The identifying of land multifunctionality is a basic tool for organization, coordination and configuration of urban land, and is a key criterion for urban land functions forms, composite pattern and dynamic tradeoffs. This topic is of important theoretical and practical significance. An available identification system of urban land multifunctionality, however, had not been built for a long time. This paper develops a function classification system for urban ecological-production-living spaces from an integrated perspective of land function, ecosystem services and landscape function. We integrated a value function group of space function based on ecosystem services valuation. A comparison method of vertical and cross direction is proposed to identify dominant function type of urban land. The empirical results show that in the study area, function classification system of urban ecological-production-living spaces can reflect differentiated function types of different land use classes. The identified result of dominant function for urban space is matched with the functions of different land types. Meanwhile, we also found that there are some problems on urban land use, such as the low adjacency degree with different spaces, and poor complementarity with different space functions. The result indicates that the spatial distribution of urban ecological-production-living spaces is congregated in the study area.

Urban ecological space is a main part of urban space, which is the interdisciplinary research topic in the urban planning, ecology and geography domain. Based on the analysis of literature related to urban ecological space(UES) home and abroad, the paper defined the urban ecological space and summarized the advance and limitations of domestic studies, pointed out that the foreign studies made important progresses in the effects of UES on residents' well-being and its mechanism, the UES perception, use behaviors and its influencing factors, economic and socio-cultural impacts of UES, UES governance methods and principles, UES pattern and optimization guided by social justice concept. In addition, humanistic approaches were applied widely. Accordingly, the paper proposed that future researches should focus on residents' well-being and pay more attention to social-ecological interaction and its mechanism, and the governance of public available UES, promote UES pattern and planning research guided by the concept of justice. At the same time, the application of multidisciplinary cross methods (such as humanism and behaviorism methods) should be strengthened.

In this paper, the concept and connotation of urban green space and ecosystem service were expatiated, and the research advance in ecosystem service of urban green space was reviewed. The studies of ecosystem service of urban green space in overseas were focused on improving the quality of urban environment, maintaining biodiversity, providing amenity values, and ecosystem management; while in China, they were focused on the structure and function of urban green space, green quantity and quality, green equivalent, indicator system evaluation, value assessment, and application of CITYgreen model. The shortages and prospects of the researches on ecosystem service of urban green space were put forward.

As a fundamental supplying carrier of natural ecosystem services in urban areas, ecological land couples human social development and natural ecological succession based on the inherent correlation between land use and land cover. Thus spatial optimization of ecological land has gradually become a vital and comprehensive approach to address the conflicts between urban development and ecological conservation. The measurement of urban ecological land demand can directly determine the equilibrium between supply and demand for ecological land, which is a significant step in overall planning and management of urban ecological land. After a systematic review of the concept of ecological land, the similarities and differences between ecological demands and ecological land demands are discussed in this paper. Then a conceptual space-function framework for measuring urban ecological land demand is proposed. Within this framework methodologies of measuring urban ecological land fall into three categories, namely experimental predication, ecosystem services and spatial patterns. In details, the category of experimental predication includes legal quota and historical trend methods. The methods of ecological footprint and carbon-oxygen equilibrium belong to the category of ecosystem services, while the method of ecological security pattern is included in the spatial patterns category. By methodological principles analysis, the advantages and disadvantages of these methods are comparatively discussed and summarized in terms of comprehensiveness, representativeness, threshold and area, and location. Finally, four key directions of future research are presented: urban ecological land classification related to ecological functions, comprehensive efficiency measurement on urban ecological land focusing on spatial patterns of ecological land, functional tradeoff of urban ecological land using multi-target scenarios, and urban ecological hinterland recognition based on ecological land supply-demand balance analysis.

Based on the land use vector data of Wuhan Urban Agglomeration in the years 1990, 2000 and 2009, this paper used Costanza' s evaluation formula to estimate the ecosystem service value (ESV) of the study area according to "equivalent value per unit area of ecosystem services in China" and analyze its spatio-temporal characteristics. Then the correlation analysis was applied to explore the association between the ESV evolution and the land use changes. The results showed that due to the substantial growth of water area, the ESV of Wuhan Urban Agglomeration increased by 9.5% during the study period, which showed an overall rising trend. The ESV of water regulation and waste treatment increased obviously. Furthermore, the ESV changes showed obvious regional differences, which were most significant in Xiantao, Xinzhou and Yunmeng. The ESV was higher in the southeast and lower in the northwest. Over time, a Wuhan-centered "low-high-low" hierarchically distributed structure of ESV was formed in the eastern, western and northern parts. The ecologic dominance of the northern mountainous and hilly region was gradually abated, while a structural expansion with a high-ESV cluster had taken place in the southern part of the region in 2009. During the research period, the temporal change of ESV in Wuhan Urban Agglomeration was positively correlated with the area changes of forestland, water, grassland and cultivated land. However, the spatially balanced distribution of ESV was negatively correlated with the dispersion degrees of the cultivated land and unused land.

