Abstract:

With the advancement in the modernization level of cities, the development of the service industry has been playing an increasingly important role in promoting urbanization. Therefore, the coordination of the concurrent development of urbanization and the service industry has become an important issue in promoting the healthy development of cities. Using the coupling model of physics to calculate the coupling coordination between the service industry and comprehensive urbanization and its subsystems in Guangzhou, we thoroughly explored the characteristics and state of internal coupling coordination at different levels and the internal mechanism of the coordinated development between the service industry and urbanization. The study found that, since the beginning of the 21st century, the development level of the service industry and comprehensive urbanization in Guangzhou has increased significantly and continuously from 2000 to 2017. The coupling degree between the two has exceeded 0.9000 since 2002 and has reached the coupling stage. The overall coordinated development of the two is sound, and the degree of coupling coordination has increased from 0.171 0 to 0.974 1, reaching the stage of polar coupling coordination. The results show that the coupling coordination degree between four types of urbanization subsystems and the service industry has reached the stage of polar coupling coordination, from the stage of low coupling coordination. The coupling coordination degree of the population urbanization and economic urbanization subsystems and the service industry is rising continuously, with a high increase rate, while the coupling coordination degree of the social urbanization and, especially, spatial urbanization subsystems and the service industry is on the rise, with relatively high volatility and a low increase rate. From the perspective of stage change, the coordination and coupling stage of the service industry and population urbanization has changed fast, having reached the stage of polar coupling coordination by 2013, while the coordination and coupling stage of the service industry and economic urbanization has changed at the slowest speed. The results of the coordinated influence of four subsystems of urbanization show that good coupling of population urbanization, social urbanization, and spatial urbanization with the service industry plays a driving role in the coordinated development of comprehensive urbanization and the service industry, while economic urbanization plays a blocking role. Therefore, maintaining the advantage of pulling and solving the disadvantage of blocking will help to accelerate the development of Guangzhou. By comparing the research results of different spatial scales, we found that when regional development reaches a certain level, it becomes an irresistible trend that the development of the service industry and the urbanization process keep moving towards the best coordination state. We also found that when compared with other cities’ coupling coordination degrees of urbanization and the service industry, Guangzhou’s coupling coordination degree is above the national average. Combined with the national conditions and the development situation of Guangzhou, social development can have an impact on the degree of coupling and coordination between urbanization and the service industry.

Key words: service industry, comprehensive urbanization, four types of urbanization, coupling model, coordinated influence, Guangzhou