Against the dual strategic backdrop of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and high-quality urbanization development, extant literature exhibits four prominent research gaps: oversimplified evaluation indicator systems, exclusive exploration of the unidirectional carbon impacts exerted by urbanization, a scarcity of long-time-series coupling analyses targeting the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YEB), and functional fragmentation between coupling coordination assessment and predictive simulation tools. Drawing on panel data covering 11 provinces and municipalities within the YEB spanning 2000 to 2021, this study constructs a comprehensive urbanization evaluation framework encompassing four dimensions: population, economy, society, and spatial layout. Meanwhile, an integrated carbon emission assessment system is established from the perspectives of population, economy, energy consumption, and carbon sinks. The entropy-weight method is adopted to assign indicator weights, and a combination of the coupling coordination degree model and system dynamics (SD) model is employed to analyze spatiotemporal evolutionary characteristics and simulate development trends from 2022 to 2032. By organically integrating the coupling coordination model and the SD model, this study establishes an integrated analytical framework that unifies static comprehensive evaluation and driving-mechanism decomposition, thereby compensating for the limitations of time-series forecasting models such as the grey prediction model and ARIMA, which only fit trends from historical data. Empirical results reveal that regional urbanization levels witnessed sustained growth across 2000–2021, with spatial urbanization acting as the core driving pillar. The overall coupling coordination degree maintained a steady upward trajectory, while the east–west regional disparity gradually narrowed. The simulation projections for 2022–2032 demonstrate continuous improvements in coordinated development across the entire basin: the coupling coordination degree ranges from 0.788 to 0.954 for the eastern region, 0.810 to 0.859 for the central region, and 0.752 to 0.865 for the western region. Such spatial differentiation corresponds to distinct practical development pathways: low-carbon stock optimization in the east, low-carbon industrial undertaking in the central zone, and clean energy transition acceleration in the west. All provincial-level administrative regions are projected to achieve an upgrade in their coupling coordination grades by 2032. This study acknowledges several limitations: missing raw data are supplemented via interpolation, only a single baseline scenario is simulated, predictive uncertainty is not quantitatively measured, and subjectivity persists in the weight assignment of coupling subsystems. Ultimately, differentiated low-carbon urbanization governance strategies are proposed for the three sub-regions, offering empirical references for the coordinated realization of dual carbon targets throughout the Yangtze River basin.

Against the intertwined strategic backdrop of China’s “dual carbon” initiative and high-quality urbanization drive, this paper systematically investigates the coupling coordination relationship and evolutionary trends between urbanization development and carbon emission efficiency across the 11 provincial-level administrative regions of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB). Based on a constructed multi-dimensional comprehensive evaluation index system for urbanization and carbon emission systems, three mainstream econometric and simulation methods are adopted, including the entropy weight method, coupling coordination degree model, and system dynamics model to empirically examine the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of urbanization-carbon emission coupling coordination during the period 2000–2021 and further predict its dynamic development trajectories for 2022–2032. The empirical results indicate that, first, the overall urbanization level of the YREB presents a fluctuating upward trend over the study period, with spatial urbanization serving as the core driving pillar. Meanwhile, the comprehensive carbon emission index increases steadily with pronounced and persistent regional heterogeneity across the region. Second, the regional coupling coordination degree demonstrates a continuous improving trend, while the developmental gaps among the eastern, central, and western sub-regions gradually diminish over time; Shanghai consistently maintains a pioneering level of coupling coordination throughout the whole period. Third, the upward evolution of coupling coordination is projected to sustain from 2022 to 2032. By 2032, all provincial-level regions in the YREB will achieve notable progress in coordinated development, with the majority entering the stage of good or superior coordination. On this basis, this study puts forward targeted policy implications for accelerating the low-carbon transformation of urbanization and promoting balanced and coordinated regional development in the YREB, which provides practical references for advancing the region’s sustainable transition and facilitating the realization of national “dual carbon” goals.