Research on the Influence of Spatial Structure on Carbon Emission Synergy of Urban Agglomeration—Based on the Development Process of Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration in China

Carbon emissions, as an indicator of green economic development in urban agglomerations, are closely related to the degree of coordinated development between cities. Additionally, urban agglomerations, as a highly developed form of urban space, are widely regarded as a more efficient, energy-saving, and land-saving urbanization method. This article constructs an urban agglomeration network based on relevant data from listed companies in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration with practical connections between cities and uses social network analysis methods and a fixed effects model to calculate the impact of overall and individual network indicators of urban agglomerations on urban carbon emissions and collaborative emission reduction of urban agglomerations. The regression results indicate that the centrality of individual cities has a significant negative correlation with the intensity of urban carbon emissions, with a coefficient of −0.067. The centrality of core cities has a significant positive impact on the collaborative emission reduction of urban agglomerations, with a coefficient of 0.0138. The impact of network density on the collaborative emission reduction of urban agglomerations shows an inverted U-shaped curve. Based on the analysis results, the paper explores the spatial structure construction method and industrial development control strategy based on urban agglomeration collaborative emission reduction.