Exploring new ideas for sustainable development of urban agglomerations-based on the coupling of people’s livelihood and environmental governance

Peoples’ livelihood and environmental governance are interrelated and interact with each other, which is a new starting point for the study of sustainable development of urban agglomerations. Given the insufficient research on the combination of peoples’ livelihood and environment in urban agglomerations. Therefore, this study analyzes the coupling relationship of environmental governance and peoples’ livelihood to achieve the objective of sustainable development of the Yangtze River urban agglomeration. The results found that from 2008 to 2017, the coupling of the peoples’ livelihood and the environment has significantly improved, and the high-coupling area was concentrated in the central part of the Yangtze River urban agglomeration. Moreover, with the rapid development of urban agglomerations, the gap between the development of peoples’ livelihood and environmental protection was not large and the correlation between the two sides is increasing. Finally, we propose to improve the development level of peoples’ livelihood and environment, focus on the relationship between peoples’ livelihood and environment related to promote the integration of peoples’ livelihood and environment development and other inspirations, to provide a reference for urban clusters to explore a sustainable development path.