Spatial–temporal evolution of logistics parks in Yangtze River economic belt

Based on the indexes of ‘innovation driven – service quality – green efficiency – collaborative integration – regional scale’, the evaluation system of high-quality development (HQD) of logistics parks in the Yangtze River economic belt (YREB) is constructed. The temporal evolution, spatial connection and network density of the HQD level of logistics parks in the YREB are explored by entropy weight measurement, exploratory spatial data analysis and gravity model. By analysing the panel data of 11 provinces in China from 2019 to 2021, the main conclusions are drawn as follows. (a) In terms of temporal evolution, the HQD score ranking of some provinces changed slightly from 2019 to 2021. The downstream region is relatively stable, while the HQD level of parks in the middle and upper reaches is uncertain. (b) In terms of spatial evolution, it is more and more obvious that a horizontal situation of ‘high→middle→low’ is developing, and a regional aggregation state is presented in a small range. (c) In terms of network density, the spatial linkages of logistics parks are unevenly distributed and complex at various levels, and the linkages describe a multi-core development structure decreasing from downstream to upstream. Accordingly, practical suggestions are given for the HQD of YREB.