In recent years, the application of ecosystem service value in land use change research is a hot topic in many famous international journals. However, policy makers are seldom taking into account the achievements of the related studies in practice. This paper summarized the three main bottlenecks in applying ecosystem service value in land management practices, i. e., the difficulty in measuring the service values, the complexity of driving factors, and the bias of evaluation criteria. Some solutions on the bottlenecks were provided, and the future research directions in China were prospected. It was suggested that in the studies of land use change based on ecosystem service value, it would be more appropriate to adopt comparative analysis method in small scale case studies, especially focusing on the natural ecological resources and the excessive loss of their values.

The "National New Urbanization Planning (2014-2020)" (hereinafter referred to as "Planning") marks a significant transformation in China's urbanization development process, with the core of human urbanization, and the general requirement of seeking advance in stability. This paper elaborates the authors' preliminary thoughts on the formation of the "Planning" mainly from the speed and quality aspects of the urbanization development. Urbanization level should be consistent with industrial restructuring, the amount of new jobs, the actual ability of absorbing rural population, and water-soil resource and environment capacity of the urban area, etc. The large scale and high speed urbanization development in China has resulted in severe environment pollution, great pressures on the infrastructure, and huge challenge to the supporting capacity of natural resources. Urbanization is an important frontier scientific issue with obvious cross disciplinary feature, which is also a complex system. The interdisciplinary human economic geography has outstanding advantages and solid research foundation in the field of urbanization research. Therefore, facing the significant realistic demand of the national new urbanization, we should do some in-depth research and tracking studies in this field.

Mega- urban agglomerations in China play a vital role in both national economic development strategies and national new-type urbanization, and undertake important historical responsibility with the world economic center transfer to China. However, they suffer a series of increasingly serious eco- environmental problems in the process of development. Thus,studies on the interactive coupled effects between urbanization and eco-environment in megaurban agglomerations are the frontier areas and high priority tasks in the earth system science for the future ten years. This paper analyses the basic theory frame of the interactive coupled effects between urbanization and eco- environment in mega- urban agglomerations systematically. In theoretical aspect, based on the nonlinear relationship and coupling characteristics of the natural and human elements in mega- urban agglomerations system, we could estimate the interactive coercing intensity, nearcoupling and telecoupling mechanism ofthe inside and outside mega-urban agglomerations system after scientific identification of the key elements, and then form the basic interactive coupling theory. Moreover, we could build a spatio- temporal coupling dynamic model, which is integrated with multi- elements, multiscales,multi-scenarios, multi-modules and multi-agents. The model will be used to develop the intelligent decision support system for urban agglomeration sustainable development. In methodology aspect, the mega- urban agglomeration is regarded as an open complex giantsystem. We should establish the standardized shared database for exploring the interactive coupled effects between urbanization and eco- environment. Then using new technology for analyzing big data and the integration methods incorporating of multi- elements, multi- scales,multi- targets, multi- agents, multi- scenarios and multi- modules, we can build a methodology framework to analyze the complex interaction coupling between urbanization and ecoenvironment. The technical route is to analyze spatiotemporal evolution characteristics, identifythe key elements, interpret coupling relationship, reveal the mechanism of coercing effect, find the general rules, filtrate the control variables, solve the critical thresholds, conduct regulation experiments, simulate different scenarios, propose an optimized schemes, and achieve national goals. Furthermore, we could put forward the overall optimization scheme. In general, this research could provide theoretical guidance and method support for the transformation and sustainable development in mega-urban agglomerations.

