Coupling or contradiction? The spatiotemporal relationship between urbanization and urban park system development in China

[Display omitted] •Urbanization and UPS in China have achieved significant development from 2000 to 2020.•The CCD between each urbanization subsystem and UPS shows steady improvement but has not reached highly balanced.•In 2020, most provinces show that the development of UPS lags behind the urbanization.•The eastern-oriented advantages occur in the development of various systems and the improvement of CCD between systems. The urban park system (UPS) is an essential determinant of a city’s vitality and construction quality, playing an important role in the process of the high-quality construction of new urbanization. To explore the coupling and coordination relationship between UPSs and urbanization, a multidimensional evaluation system for urbanization and UPSs is constructed for 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2020, and the indexes are calculated using the entropy weight method. Then, a coupling coordination degree (CCD) model and relative development degree (RDD) model are used to comprehensively analyze the spatiotemporal evolutionary pattern in the coupling coordination between systems from a systematic perspective to a holistic perspective. On this basis, the spatial clustering of the CCD is identified by spatial autocorrelation methods. The research results indicate the following: (1) The urbanization indexes and UPS index both improved over the research period and both exhibit a significantly higher index in eastern provinces than in other regions. (2) The CCD between systems generally improved to a higher level overall. The spatiotemporal patterns indicate that the CCD showed a trend of deepening development from the edge to the middle. (3) Regarding the RDD, there was a widespread lack of synergy between UPSs and urbanization systems. In 2020, most provinces showed that the development of UPSs lagged behind urbanization. (4) The cold and hot spots of spatial clustering revealed a spatial evolution and migration trend, albeit to a limited extent. The cold spots were always distributed in the west with a gradually shrinking scope, while the hot spots were concentrated in the east, with their scope gradually expanding.