Coupling or contradiction? The spatiotemporal relationship between urbanization and urban park system development in China

•Urbanization and UPS in China have achieved significant development from 2000 to 2020.•The CCD between each urbanization subsystem and UPS shows steady improvement but has not reached highly balanced.•In 2020, most provinces show that the development of UPS lags behind the urbanization.•The eastern-oriented advantages occur in the development of various systems and the improvement of CCD between systems.