A Study on the Impacts of Scientific and Technological Innovations on the Coordinated Development of Urban Clusters——An Analysis Based on the Urban Sustainable Competitiveness

Urban cluster plays a key role in the regional coordinated development of China in the new era. Using the Zipf's law to calculate the coordination degree of 14 major urban clusters in China, this paper identifies the development stages of different urban clusters from the perspective of urban sustainable competitiveness, and further tests the impacts of scientific and technological innovations on the coordinated development of urban clusters. The study finds the distribution of urban sustainable competitiveness in China is unbalanced, and the number of cities with too low sustainable competitiveness in urban clusters is large. In terms of development stages, all urban clusters are still in a polarized period, and no urban clusters have yet entered the stage with high sustainable competitiveness and high degree of coordination. In addition, the level of scientific and technological innovation of individual cities within the urban cluster and the coordination degree of urban cluster development show an inverted U relationship. Therefore, implementing the innovation-driven strategy and promoting scientific and technological innovation is an important way to promote the coordinated development of urban clusters.