Can the Spatial Function Division of Urbanization Promote Regional Coordinated Development? Evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China

The spatial function division of urbanization (SFDU) based on the value chain has an important impact on optimizing the industrial layouts of these areas and promoting regional coordinated development. Based on urban panel data from the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 2007 to 2016, this paper uses the SYS-GMM, fixed-effects, and quantile regression methods to test the impact of the SFDU on regional coordinated development and further reveals its mechanism of impact. The results show the following: (1) the SFDU significantly improves the level of regional coordinated development, and the introduction of the SYS-GMM method enables us to overcome the endogenous problem of regression; (2) the improvement of capital allocation efficiency is an important way for the SFDU to promote regional coordinated development, whereas labor allocation efficiency is related to “process distortion”; (3) the impact of the SFDU on coordinated regional development in the middle and lower reaches of the YREB is stronger than that in the upper reaches; and (4) the promoting effect of the SFDU on coordinated regional development is significantly higher in the “economic coordination dimension” than in the “people’s livelihoods” and “ecological coordination” dimensions. This paper provides a valuable reference for the government to formulate regional coordinated development policies in basin economies around the world from the perspective of sustainable development.