Exploring the interrelationship and coupling coordination between new urbanization and green development in China

Green development has become an essential approach to overcoming environmental constraints along with the new urbanization process in China. The objective of this study is to explore the interrelationship and coordination between new urbanization and green development across 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2020 utilizing the global entropy, coupling coordination degree, and panel vector autoregression models. Results revealed that China has experienced high speed growth rates of new urbanization and green development with 1.568 and 0.716 times, respectively. The coupling coordination degree between new urbanization and green development demonstrates an overall increasing trend with large heterogeneity among each province; its spatial pattern shows a decreasing trend from east (0.744) to west region (0.639) in 2020. From the viewpoints of interaction between the two indicators, new urbanization hinders green development in the early periods (except for the eastern region), and its influence disappears as the number of periods increases. Overall, a positive interaction between new urbanization and green development exits, but the coupling coordination degree exhibits a strong imbalance across Chinese provinces. Especially, 36.67% of provinces which is concentrated in the western and northeastern regions remain insufficiency and imbalance in the coupling coordination degree. Policymakers should ensure coupled coordination between new urbanization and green development and address interregional disparities. The results of this study can facilitate Chinese provinces or other developing countries in formulating policies and actions to achieve sustainable development through coordinated efforts in new urbanization construction and green development.