Carbon emissions caused by economic growth are the main cause of global warming, but controlling economic growth to reduce carbon emissions does not meet China's conditions. Therefore, how to synergize economic growth and carbon emission reduction is not only a sustainable development issue for China, but also significant for mitigating global warming. The territorial spatial functional pattern (TSFP) is the spatial carrier for coordinating economic development and carbon emissions, but how to establish the TSFP of synergizing economic growth and carbon emission reduction remains unresolved. We propose a decision framework for optimizing TSFP coupled with the multi-objective fuzzy linear programming and the patch-generating land use simulation model, to provide a new path to synergize economic growth and carbon emission reduction in China. To confirm the reliability, we took Qionglai City as the demonstration. The results found a significant spatiotemporal coupling between TSFP and the synergistic states between economic growth and carbon emission reduction (q ≥ 0.8220), which resolves the theoretical uncertainty about synergizing economic growth and carbon emission reduction through the path of TSFP optimization. The urban space of Qionglai City in 2025 and 2030 obtained by the decision framework was 6497.57 hm² and 6628.72 hm² respectively, distributed in the central and eastern regions; the rural space was 60,132.92 hm² and 56,084.97 hm², concentrated in the east, with a few located in the west; and the ecological space was 71,072.52 hm² and 74,998.31 hm², mainly located in the western and southeastern areas. Compared with the TSFP in 2020, the carbon emission intensity of the TSFP obtained by the decision framework was reduced by 0.7 and 4.7 tons/million yuan, respectively, and realized the synergy between economic growth and carbon emission reduction (decoupling index was 0.25 and 0.21). Further confirming that TSFP optimization is an effective way to synergize economic growth and carbon emission reduction, which can provide policy implications for coordinating economic growth and carbon emissions for China and even similar developing countries.

Territorial space classification (TSC) provides the basis for establishing systems of national territory spatial planning (NTSP) and supervising their implementation in China, thus has important theoretical and application significance. Most of the current TSC research is related to land use/land cover classification, ignoring the connection of the NTSP policies and systems, failing to consider the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of land use superior territorial space functions (TSFs) and the dynamic coupling between land use and its superior TSFs on the result of TSC. In this study, we integrated the factors influencing the connection of NTSP policies and systems and established a theoretical framework system of TSC from the perspective of spatial form and functional use. By integrating the $q$-statistic method with spatiotemporal geographical analysis, we propose a method to construct a TSC system for Qionglai City of Sichuan Province in China based on the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of land use superior TSFs and the dynamic coupling between land use and its superior TSFs. It makes up for the deficiency of directly taking land use/land cover classification as TSC and solves the problems of ignoring the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of land use superior TSFs and the dynamic coupling between land use and its superior TSFs. Using this method, we found that the TSC of Qionglai City consists of 3, 7, and 14 first-, second-, and third-level space types, respectively. The key findings from this study are that land use superior TSFs show spatiotemporal heterogeneity in Qionglai, and coupling effects in spatial distribution were noted between land use types and their superior TSFs, as was temporal heterogeneity in the coupling degree and the structure of the TSFs corresponding to the land use types, which show obvious dynamics and non-stationarity of the functional structure. These findings confirm the necessity of considering the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of land use superior TSFs and the dynamic coupling between land use and its superior TSFs in TSC. This method of establishing a TSC system can be used to address a number of NTSP and management issues, and three examples are provided here: (a) zoning of urban, agricultural, and ecological space; (b) use planning of production, living and ecological space; (c) delimitation of urban development boundary, permanent basic farmland protection redline, and ecological protection redline.