Abstract:

Since the development strategy of central China was carried out，three urban agglomerations as Wuhan City Circle，ChangshaZhuzhouXiangtan City Cluster and Poyang Lake Ecological Economic Zone have been formed along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. It is the basic and strategic direction for the Yangtze River Middle Reaches Urban Agglomerations to carry forward the integration process，promote the regional updating of industrial structure and forge the fourth pole of Chinese economic development. Apparently，the accelerating of regional integration of the Yangtze River Middle Reaches Urban Agglomerations is not only beneficial to carry on the competitive industry transferring to promote locative industry development，but also is beneficial to promote the development of the Central Henan Urban Agglomeration and deliver the developing potential energy of eastern areas toward the western areas，thus narrowing the development gap between western areas and eastern ones，which are of great significance. In this paper，we  adopted the threes dimensions of density，distance and segmentation to evaluate the regional integration level and built the evaluation systems in reference to the report of “World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography” by the World Bank in 2010. In addition，we adopted certain data from 2000 to 2010 and made practical investigation in the respective city cluster areas. What is more，we made analysis of the date through taking advantage of the method of AHP and Standard Deviation to measure the specific integration level of Wuhan City Circle，ChangshaZhuzhouXiangtan City Cluster and Poyang Lake Ecological Economic Zone，and finally made a comparison. The results were as follows: （1） The integration level of ChangshaZhuzhouXiangtan City Cluster showed best，Wuhan City Circle followed and the Poyang Lake Ecological Economic Zone was the lowest，and the three urban agglomerations integration levels showed a growing trend. （2） The difference in market integration，administrative integration and social integration were obvious of the three urban agglomerations as Wuhan City Circle，ChangshaZhuzhouXiangtan City Cluster and Poyang Lake Ecological Economic Zone，however，the difference were narrowing. （3） Wuhan City Circle integration level were improving steadily under the promotion of strategy of “energysaving，environmentprotective” construction；ChangshaZhuzhouXiangtan City Cluster showed unique advantage as the earliest experiment site; Poyang Lake Ecological Economic Zone showed obvious latermover advantage. Finally，we tried to sweep away the obstacles of regional integration of the urban clusters，and put forwards certain suggestions to build the linkage mechanism of regional development