Urban agglomeration has been the inevitable result of China's rapid industrialization and urbanization over the last 30 years. Since the early 2000s, urban agglomeration has become the new regional unit participating in international competition and the division of labor. China has declared urban agglomeration the main spatial component of new types of urbanization over the next decade as clarified at the first Central Urbanization Working Conference and in the National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014?2020). However, research on urban agglomeration remains weak and needs to be strengthened. From 1934 to 2013, only 19 papers published in Acta Geographica Sinica contained the theme of urban agglomeration (0.55% of the total number of articles published) and the first paper on urban agglomeration appeared less than 10 years ago. Despite a small number of divergent studies, this work has contributed to and guided the formation of the overall pattern of urban agglomeration in China. For example, spatial analyses have promoted the formation of the fundamental framework of China's urban agglomeration spatial structure and guided the National New-type Urbanization Plan; spatial identification standards and technical processes have played an important role in identifying the scope and extent of urban agglomeration; serial studies have facilitated pragmatic research; and problems with the formation and development of urban agglomeration have provided a warning for future choices and Chinese development. Future research into urban agglomeration in China should (1) review and examine new problems in China's urban agglomeration options and cultivation; (2) critically consider urban agglomeration when promoting the formation of the 5+9+6 spatial pattern; (3) rely on urban agglomeration to construct new urbanization patterns such as 'stringing the agglomerations with the axis, supporting the axis with the agglomerations'; and (4) deepen national awareness about resources, environment effects and environmental carrying capacity in high density urban agglomerations, management and government coordination innovation, the construction of public finance and fiscal reserve mechanisms, the technical regulation of urban agglomeration planning, and standards for identifying the scope and extent of urban agglomeration.

Urbanization in China has resulted in an increased consumption of resources, energy, and materials and led to negative environmental effects. Urban agglomeration plays pivotal roles in the China's new urbanization. These factors have motivated the widely discussed topic of urban agglomeration's eco-efficiency. This research developed an index system of eco-efficiency and evaluated the eco-efficiency of counties in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration using the modified Topsis model for the spatial pattern of consumption of resources, economic benefit, and environmental pollution outputs. We also quantified eco-efficiency by the undesirable-output SBM model in 2006, 2010, and 2014 using environmental pollution as an undesirable output. Spatial autocorrelation index and local Moran's I index were used to analyze the spatial correlation pattern of eco-efficiency at the county level in the study area. The results show that there exist significant spatiotemporal differences of consumption of resources, economic benefit, and environmental pollution outputs. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area had high values of inputs and outputs in the research period. Eco-efficiency of counties in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration was relatively low. Mean values of eco-efficiency were 0.324, 0.305, and 0.347 in 2006, 2010, and 2014. It decreased first and then increased. The reasons for the spatial differences of eco-efficiency are location and natural backgrounds, and low economic benefit and high environmental impact are the main factors that restrict the improvement of eco-efficiency. The global Moran's I index values were 0.2539, 0.3007, and 0.3088, indicating that the impact factors of eco-efficiency were not only related to the economic development level of each county unit, but also associated with the eco-efficiency of adjacent counties. The positive agglomeration effect has been increasingly obvious since 2006, and the gap of eco-efficiency of neighboring counties has reduced.

Based on the national needs for resources and environment carrying capacity monitoring and early-warning, this article addresses the definition of ecological carrying capacity and its evaluation method for early-warning. A case study was carried out for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The article concludes that ecological carrying capacity refers to the ability of ecosystems in providing ecosystem services, preventing ecological problems, and ensuring ecological security. Ecological carrying capacity evaluation for early-warning is to examine the extent of human disturbances that affect ecosystem services supply with regard to water retention, soil retention, sandstorm prevention; produce ecological problems; and affect regional and national ecological security. The main procedures involve indicator and evaluation method selection, threshold identification, status and trend analysis of ecological carrying capacity with reference to early-warning threshold, and cause analysis. The method and case study of ecological carrying capacity evaluation for early-warning proposed in this study can serve as a basis for regional and national assessment.

