中文摘要：

城市群作为中国区域发展空间战略的重心,发挥着区域经济增长极的作用。以中部地区长江沿线各城市群为研究对象,通过相对发展率判断各城市群的空间结构,并运用锡尔系数研究各城市群内部区域经济差异的变化,以全面把握该地区的经济发展和空间结构演化过程。研究表明武汉城市圈和鄱阳湖城市群单核特征明显,皖江城市带和长株潭城市群呈现双核和多核特征;武汉城市圈和皖江城市带中各城市之间的区域经济差异较大,并呈继续扩大的趋势,鄱阳湖城市群和长株潭城市群中各城市的区域经济差异相对较小。在城市群发展过程中特别是起步阶段,伴随着中心城市和副中心城市的成长,区域经济差异的拉大是必要的,而长期低水平的均衡并不利于城市群的经济发展。

英文摘要：

Large city clusters are not only the key of region development spatial strategy, but also the economic growth poles of an area. This paper studied on the large city clusters along the Yangtze River in the central region of China. The large city clusters’ spatial structure was judged by Nich, and their regional economic gaps were analyzed by using the Theil Index. The research tried to explain the economy development and the progress of spatial structural evolution in this area. Results show that the Wuhan city circle and the Poyang Lake city group show the characteristics of single core obviously, but the Wan River City belt and the Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan city group present the binuclear or polynuclear characteristics; the regional economic gaps of the Wuhan city circle and Wan River City Belt are great, and the gap has continued to expand. The regional economic gaps of Poyang Lake city group and Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan City group are relatively small. During the development process especially the initial period of large city clusters, along with the development of the center city and sub-center city, the expanded regional economic gaps are necessary, and the low level equilibrium of a long term is not conducive to the economic development.