Coupled analysis of new urbanization quality (NUQ) and eco-environmental carrying capacity (EECC) of prefecture-level and above cities in China during 2003–2016

The act of balancing simultaneous rapid development of urbanization and ecological environmental protection is an increasingly important strategic agenda of national importance. While focusing on the principle of sustainable development, this paper calculates and analyzes the extent of coupling coordination degree (CCD) between the new urbanization quality (NUQ) and eco-environmental carrying capacity (EECC) of 246 prefecture level and above cities in China. The gravity center moving trajectory, Moran's I and LISA are employed to perform exploratory spatial analysis, and the differences among cities are analyzed by variation coefficient (CV) method. Based on simulation by the NUQ and CCD, results obtained show a continuous growth trend at similar rate among the cities. Meanwhile, the mean value of EECC showed a fluctuating growth trend. The coordinated development type cities were largely concentrated in the coastal areas of the east. In comparison, other areas are dominated by disorders recession type cities and the coordination transition type cities. The center of gravity CCD was found moving from the northeast to the southwest. The situation of HH (CDD main city—high, CDD surrounding cities—high) and LL (CDD main city—low, CDD surrounding cities—low) always accounted for more than seventy percent. The cluster locations of HH and LH (CDD main city—low, CDD surrounding cities—high) are largely concentrated around mega-urban agglomerations comprising the following three major urban agglomerations, i.e., (i) the Yangtze River Delta; (ii) the Pearl River Delta; and (iii) the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. CV of CCD shows that the gap among cities is gradually narrowing. In summary, the results conclude that most of the evaluated cities have not achieved coordinated development. As such, enhancing ecological environment protection awareness, improving the utilization effectiveness of natural resources and gradual elimination of regional differences should be the way forward in facilitating the process of new urban construction. The significance of this research not only helps increase the focus on ecological environmental governance, but also enrich the theoretical system of urbanization, both of which have important theoretical significance and application values in the building of an ecological civilization.