Spatial Patterns and Development Strategy of Competition-Integration between Cities in Urban Agglomeration in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River

The maximization of functionality of urban agglomeration largely depends on harmonious competition-integration relations between cities. In the view of evolution law of urban agglomerations, the Urban Agglomeration in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River(UAMRYR) is at an early stage of development, there is little academic research about competition and integration between cities in it. Based on perspective of city competitiveness and spatial interaction, this paper introduces the principal component analysis and spatial interpolation technique, and then builds a fundamental framework of competition-integration patterns between cities in UAMRYR to reveal the present urban competition-integration situation and mechanism of action. The conclusions are as follows: 1)The competition pattern of UAMRYR shows radial characteristics with core-periphery schema on the whole, and the competitiveness centrality of Wuhan, Changsha, Nanchang are obvious. The differentiation of competition pattern in three sub-urban agglomerations are significant. In Wuhan Metropolitan Area, there exists a wide gap of competitiveness between Wuhan and other cities. The competition pattern in Hunan's 3+5 Urban Agglomeration shows a feature of concentrating on core city and extending along the axis. The distribution of cities competitiveness in Urban Agglomeration Surrounding Poyang Lake is characterized by aggregating along the Yangtze River and Poyang Lake. 2) The integration pattern between cities mainly shows that linkage within urban agglomeration is at a level higher than that among urban agglomerations, the directivities of center city and geographical adjacency are notable, a suction straw is generated along the major roads, and these traffic axes evolve into the main directions of integration pattern finally. The competition-integration patterns between cities present a feature of overall correspondence and part deviation. 3) Actually the competition pattern is activated by multiple factors. Among them, the coupling of components, the effect of polarization, administrative and natural division and transportation are the critical factors. The distance attenuation rule and radiation effect of growth pole dominate the integration pattern between cities. These factors promote the competition-integration patterns between cities to move towards differentiation, and the patterns are various spatial structure forms derived from these kinds of mechanism. 4) With the comprehensive analysis of inter-city competition-integration pattern, this paper puts forward policy suggestions about competitionintegration in many aspects, such as cooperation on planning, transportation integration, and industrial division and so on.