Regional Development and Inequality Within City Regions: A Study of the Yangtze River Delta, China

The city region has emerged as an important form of regional development and governance. However, the dynamics of spatial inequality in city regions are misunderstood. This study examines the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) to determine the spatiotemporal evolution of regional inequality across prefecture-level municipalities from 1990 to 2018. It finds that regional inequality has steadily increased since the 1990s but has declined somewhat in recent years. This is associated with faster growth and higher upward mobility of central regions in the early reform period and increases in the upward mobility of the periphery in recent years. The gradient-distance curve of the Shanghai-centered economy sharpened and then flattened, indicating the polarization of growth in the core regions, followed by the diffusion of development and improved regional integration. However, the core-periphery remains stronger within provinces between provincial capitals and other regions. Despite regional integration and peripheral development, the problem of spatial exclusion and core-periphery structures persists. More attention needs to be given to the core-periphery relationship and the development of peripheral regions to promote regional integration and reduce spatial polarization.