Spatiotemporal differentiation and the factors influencing urbanization and ecological environment synergistic effects within the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration

Numerous environmental problems have been seen due to the "high energy consumption, high pollution, high emissions" economic model in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration (BTHUA). The coupling coordination degree model is applied to provide a coordination of urbanization and ecological environment composite system (CUECS) value while a geographic detector is applied to explore the dominant factors controlling it. This study reached the following conclusions. (1)The CUECS types are mainly low coordination, but which generally exhibit positive evolutionary trend. The change trends can be characterized as urbanization lags followed by system equilibrium followed by ecological environmental lags. (2)The CUECS conforms to a core-edge distributional pattern that comprises plain high mountain low, inland high coastal low. Industrialization played a key role in the development of BTHUA, the landform type was the important factor controlling CUECS. (3) Social consumer goods, gross domestic product, the disposable income of urban residents (all per capita) are the core factors controlling CUECS within different spatial units. Urbanization rate, per capita social consumer goods, the proportion of tertiary industrial population are the core factors controlling CUECS during different urbanization development stages. (4)The relative impacts of urbanization and ecological environmental subsystems on CUECS are (in decreasing order of importance) population urbanization, economic urbanization, social urbanization, ecological environment subsystem. Therefore, green urbanization remains the primary path for sustainable development within the urban agglomeration. It is unsuitable for rapid urbanization development model in the mountainous areas that encapsulate ecological and environmental security as their main functions, so the government urgently needs to amend its 'one size fits all' policy system.