Spatial Structure and Economy Development of Large City Clusters along Yangtze River in Central China

Large city clusters are not only the key of region development spatial strategy, but also the economic growth poles of an area. This paper studied on the large city clusters along the Yangtze River in the central region of China. The large city clusters' spatial structure was judged by Nich, and their regional economic gaps were analyzed by using the Theil Index.The research tried to explain the economy development and the progress of spatial structural evolution in this area. Results show that the Wuhan city circle and the Poyang Lake city group show the characteristics of single core obviously, but the Wan River City belt and the Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan city group present the binuclear or polynuclear characteristics; the regional economic gaps of the Wuhan city circle and Wan River City Belt are great, and the gap has continued to expand. The regional economic gaps of Poyang Lake city group and Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan City group are relatively small.During the development process especially the initial period of large city clusters, along with the development of the center city and sub-center city,the expanded regional economic gaps are necessary, and the low level equilibrium of a long term is not conducive to the economic development.