Driving forces and obstacles analysis of urban high-quality development in Chengdu

High-quality development paths in important cities are blurry and lacking. In order to explore the important engine for Chengdu high-quality development, driving forces and obstacles recognition has emerged as a pivotal technological solution. Using the Chengdu in Sichuan province of China as a research area and quantitative data from 2010 to 2019, this study has used content mining to recognize urban high-quality development (UHQD) variables, and calculated variables' weights by entropy weight method, and explored driving forces and obstacles of UHQD by the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method. The main findings are: (1) there are 36 UHQD variables; (2) Chengdu high-quality development overall level soars from 2017 to 2019, only with two negative growth rates in 2011, 2015; (3) There are 3 key driving force paths: (1) improving green development by volume of industrial wastewater discharged, comprehensively utilised ratio of industrial solid wastes, harmless treatment rate of domestic garbage; (2) stressing open development by total import and export/GDP, actual use of foreign capital, number of foreign tourists/total tourists; and (3) intensifying shared development by funds for urban residents under basic provision protection. (4) 3 clearing obstacles paths can also realize Chengdu high-quality development: (1) improving innovative development level by R&D internal outlay, patent authorisations, state high-level tech enterprises; (2) optimizing coordinated development level by the proportion of tertiary industry; (3) promoting shared development level by urban basic pension insurance. According to these findings, suggestions are put forward to promote Chengdu high-quality development from the perspective of policy implementation.