Research on Ecological Niche Characteristics and Associated Pathways of Urban New Quality Productive Forces

Developing new quality productive forces (NQPF) is an important direction for accelerating China’s high-quality development and advancing Chinese-style modernization. Based on the connotation and characteristics of NQPF, this study constructs an urban evaluation index system from three aspects of niche width, height, and overlap, and uses panel data of 283 Chinese prefecture-level cities over 2010–2023 to examine the spatiotemporal evolution patterns and key influencing factors of urban NQPF. Results are as follows. Firstly, urban NQPF exhibits an overall upward trajectory with an average annual growth rate of about 4.89%, showing phased features of rapid growth, moderated growth, and slight decline, and a spatial gradient of Eastern leadership, Central catch-up, and relatively low levels in the Western and Northeastern zones, with high-level cities growing into the largest group. Secondly, niche width, height, and overlap all show long-term upward trends. The energy level of factor resources and external resource acquisition capacity grow persistently. Inter-city competition evolves from moderate to high intensity, and regional disparities gradually converge. Thirdly, niche width and height are significantly and positively associated with NQPF development, whereas overlap is significantly and negatively associated, with marked regional heterogeneity. Combinatorial pathway analysis reveals that dominant pathways shift from “LLL + MLM” to “HHH + MMH” types, with HHH dominating high-level cities, MMH prevailing among medium-level ones, and low-level cities shifting from LLL to LLH. Improving energy level of urban new qualitative factor resources, strengthening spatial interaction level of new qualitative factors among cities, and avoiding adverse effects caused by excessive competition among cities should become an important content of optimizing the spatial layout of NQPF factor resources in China.