Exploring the Coordinated Development of Smart-City Clusters in China: A Case Study of Jiangsu Province

Abstract

As urbanization has accelerated, China has started to build smart cities, which have formed smart-city clusters. It is critical to coordinate development within smart-city clusters to enhance the efficiency of city-cluster construction. From the perspective of demographic economics, this study innovatively constructed an evaluation system for the coordinated development of smart-city clusters and utilized the coupled coordination degree model to conduct an in-depth study of smart-city clusters in Jiangsu Province. The results show that there are clear differences in the development between the three regions of Jiangsu Province: Southern Jiangsu, Central Jiangsu, and Northern Jiangsu. The development within Jiangsu Province is imbalanced, where the overall development trend is high in the southern region and low in the northern region. The main driving factors include geography, the Matthew effect, game thinking, and industrial structure. Accordingly, the results suggest the following recommendations for the coordinated development of smart-city clusters: strengthening cross-regional cooperation, promoting data sharing and interoperability, deepening synergistic industrial development, and expanding innovation capacity.