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Comparative analysis of spatial–temporal differences in sustainable development between the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Yellow River Economic Belt

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Abstract

Facing the increasing gap in economic development between the North and South in China, the urgent problem is whether social and environmental development disparity will increase and thus give rise to unsustainable development in the underdeveloped north. To answer this question, this study dealt with the concept of sustainable development, considering its three dimensions: economy, society and environment and focused on the Yellow River Economic Belt (YREB) in North China and the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YZREB) in South China. The spatial–temporal differences in sustainable development between the two economic belts from 2003 to 2016 were analyzed by using the entropy weight TOPSIS method and spatial autocorrelation. We found that economic recession did not lead to the degradation of sustainable development in the North, where high social progress level made up for the lack of economic development. The economic development level of YZREB was always higher than that of YREB, and the gap between the two increased exponentially. Although the social progress level in YREB was higher than that in YZREB, the gap between the two increased first and then decreased. The ecological civilization level of the two economic belts was relatively low and contributed little to sustainable development.

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Data availability

The data used in this paper were mainly derived from Statistical Yearbook of China, which can be downloaded on https://data.cnki.net/.

Code availability

Geoda and Arcmap software were used in this paper to analyze spatiotemporal data and visualize the result.

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Funding

We express appreciation to the students at the College of Environment and Planning of Henan University for data collecting and processing, including Xia Wang, Xiangning Wang, Jiaxuan Ye and Mingzhao Shi. This research was also supported by grants from the National Science Foundation of China (No. 41671536, 41501588) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2016M600575).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chongqing, 401122, China

    Yongyue Ji

  2. College of Geography and Environmental Science, Henan University / Key Laboratory of Geospatial Technology for the Middle and Lower Yellow River Regions, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475004, Henan, China

    Lijun Zhang

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  1. Yongyue Ji
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Yongyue Ji and Lijun Zhang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yongyue Ji and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lijun Zhang.

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Ji, Y., Zhang, L. Comparative analysis of spatial–temporal differences in sustainable development between the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Yellow River Economic Belt. Environ Dev Sustain 25, 979–994 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-021-02087-4

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