| The relationship between urban and rural areas is an inevitable problem during the process of achieving modernization. China’s specific national conditions determine the complexity of its urban-rural relations. The capability of coordinating the issues concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers, plays a significant role in China’s industrialization, urbanization and modernization. In order to eliminate the institutional barriers concerning rural-urban segmentation, as well as to comprehensively address the urban-rural gap in China’s economic and social development, taking the road of integration of urban and rural development will be the focus of our reform at the next stage. As one of the country’s most developed region, Jiangsu Province, with its high level of industrialization and urbanization, has come to the stage to accelerate the integration of urban and rural development. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to study the performance of its integration development.Methods of the paper are as follows:firstly, build the evaluation index system of integration of urban and rural development, then use the gray correlation methods and models to couple the two subsystems, as well as to estimate the degrees of association and coupling. Secondly, with the analysis of the interaction between the two subsystems, as well as the space type of urban-rural coupling, it reveals the level of integration of urban and rural development of the county unit in Jiangsu Province in2010. Thirdly, with the analysis of global and partial autocorrelation, using the exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) method, it explores the spatial pattern and problems in the integration process.Conclusions of the paper are as follows:(1) the integration of urban and rural development is the unity of process and result in socio-economic development within urban and rural areas. Essentially, it is to achieve the unity of economic development and social equity, as well as to coordinate prominent contradictions concerning oversized urban-rural gap and semi-urbanization. Thus it promotes the comprehensive development of people.(2) The overall level of integration of rural and urban development in Jiangsu Province in2010is good. The degrees of urban-rural coupling are higher in counties near Shanghai-Nanjing railway and coastal areas. The study area was divided into four types according to the degree of coupling based on economic differentiation characteristics. The antagonistic type, accounted for66percent, is the future key area in Jiangsu Province.(3) The urban and rural subsystems are closely related. The degree of association among various indicators is greater than0.65, which is of higher relevance. In the coupling of urban to rural elements, the integration level of urban industrial development has the most influence, while the city space layout has the least. In the coupling of rural to urban elements, the integration level of rural living has the biggest influence.(4) The Moran’s I index of global autocorrelation was0.2066, which indicates positive but not strong spatial correlation. From the local spatial correlation analysis results, the Hight-Hight region does not exist in Jiangsu Province, which means there is no gathering area of urban-rural coupling. All counties have small positive correlation to the surrounding areas in Jiangsu Province. Additionally, the regions of positive correlation present a situation of tripartite confrontation. The positive correlation of counties around Nanjing-Zhenjiang areas, surrounding areas of Shanghai and northern Jiangsu coastal areas is generally high. |
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