Urban-rural integration in China's city clusters: reconstructing spatial justice and long-term competitiveness

Introduction: Rebalancing Urban-Rural Relations

In the process of global urbanization, the binary opposition between urban and rural areas was once regarded as an inevitable pain of modernization. However, when megacities like Tokyo and New York face spatial polarization and rural decline, while China reconstructs its development logic through “urban-rural integration,” a new spatial philosophy is emerging. A study published in 2025 in Frontiers in Sustainable Cities focuses on the urban-rural integration development level (URIDL) of three major urban agglomerations in the Yangtze River Economic Belt—the Yangtze River Delta, the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River, and the Chengdu-Chongqing region—between 2010 and 2019, revealing the quantitative trajectory and deep driving forces of this strategy.

Urban-rural integration is not simply spatial equalization, but a systematic integration of factor flows, public services, and resource allocation. The study shows that the URIDL of the three major urban agglomerations has generally been on the rise, but with significant regional differences: the Yangtze River Delta and the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River are far ahead, while the Chengdu-Chongqing region has long lingered at a low level. This gradient gap is no accident; it is a condensed reflection of China's geographic-economic pattern, industrial pathways, and policy empowerment.

From Gradient to Agglomeration: The Spatial Politics of Urban-Rural Integration

The spatial distribution of URIDL exhibits a clear clustering effect. High-value areas are concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta and its northern extension belt, while low-value areas cluster in the Chengdu-Chongqing region and the southwestern mountainous areas. This is not an isolated case—globally, core urban agglomerations often take the lead in achieving urban-rural coordination, while peripheral regions fall into the “core-periphery” trap. The township enterprises and digital economy of the Yangtze River Delta have long blurred the boundaries between urban and rural areas, while the mountainous counties of Chengdu-Chongqing remain constrained by geography and history.

More noteworthy is that the agglomeration effect has strengthened over time. The study uses the global Moran’s I to verify this trend: cities with high URIDL are adjacent to each other, while low-value areas also form clusters. This means that urban-rural integration has spatial spillover effects, but “club convergence” also makes it difficult for lagging regions to break out spontaneously. For policymakers, this suggests that simple decentralized support may be ineffective; cross-domain governance must rely on the overall network of urban agglomerations.

Driving Engines: The Triangular Game of Industrial Structure, Population, and Land

In traditional understanding, the urbanization rate is a direct driver of urban-rural integration. However, the factor detection in this study shows that the explanatory power of a single factor is limited, and interaction effects are the key. The synergistic effect of the proportion of non-agricultural population (X1), per capita arable land area (X3), and industrial structure (X6) is far greater than that of individual factors—for example, when industrialization and population migration occur simultaneously, the urban-rural income gap narrows significantly.

Industrial structure fluctuations are particularly striking. The study points out that industrial shocks during economic transitions (such as China's capacity reduction and the rise of the new economy after 2015) directly alter the direction of factor flows between urban and rural areas. The smart manufacturing upgrade in the Yangtze River Delta has attracted high-skilled labor back to rural areas, while the automobile and electronics assembly industries in Chengdu-Chongqing have squeezed out low-skilled jobs due to automation. This reveals the dynamic nature of urban-rural integration: it is not only a policy outcome but also a function of the evolution of the economic structure.The per capita arable land area seems to be an agricultural indicator, but in fact reflects the land system and ecological constraints. In Chengdu-Chongqing, mountainous and hilly terrain leads to fragmented arable land, hindering large-scale agricultural development and making it difficult for farmers to increase income through land transfer. In contrast, the Yangtze River Delta has activated dormant assets through the "three rights separation" and the market entry of rural collective经营性 construction land. The flexibility of the land system serves as the institutional foundation for urban-rural integration.

Global Lens: China's Experience and Path Choices for Southern Countries

China's practice of urban-rural integration is not isolated. The urban-rural relationship in Western countries has experienced a cycle of "separation-integration-re-differentiation," but it is often characterized by market-led urban sprawl or welfare-subsidized rural protection. Meanwhile, China, while maintaining urban competitiveness, attempts to actively bridge the gap through administrative planning and factor reforms. This offers an alternative script for the Global South—from Lagos in Africa to Mumbai in India: urbanization does not have to come at the expense of rural areas, and city clusters can serve as vehicles for urban-rural synergy.

However, challenges also exist. The lag in Chengdu-Chongqing indicates that geographical constraints and industrial resilience require a longer cultivation cycle. Climate change intensifies floods and droughts in the southwest, and the conflict between ecological red lines and development demands is becoming a new variable in urban-rural integration. As the pioneering zone of China's ecological civilization, the Yangtze River Economic Belt must incorporate carbon budgets and ecological compensation into its urban-rural integration; otherwise, spatial justice will remain an empty concept.

Towards a Long-term Strategic Framework

The value of this research lies not only in depicting the current situation, but also in pointing out future directions: the intelligent upgrade of industrial structure requires synchronous upgrading of education and training systems; the two-way flow of population needs nationwide coordination of social security; land system reform must break free from dependence on local fiscal revenue. For global urban researchers, the story of the three city clusters in the Yangtze River Economic Belt is a vivid case study of "how to balance efficiency and equity at the scale of a large country."

The ultimate goal of urban-rural integration is not to eliminate rural areas, but to make spatial choice free. When farmers in the Yangtze River Delta can switch between digital farmland and financial towns, when mountain dwellers in Chengdu-Chongqing can share development dividends through ecological compensation and distance education, the competitiveness of city clusters will truly be internalized into development on a human scale. This research reminds us: the long-termism of city clusters begins with every synergistic evolution between urban and rural areas.