Evaluation of the urban development index based on Silicon Valley index

Based on the Silicon Valley Index, urban development index of the Yangtze River Delta is designed and assessed by entropy index model. The results show that: 1) the urban development index have significant differences in levels, the same city has significant differences in different dimensions, and the same latitude has significant differences in different cities; 2) there are significant differences in the contribution rates and driving effects of each subsystem to the urban development index, resulting in unbalanced urban development levels between cities; 3) obvious differences in the driving effect of various indicators on urban development index are found. The ratio of housing price to income and urbanisation rate have the most stirring influence on the urban development index, with the index weights of 0.1355 and 0.1230, respectively. In short, urban development index in the study area is low and needs to be further improved.