of the adaptive cycle and regional economic resilience was applied to construct a three-dimensional comprehensive measurement framework of " potential-connectivity-resilience". Using the entropy method and the evolutionary dynamics model, we inscribed the trajectory of the resilience evolution of the 17 provincial-level and above development zones in the CZTUA from 2005 to 2021. The resilience formation mechanism from the multi-scale of the cities, development zones, and enterprises was explored. The results showed that: (1) the resilience level of the development zone of the CZTUA presented a fluctuating upward trend. The ability to cope with external disturbances was increasing. (2) The evolution of development zones in the CZTUA was consistent with the intrinsic law of adaptive cycling, which continued to evolve through four different stages: exploitation, conservation, release, and reorganization. The majority of development zones was currently in the updating stage and was evolving towards a new stage of exploitation. (3) The resilience of development zone evolved in a complex dynamic environment, with different driving factors at different stages. At the exploitation and conservation stages, the main driving force came from external sources, and the city's level of financial self-sufficiency and market scale showed the most significant effects; At the release stage, the main driving force came from the development zone's level of industrial specialization and governance capacity; At the reorganization stage, the innovation capacity showed the most significant effects. The study aimed to provide new ideas and directions for development zones to adapt to environmental changes from the perspective of dynamic development. The research outcomes were expected to further enrich the content of resilience research, and to provide theoretical guidance and case support for promoting the development of development zones themselves as well as the high-quality development of the regional economy.