Measurement of urban integration degree of urban agglomeration under the background of regional integration: A case of Nanjing, Zhenjiang and Yangzhou

The main contributions of the research include the following aspects: the information index constructed by searching information on Baidu’s web pages through crawler algorithm is adopted for the first time to improve the gravity model, which is then incorporated into the same framework with urban flow model and geo-economics relationship model; a new traffic accessibility model considering both passenger and freight transport is established; a comprehensive measurement index system covering seven aspects of space, industry, transportation, market and so on is constructed to quantitatively measure the development level of urban integration in Nanjing, Zhenjiang and Yangzhou from 2004 to 2016. The results show that the development trend of urban integration in the three cities is obvious and periodic during the research period. However, serious problem of industrial convergence still exists between Yangzhou and Zhenjiang and the relationship between them is a competitive geo-economics relationship. In addition, it is necessary to further integrate the factor market and enhance the sharing of infrastructure and the equalization of public services in Nanjing, Zhenjiang and Yangzhou.