Abstract: Urban coordinated development is a hot issue that economic geographers pay attention to, and it is also one of the important ways to achieve the goal of high-quality development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Based on the theory of complex ecosystem, regional innovation system, and relational economic geography, the paper constructs the evaluation index system of the city's coordinated development ability in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. With the help of quantitative methods such as spatial correlation and Zipf scale-rank rule, calculates and analyzes the coordinated development capability of cities in 2021. Results show that the coordinated development pattern of cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt is generally higher in the east and lower in the west, with an olive-shaped distribution, and there are obvious differences in urban levels; the four sub-fields of economic development, technological innovation, exchange services and ecological support complement each other and have a positive correlation; the three major urban agglomerations play an obvious role in the strategic guidance and support capability of the coordinated development of cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Finally, this paper proposes that we can strive to achieve the national strategic goal of the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt by promoting the coordinated development of large, medium and small cities, integrating the four chains, improving the comprehensive efficiency of the regional innovation system, and cultivating new advantages of all-round opening.