Study on Development Pattern and Comprehensive Evaluation of Integration of Urban Underground Space and Rail Transit in China

China’s urban development has entered the stage of urban renewal, transitioning from large-scale incremental construction to stock enhancement and renovation. In response to challenges such as traffic congestion and land-use constraints, urban planning has increasingly prioritized the development of urban underground space (UUS) and urban rail transit (URT). However, disparities in development levels across cities, as well as the fragmented and uncoordinated integration of UUS and URT, remain significant challenges. While existing studies have predominantly examined UUS and URT independently, the interaction between the two has been largely overlooked. In order to supplement this gap, the aim of this study is to construct an integrated measurement framework and quantitatively assess the level of integration between UUS and URT in 38 Chinese cities. We seek to explore the interrelationship between the two, identify the differences in the integration process across cities, and discuss the potential implications for urban planning and policy making. Specifically, this study assembles an integration measurement index framework from three dimensions (UUS, URT, and urban development), quantitatively evaluates the integration level of 38 Chinese cities by using the entropy weighting and VIKOR methods, and summarizes the regionalization characteristics by using K-means clustering. The results of the study show that (1) there is a positive correlation between UUS development and URT construction and the degree of correlation is affected by the level of urban development; (2) the construction of URT is dominant in the integrated system of UUS and URT; (3) the sample cities can be classified according to the characteristics of the integration into the types of developing cities (47.37%), mature cities (21.05%), and underdeveloped cities (31.58%), and there is a clustering effect on the overall spatial distribution.