The Efficiency of Urban–Rural Integration in the Yangtze River Economic Belt and Its Optimization

Abstract

China has entered a new stage of integrated development of urban and rural areas under the constraints of scarce land resources and the need for high-quality economic and social development. While there is concern about the state and speed of urban–rural integrated development (URID), increasing attention is being paid to efficiency improvement. This paper comprehensively measures the efficiency of URID from the input–output perspective, taking into account the impact of carbon emissions; it also studies the efficiency of URID and its developmental spatiotemporal characteristics in 73 cities within three major city clusters in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 2010 to 2019, and analyzes the input–output optimization strategies for URID within each of these major urban systems. The results show that (1) the comprehensive efficiency evaluation system constructed by the study can more objectively reflect the state and trends of URID. From 2010 to 2019, the efficiency of URID in the three major city clusters in the YREB showed a downward trend; in cities with better economic development, the efficiency of URID was lower than in cities with average economic development, where carbon emission indicators showed a significant impact. (2) The spatial distribution of URID efficiency in the three major city clusters in the YREB follows an inverted “U” shape; URID efficiency in the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (MRYRUA) is higher than in the Chengyu urban agglomeration (CYUA), where it is higher than in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (YRDUA). (3) The input redundancy rates are high in the indicators for culture, sports and media, energy conservation and environmental protection, urban and rural communities, and housing security expenditures. Carbon emission redundancy has a negative impact on efficiency in URID. Based on the high redundancy rates of each input–output indicator, this paper proposes methods to optimize the efficiency of URID in each of the three major city clusters and provides directional guidance for promoting the high-quality development of regional urban–rural integration.