Intercity Rail Transit and Integrated Development of the Pearl River Delta Urban Cluster: Based on the Perspective of Network Analysis

Intercity rail transit is an important power promoting the integrated development of urban clusters.This paper adopts a social network analysis to analyze the impact of the intercity rail development on the integration of the Pearl River Delta urban cluster in 2010, 2012, and 2020, respectively.The results show that the development of intercity rail transit is generally conducive to enhancing the network development trend of the Pearl River Delta urban cluster, strengthening the inter links and promoting the division of labor within the urban cluster, reinforcing the status of the center cities, thus promoting the integrated development of the Pearl River Delta urban cluster. However,the development of intercity rail transit still cannot break the former core–periphery structure,which may aggravate the unbalanced development among cities. Therefore, on the one hand,accelerating the construction of intercity rail transit is an important path to promote the integrated development of the Pearl River Delta urban cluster; on the other hand, it is necessary to optimize the intercity rail network planning, so that the adverse impact could be mitigated.