Configurational Pathways to County-Level Urbanization from a Factor Flow Perspective: Evidence from 12 Counties in the Hefei Metropolitan Area, China

Coordinated population, economic, and land urbanization across counties is essential for sustainable metropolitan development. Factor flows between central cities and their surrounding counties are closely associated with urbanization levels across counties within metropolitan areas. Using multi-source data for 12 counties in the Hefei Metropolitan Area, China, in 2023, we measure population, economic, and land urbanization through equal weighting and characterize bidirectional population, logistics, capital, technology, and information flows between the central urban area and the counties. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) identifies configurations associated with the three urbanization dimensions. Population urbanization shows the greatest intercounty disparities, followed by economic and land urbanization. Economic urbanization exhibits a clear core–periphery pattern, population urbanization a partial one, and land urbanization a dispersed pattern. Factor flows cluster mainly near the central urban area but show neither uniform distance decay nor one-way diffusion. No single flow is necessary. Inflow configurations center on capital or logistics–information for high population urbanization, capital-information for high economic urbanization, and capital–technology for high land urbanization. Outflow configurations center on information with or without capital, capital–information, and capital and/or information, respectively. These findings provide a configurational basis for differentiated county-level strategies and contribute to understanding how bidirectional metropolitan linkages can support more coordinated and sustainable urbanization within comparable metropolitan contexts.