Transport Integration, Land-Use Transition, and Human–Land Coupling Coordination Under the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Coordinated-Development Strategy: Spatiotemporal Evolution and Heterogeneous Responses, 2010–2020

The Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) coordinated-development strategy provides a county-level setting for examining how transport-led regional restructuring reshaped the relationship between human activity and land–environment conditions. Using a balanced panel of 200 county-level units from 2010 to 2020, we work with two linked subsystems: the human-activity subsystem (H), which combines transport integration and economic upgrading, and the land–environment subsystem (L), which combines land-use transition and ecological response. Pooled entropy weighting, a coupling-coordination index, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and fixed-effects differential-response models are used to trace temporal change, spatial clustering, and post-2014 heterogeneity within BTH. Mean coupling coordination (D) rose from 0.5430 to 0.6012, but the increase came mainly from the rise of H, while L changed only slightly. Positive spatial autocorrelation persisted throughout the period. Counties in the Beijing–Tianjin ring kept higher absolute coordination levels, yet after 2014, they improved more slowly than non-ring counties because land–environment adjustment lagged behind changes within H. Relative to key ecological function zones, agricultural counties—and to a lesser extent urbanized counties—posted faster gains in D, again mainly through H. The results show that in BTH, regional integration did not move the two subsystems in lockstep: transport reorganization and economic upgrading advanced faster than land–environment adjustment, so durable county coordination still depended on land governance, ecological regulation, and policies matched to territorial functions.