As the main carrier of population and socio-economic activities, cities are also the places that accumulate the problems from production, living and ecological activities. In order to evaluate the quality of urban production-living-ecological space, this paper develops an evaluation index system based on its theoretical framework, and then analyses the overall characteristics and spatial distribution of the production-living-ecological space quality. Moreover, this paper explores the factors that may affect the quality of urban production-living-ecological space. Using data from 289 prefecture-level cities and above in China in 2015, we find that: (1) the urban production-living-ecological spatial quality is generally at a low level and decreases from the southeast coastal areas to the west and northeast inland areas. (2) The quality levels of production space in the northeast region and living space in the western region are significantly lower than those of other parts of China, and the quality level of ecological space depends on local natural ecology and pollution control. (3) While the quality levels of production and living spaces have a significantly positive correlation, the quality levels of production and ecological spaces show an opposite trend in quite a number of cities. (4) The urban production-living-ecological space quality is associated with the population size and administrative level in an inverted U shape. Specifically, cities with a population size between 10 million and 15 million are more conducive to improve the quality level of production-living-ecological space. Urban production-living-ecological space quality is positively associated with per capita GDP, and cities with comprehensive functions or located in urban clusters have a higher level of production-living-ecological space quality. The above conclusions provide important policy implications for deepening and implementing the planning of China's major function oriented zoning, regional development planning, and even the comprehensive spatial planning under construction from the perspective of production-living-ecological space, as well as directive guidance for urban development strategy and overall planning in different regions. On the whole, the optimization potential of urban production-living-ecological space should be fully released, especially more attention should be paid to the coordination of production-living-ecological space. Different regions should take overall consideration and make up for the shortcomings based on actual conditions respectively.

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration is one of the most competitive support platforms of China in the international economic system. It is also one of the most challenging areas with regard to water security in China and worldwide. Mainly based on data from 2000-2014, we analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics of water resources exploitation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration using quantitative and qualitative methods, including Theil index, coefficient of variation, curve analysis, and spatial classification analysis. The results show that: (1) The average annual water resources of nearly all cities decreased evidently. The decrease in the north and west were greater than that in the south and east. (2) Water resources are scarce and unevenly distributed in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. The spatial imbalances of water resources first decreased and then increased during the study period. Water scarcities in the central and southern parts of the region were more serious than that in the north. (3) Total water utilizations of nearly all cities showed zero or slow negative growth. The proportion of industrial and agricultural water uses in total water utilization decreased in most cities. However, the spatial imbalances of all types of water use remain relatively stable. (4) Water use efficiencies in all cities increased rapidly. Their spatial differences first increased and then decreased. Based on the above spatiotemporal characteristics, it is recommended that the size of cities and the scale of industrial operations in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration should be planned according to water resources carrying capacity, and corresponding urbanization and industrial development policies should be implemented. Water and ecological compensation policies should be improved. Water resource management red line policies should be carried out.

This paper created a land use classification system of production-living-ecological spaces based on analyzing the theories of production-living-ecological spaces and commanding the dialectical relationships between land use types and land use functions. The classification system perfectly connected to the state standard of land use classification. Based on this system, we examined the spatial and temporal patterns of production-living-ecological spaces in China between 1990 and 2010. The results showed that: (1) The production spatial pattern almost unchanged between 1990 and 2010, and the production spaces were mainly distributed in the southeast of the Hu Huanyong Line, including Northeast China Plain, northwest Xinjiang, Ningxia, Lanzhou-Xining, Sichuan Basin, Bohai Rim, Yangtze River Delta, Xiamen-Quanzhou-Zhangzhou, and Pearl River Delta, where China's urban agglomerations and main grain production areas were located in. (2) Living spaces were mainly distributed in China's urban agglomerations and cities, showing a spatial pattern of "high in the east and north regions, while low in the west and south regions". Its spatial expansion varied in different areas. Large-scale expansion of living spaces appeared in the Bohai Rim, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta, while small-scale and point-type expansion in the major provincial capitals. (3) Ecological spaces were mainly distributed in the northwest of the Hu Huanyong Line, showing a spatial pattern of "high in the west and south regions, while low in the east and north regions". The expansion of ecological spaces were mainly in the Loess Plateau, Hulun Buir Glassland and Tianshan Mountains, while the reduction of ecological spaces were mainly in the Northeast China Plain, North China Plain, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Ningxia and Xinjiang. (4) Industrialization and urbanization were the basic driving powers of changes of China's production-living-ecological spaces. The main reasons for regional spatial differences across China included farmland cultivation in Northwest and Northeast China, rapid urbanization in North China, Bohai Rim, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta, and reversion of farmland to forestland in the Loess Plateau. This research was valuable for the studies on classification and evaluation of production-living-ecological spaces.

