The Economic Performance Of Urban Cluster Spatial Structure In The Yangtze River Middle Reaches

With the advance of economic globalization and regional integration,urban agglomeration has gradually become one of the main carriers of various policies implemented by developed countries in the world.Since the 11 th five-year plan,China has taken urban agglomeration as an important spatial carrier to promote urbanization,which means that the research based on the characteristics and evolution trend of urban agglomeration's spatial structure is of great significance.However,as most of China's urban agglomerations are gradually formed in the direction of government policies,the application of foreign experience in the development of urban agglomerations based on free market in China is limited.At the same time,since China's reform and opening up starts from coastal areas and then advances to the inland in a gradient way,China's urban agglomeration has differences in development stages and development paths in different regions,so it is more beneficial to study the spatial structure of specific urban agglomeration for its development.Taking the middle reaches of the Yangtze river and its 31 city as the research object,we make an empirical study on the impact of urban agglomeration spatial structure on its economic performance from two aspects: population and industry.To achieve this goal,we use the rule of rank size and EG index in space.We hope to draw some valuable conclusions,and provide a basis for strategic planning and policy formulation of urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.The research shows that,from the perspective of morphology,the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze river is developing towards multi-center,but tends to be single-center.From the perspective of industry,the overall advanced manufacturing industry of the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze river develops on average at the present stage,while low-end and high-end producer services have low agglomeration.According to the analysis results of the panel data,the population spatial structure of the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze river and the single-center development of high-end producer services and the multi-center development of low-end producer services can promote its economic growth.Therefore,the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze river is still in the first part of "Williams hypothesis",and it should first complete the single-center polarization process,and then graduallydevelop towards multi-center direction.As low-end producer services are more inclined to the type of public services,they need to transfer before the population,so they need to develop towards multi-center average.