Study of the Urban Coordinated Development Capability Index in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

摘要

Coordinated development is a major concern in the construction strategy of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB).However,there were few studies which have quantitatively measured the level of coordinated development in the YREB.This paper aimed to propose an comprehensive index system of coordinated development based on the theories of growth pole and complex ecosystem and new guidelines of development from the central government.The index system was composed by 18 indicators within 4 domains including economic development,technology & innovation,communication & transportation,and ecological protection.The scores of coordinated development capability of the 110 prefecture-level cities in the YREB were calculated and examined using natural break point analysis,spatial autocorrelation analysis and rank-size analysis.It was shown that Shanghai,Nanjing and Wuhan were leading the coordinated development in the YREB.Generally,the scores of coordinated development capability were higher in the eastern region of the YREB,in which the cities performed well in the domains of economic development,technology & innovation and communication & transportation yet showed poor performance in ecological protection.Most cities in the middle reaches of Yangtze river ranked in the middle in the YREB in all the domains,except the provincial capitals.The western region of the YREB got the lowest score in the coordinated development capability besides the largest cities such as Chongqing,Chengdu,Kunming and Guiyang.The correlation coefficients between ecological protection and other domains were very low,suggesting that few cities have achieved a win-win situation between environment protection and socio-economic development.We suggested 3 ways to promote coordinated development in the YREB:establish multi-level institutional designs;enhance the innovation in green industries;and strengthen the joint prevention and control of ecological risks.