Research On The Spatial Structure Evolution Of Yangtze River Delta Metropolitan Area Under The Background Of Integration

Under the background of the new era,the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta represents a new height of China’s reform and opening up,a new height of regional spatial development quality,and a new height of spatial governance capacity modernization.To achieve integration in the Yangtze River Delta region,in short,it is to break down barriers,reduce transaction costs,facilitate the flow of factors and the profit-seeking selection of micro subjects in a larger space,and let the market determine the allocation of resources.Therefore,in the context of integration,that is,in the context of letting the market play a decisive role,this paper will analyze the impact of integration on the spatial structure,that is,analyze how the market determines the spatial distribution of production factors such as capital and population,and then form a new regional structure that is different from the past.This paper predicts the future metropolitan structure from the theoretical and empirical levels,and verifies the reality from the empirical level.The theoretical part mainly starts from the microscopic perspective,based on the cost-benefit analysis method,and attempts to deduce the general law of the evolution of the spatial structure of the metropolitan area.The study believes that the fundamental driving force for the evolution of the spatial structure of the Yangtze River Delta metropolitan area under the background of integration still lies in the spatial imbalance of benefits and costs.This imbalance leads to changes in some basic market variables,such as the direction and speed of factor flow and the direction and speed of industrial transfer,which will inevitably reshape the spatial structure of the region.Model analysis shows that the evolution of the spatial structure of the metropolitan area has roughly gone through three stages: first,because of the existence of scale effect and agglomeration effect,the factors flow to the core advantageous cities,and the scale of the core cities continues to expand.Secondly,the increase in costs brought about by the increase in the scale of core cities will cause some industries to lose their original competitive advantages and seek to migrate outward,at this time,neighboring cities have advantages in undertaking corresponding economic activities because they are at a lower agglomeration level,and thus gradually become new economic growth centers,which is reflected in the polycentric area scale;Finally,after high-quality social and economic development and continuous population growth,metropolitan areas have gradually formed a functional division of labor between core cities and peripheral cities.In the empirical part,data is mainly used to test whether the real trend is consistent with the theoretical prediction.Data analysis reveals that the structure of each metropolitan area in the Yangtze River Delta presents three characteristics in the development: first,the unicentralization of the metropolitan scale,that is,under the relatively large metropolitan scale,from the perspectives of economic agglomeration and population agglomeration,the elements of the metropolitan area in the Yangtze River Delta continue to flow to the center,and the scale of core cities shows an expansion trend;The second is the multi-centralization of the metropolitan area scale,in which multiple growth poles coexist in the core urban areas of each metropolitan area,where the main center and the sub-center coexist,and the spatial distribution of economy,population and employment gradually balanced.Third,with the advancement of integration,the metropolitan areas of the Yangtze River Delta have gradually formed a relatively complete functional division of labor system from the core to the periphery.The empirical part of this paper selects the panel data of the Yangtze River Delta region from 2005 to 2020,and studies the impact of integration level on spatial structure at the metropolitan area and metropolitan area levels,and results from the fixed effect test analysis that the improvement of the integration level of the Yangtze River Delta region in the period covered by the study has a positive effect on the monocentralization of the metropolitan area and the multi-centralization of the metropolitan area.It can be seen that the spatial structure development of the Yangtze River Delta metropolitan area is still at a low level,while the development level of the spatial structure of some core urban areas is relatively high.Therefore,it is necessary to formulate reasonable policies to guide industries to achieve upgrading and transfer,and develop a higher quality urban spatial structure in the Yangtze River Delta.However,compared with the relatively mature metropolitan areas abroad,the evolution of the Yangtze River Delta metropolitan area is still slow,highlighted in the scale agglomeration of core cities has not yet been completed,the expansion of urban scale is still insufficient,and the land use of urban areas is not sufficient,which is mainly due to the specific conditions of Chinese cities,China’s cities are a collection of tens of millions of central cities and several small cities.Therefore,the core cities of the Yangtze River Delta metropolitan areas still have great potential in terms of population and industrial carrying capacity,and can continue to absorb more people and industries to improve their ranking in the entire metropolitan area.At the same time,there is still a problem of isomorphism in the division of labor in cities in some metropolitan areas.These problems exist because there are a series of obstacles in structural cognition,land allocation,urban governance and collaborative planning.In terms of the full text,the focus of this paper is not to discuss the direct impact of integration on the spatial structure of the metropolitan area,but only to use it as a background,in this context,focus on analyzing the spatial migration of micro subjects based on the cost-benefit trade-off,and then judge the future trend of the spatial structure of a metropolitan area.This paper always argues that any macro-level metropolitan structure is caused by the micro-level rational subject’s decision to maximize space.