As the main places for urban residents' recreation activity in the era of mass leisure, urban public recreational space (UPRS) is one of the major components of urban public spatial system. Its planning, layout, and the service are the main characters to measure the urban social civilization and the life quality of residents. Meanwhile, in order to meet the current demands for the construction of livable cities and meet the challenges of UPRS development in the process of urbanization, it is important to have a scientific and systematic review on the latest development of UPRS research for promoting the development of this subject. Based on a data from the China National Knowledge Internet during 1985 to 2017, this study examined and summarized the research development of UPRS in China. By using literature quantitative analysis, we divided the China's UPRS related research into three stages of development based on the number and growth rate of papers per year, namely starting period (1985-2000), growth period (2001-2009), and consolidation period (2010-2017). Then, this paper identified nine hot research topics in the UPRS and reviewed their progresses in research by using a knowledge network of UPRS built on the co-occurrence of keywords. These topics include the classifications of UPRS, spatial structure and layout, comprehensive assessment, planning and development strategies, impacts induced by UPRS development, evolution characteristics and their driving mechanism, space imagery features, sustainable utilization, and so on. Moreover, this paper systematically reviewed the research methods and the scale of the China's UPRS related studies. Finally, in response to problems and deficiencies of extant research, this paper put forward some suggestions regarding future research. Chinese UPRS studies should pay more attention to the basic theoretical research. We should construct a new research system with Chinese characteristics based on interdisciplinary and multi-level spatial integration research. Besides, we should develop the humanism philosophy and construct management systems for UPRS that can lead the development of world cities based on the global vision.

This paper presents a review of the mechanisms and advantages of the constructed wetland (CW). The wetland as land-intensive biological treatment systems has complicated purificative mechanisms, including physio-chemistry such as substrate adsorption, substrate filtration, plant adsorption, pollutant sediment ion exchange and biochemistry such as plant sorption, microbiology oxidation, microbiology ammunition. Besides the aesthetic aspect of macrophytes to provide wildlife habitats, the advantages of CW are relatively low cost, simple operation with stable effluent quality and good resistance to shock loading. In recent years, these systems have been used in the purification of domestic sewage. Nowadays attention has focused particularly on the use of constructed wetlands for the treatment of industrial effluents. According to the study and present state of constructed wetland for industrial wastewater treatment, feasibility of CW for special industrial wastewater treatment and investigations in the future were discussed.

The planning and construction of ecological recreation spaces are important contents of urban planning and construction, and the enhancement of leisure value is an important task in the construction of urban ecological recreation spaces. By selecting comparable observation corridors in the woodland, grassland, water area with highlighted urban ecological recreation service function in Changshu city, and dynamically observing recreationists' spontaneous recreation behaviors, this study set up the method for evaluating the leisure value of urban ecological recreation space, and the evaluation indexes included leisure tendency to certain eco-space, leisure viscidity, and the adaptability of certain eco-space to recreationists. Using these evaluation indexes, the dynamic comparative analysis of the leisure values of woodland, grassland and water area was carried out. The results showed that: (1) Among the three types of ecological recreation spaces with similar acreages, water area had the highest leisure value in the whole year, followed by grassland and woodland. Woodland had the most advantages in forming better recreational environment when the external macro-conditions were not good for recreation in daylight, followed by water area and grassland. (2) In the whole year, the leisure value distributions of different ecological recreation spaces were different and mutually complementary each other. The factors like visual field, light, activity space and others weakened the leisure value of woodland in the early morning and at nightfall, but grassland and water area had certain comparative advantages in terms of these factors, and formed complementation with woodland. (3) The leisure value of woodland to the elder was most remarkable, while middle-aged people preferred water-area leisure, and the youth and children preferred grassland leisure. What's more, different aged people tended to conduct their most ecological leisure activities in their respective favorite time, which influenced the temporal distribution of the leisure value of each ecological recreation space. (4) In the construction of urban ecological recreation spaces, the mutual complementarity of different ecological recreation spaces in the aspects of recreation servicing time and serving objects should be attached more attention; the configuration scheme of different ecological recreation spaces should be made according to the areal distribution of different aged people in city; the leisure facilities should be scientifically allocated according to the differences in the leisure value of each ecological recreation space; the dynamic management measures should be implemented according to the variation of the leisure value of eco-space; and the leisure value of certain ecological recreation space should be enhanced according to the relevant influencing factors, and so on.

