The Next Race for Urban Agglomerations: The Structural Turn in Urban-Rural Integration in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

When people talk about urban agglomerations, the usual indicators are GDP, population size, subway mileage, and airport throughput. But a study of the three major urban agglomerations in the Yangtze River Economic Belt points to another quieter but potentially more critical divide: that between urban and rural areas.

Published in 2025 in Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, this study used 2010–2019 as its observation window and assessed the level of urban-rural integration development in the three major urban agglomerations: the Yangtze River Delta, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and Chengdu-Chongqing. It did not treat urban-rural integration merely as a rural policy issue, but placed it within the spatiotemporal evolution and driving mechanisms at the scale of urban agglomerations. For global urban researchers, this means that the competitiveness of urban agglomerations is being redefined: no longer merely a matter of the level of core cities, but of whether cities and their hinterlands, and cities and rural areas, can form a sustainable continuum.

From Growth Poles to Continuum

Over the past few decades, urban agglomerations have often been viewed as growth poles in global policy discourse. Core cities drive surrounding areas by concentrating capital, talent, and infrastructure. But this study shows that an overall rise in urban-rural integration levels cannot conceal internal structural differences. The Yangtze River Delta and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River generally have higher levels of urban-rural integration, while the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration is markedly lower.

This is not merely a gap in total economic output. It points to a deeper governance question: whether urban agglomerations truly incorporate rural areas into their development logic, or mainly regard them as sources of land, labor, and ecological resources. The experience of mature metropolitan regions such as the Paris Region and the Tokyo metropolitan area shows that public services, transport connections, and industrial division of labor in hinterlands and small and medium-sized towns directly affect the long-term competitiveness of core cities. Urban-rural integration is therefore not an “external affair” of urban agglomerations, but a test of their internal integration capacity.

Spatial Gradients Are Not a Natural Fate

The study shows that the levels of urban-rural integration in the three major urban agglomerations of the Yangtze River Economic Belt exhibit marked spatial clustering: high-value areas are concentrated in the east (north), and low-value areas in the west (south). Mountainous areas and peripheral counties and cities on the outskirts of the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration often form low-value zones. This pattern echoes the long-term spatial differences delineated by the Hu Huanyong Line and the Qinling–Huaihe Line.

But spatial gradients should not be simply understood as geographic destiny. The study further finds that the interactions among factors such as the share of non-agricultural population in the total population, per capita arable land area, and industrial structure significantly exceed the influence of any single factor. This means that urban-rural integration cannot be advanced by any single policy alone. There are complex coupling relationships among population mobility, land institutions, industrial upgrading, and fiscal arrangements. Changes in industrial structure even bring fluctuations, reflecting the direct impact of economic transformation on urban-rural relations.

In other words, the low-value areas in the west (south) are not destined to remain so. Whether institutional interfaces are smooth, whether factors can flow in both directions, and whether public services are accessible are the key variables determining the direction of urban-rural integration.

Driving Mechanisms: Factor Flows and Institutional InterfacesThis study uses the vertical-horizontal scatter degree method and the Geodetector method to try to identify the driving factors of urban-rural integration. The results show that the interaction effects of the share of nonagricultural population, per capita arable land, and industrial structure are particularly prominent. In the Chinese context, this means that household registration, land, employment, public services, and fiscal transfer payments must be advanced in coordination. Relaxing household registration alone without simultaneously improving rural public services, or adjusting land quotas alone without cultivating nonagricultural industries, makes it difficult to form lasting integration.

For the Global South, this conclusion also has reference value. Many countries in rapid urbanization face similar challenges: urban boundaries expand, but rural areas are not incorporated into modern service networks; population mobility accelerates, but land and status systems remain segmented. The urban-rural interface thus becomes a touchstone of governance capacity.

Urban Agglomerations Are Becoming Governance Actors

The Yangtze River Economic Belt is a national strategic corridor spanning eastern, central, and western China. Its significance lies not only in economic aggregate but also in placing regional coordination, ecological protection, infrastructure, and urban-rural integration within the same spatial framework. Urban agglomerations are therefore no longer merely statistical units but are gradually becoming actors in resource allocation and governance coordination.

Globally, urban governance is moving from single-city governments toward metropolitan coordination mechanisms. Urban agglomerations need to handle transportation, ecological compensation, industrial layout, and public services at the interprovincial and intermunicipal levels. This study reminds us that without cross-regional comparison and coordination, the internal mechanisms of a single urban agglomeration may be misread, and regional heterogeneity may be underestimated. In the future, competition among urban agglomerations will to a large extent be competition in institutional coordination capacity.

Long-Term Trends: The Spatial Reorganization of Urban Civilization

Artificial intelligence, remote work, and regionalized supply chains are changing patterns of agglomeration, but they will not automatically eliminate urban-rural gaps. They may create new risks of marginalization, and they may also bring new service and industrial opportunities to remote areas. At the same time, climate and ecological constraints are rising. The ecological barrier function of the Yangtze River Economic Belt means that urban-rural integration must be combined with green infrastructure, watershed governance, and resilience building.

A longer-term judgment is that the urban system will shift from “competition among cities” to “competition among urban agglomeration–urban-rural continuum units.” If an urban agglomeration cannot manage the urban-rural interface well, internal fractures will eventually erode its competitiveness. Rural areas are no longer merely objects swallowed by urbanization but carriers of ecological, food, cultural, and leisure assets.

This study on the Yangtze River Economic Belt is not merely a local story. It reveals the core proposition of the next stage of urbanization: from the victory of cities to urban-rural continua. The gap between Chengdu-Chongqing and the Yangtze River Delta and the middle reaches of the Yangtze reminds us that growth poles without hinterland integration are difficult to sustain. Policymakers need cross-regional comparison, need to promote equalization of public services, and need to establish closer coordination among land, industrial, and population systems.

Information source: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-cities/articles/10.3389/frsc.2025.1528062/full