The urban fringe of large cities served as critical transitional spaces for urban-rural integration and exhibited high complexity, low stability, and weak conservation-characteristics that rendered them particularly vulnerable. These areas emerged as key weak links in metropolitan systems' capacity to withstand both external shocks and internal disturbances. However, existing research focused primarily on identifying vulnerability from a single-dimensional perspective, with limited attention to the dynamic interactions within the social-ecological system. Therefore, understanding the transformation mechanism from vulnerability to resilience in urban fringes and enhancing their adaptability to environmental changes and disruptions became crucial for promoting high-quality territorial governance. From the perspective of social-ecological system coupling, this study reviewed the research progress on the relationship between vulnerability and resilience transformation in urban fringe of large cities both domestically and internationally. By systematically integrating the adaptive cycle theory and vulnerability framework, the study followed a core methodology of "diagnosis-cause identification-prediction-response", and proposed a framework that included "vulnerability diagnosis and measurement-analysis of vulnerability mechanisms-multi-scenario risk warning-resilience planning response". Furthermore, multi-scale coordinated strategies for transforming vulnerability into resilience were developed from three key dimensions: spatial governance-based planning response models, adaptation pathways centered on social governance mechanisms, and comprehensive technical guidelines for urban fringe areas supported by planning systems, and provided new insights for developing more sustainable and integrated urban-rural development solutions.