Natural ecosystems supply tangible products and intangible services, which are demanded and consumed by human beings. Therefore, supply and demand make up the dynamic process of ecosystem services flowing from natural ecosystems to human society. The process of identifying, measuring, mapping and conducting an equilibrium analysis of the supply and demand of ecosystem services is beneficial for the effective management of natural ecosystems and optimal allocation of natural resources. Moreover, this can provide theoretical support to payments for environmental services and ecological compensation, thus promoting ecological security and sustainable development. Although the study of ecosystem services supply and demand is important, related studies are limited in China and are mainly focused on Europe and North America. Based on the theory and case studies conducted in China and other countries, this paper first presented the definition of ecosystem services supply and demand, including actual supply, potential supply, satisfied demand, and total demand. Second, the classifications of ecosystem services were compared based on their spatial characteristics. Third, the methods of mapping ecosystem services supply and demand were divided as follows: (1) land use estimation, which needs simple operation and limited data, may cause errors due to the loss of internal heterogeneity and boundary effects; (2) ecological process simulation is mostly applied in water-related ecosystem services, showing detailed and reliable results with multi-calculation; (3) spatial data superposition, which is an ideal method for mapping ecosystem services with complete spatial data sets; (4) expert knowledge, where the mapping of ecosystem services supply and demand is decided by a group of experts or is based on the previous related findings; however, the mapping principle followed in a local study may not be applicable to studies conducted at other places; and (5) the use of integrated models InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs), which is suitable for supply analysis, and ARIES (ARtificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services), maps service flow from natural ecosystems to human beings. Finally, we discussed the equilibrium analysis framework for ecosystem services supply and demand from three angles: actual supply and potential supply, satisfied demand and total demand, and the spatial and quantitative relation between supply and demand.

Urban agglomeration refers to a highly integrated city and town group. It comes into being with the development of industrialization and urbanization to the advanced stage. The formation and development of urban agglomeration is a long natural process, which is transformed from competition to cooperation. China is in a new stage of urbanization transition, and has entered a new era of leading the global urban agglomeration development in the 21st century. The research and experience model of China's urban agglomeration has been accepted by global urban agglomeration construction as reference. In this paper, the natural law of urban agglomeration is proposed, including developmental gradual law, multi-scale transmission law of space intensive utilization, the combination law of spatial crystal structure, the natural growth of the breeding tree, and the gradient upgrade law of sustainable development. Following these laws, Chinese geographers have made great contributions to the research and development of China's urban agglomerations, which focuses on academic theory, technical method, decision support and planning practice. We developed and scientifically defined the concept of urban agglomeration, and first adopted the identification standard of urban agglomeration space. We established the spatial intensive development and layout simulation decision support technology chain in urban agglomeration, and developed related software chain. We laid out the new pattern of 5+9+6 in the spatial organization of China's urban agglomerations, and formulated the first China's urban agglomeration planning technical regulation. We completed the development plan of most urban agglomerations in China, which has become an important basis for decision-making at the national level. In the future, geographers will play a growing role and shoulder the responsibility in the development of Chinese urban agglomerations. We should combine qualitative and quantitative methods, and use big data and intelligent decision support technology to solve a series of problems in the development of this cause. Only in this way can Chinese geographers make greater contributions to the development of urban agglomerations.

Promoting coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration is not only a major national strategy, but also a long-term complex process. It is necessary to apply scientific theories and respect the laws of nature to realize the strategic target of common prosperity, share a clean environment, share the burden of risk of development, and build a world-class metropolis for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. This article examines the scientific foundation and patterns of coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. Synergy theory, game theory, dissipative structure theory, and catastrophe theory are the theoretical basis of coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. Synergy theory is the core theory for the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. The coordinated development process of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration is a non-linear spiral progress of game, coordination, mutation, game, resynchronization, and mutation. Each game-coordination-mutation process promotes the coordinated development of the urban agglomeration to a higher level of coordination, and the progress fluctuates. This process includes eight stages: assistance phase, cooperation phase, harmonization phase, synergy phase, coordination phase, resonance phase, integration phase, and cohesion phase. Further analysis shows that the real connotation of coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration is to realize the coordination of planning, transportation, industrial development, urban and rural development, market, science and technology, finance, information, ecology, and the environment, as well as the construction of a collaborative development community. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration will achieve advanced collaboration from low-level collaborative phase through regional coordination on planning, construction of traffic network, industrial development, joint development of urban and rural areas, market consolidation, science and technology cooperation, equal development of financial services, information sharing, ecological restoration, and pollution control. This study may provide a scientific foundation and theoretical basis for the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration.