Industrial green spatial pattern evolution of Yangtze River Economic Belt in China

We use the directional slacks-based measure of efficiency and inverse distance weighting method to analyze the spatial pattern evolution of the industrial green total factor productivity of 108 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt in 2003–2013. Results show that both the subprime mortgage crisis and ‘the new normal’ had significant negative effects on productivity growth, leading to the different spatial patterns between 2003–2008 and 2009–2013. Before 2008, green poles had gathered around some capital cities and formed a tripartite pattern, which was a typical core-periphery pattern. Due to a combination of the polarization and the diffusion effects, capital cities became the growth poles and ‘core’ regions, while surrounding areas became the ‘periphery’. This was mainly caused by the innate advantage of capital cities and ‘the rise of central China’ strategy. After 2008, the tripartite pattern changed to a multi-poles pattern where green poles continuously and densely spread in the midstream and downstream areas. This is due to the regional difference in the leading effect of green poles. The leading effect of green poles in midstream and downstream areas has changed from polarization to diffusion, while the polarization effect still leads in the upstream area.