The economic development zones are the impetus of regional economic growth.Under the background of the new normal of the economy,the optimization of spatial pattern of economic development zones and the transformation and upgrading of leading industries are the core to the coordinated development of regional economy,innovationdriven development and highquality development.This paper selects the five northwestern provinces as the research area,uses the nuclear density analysis and multidistance spatial cluster analysis to explore the spatial pattern evolution of and leading industries change the regional economic development zones in 2006 and 2017 according to the officially released national and provincial development zone data.The following conclusions are obtained: (1) In 2006 and 2017,the economic development zones of the five provinces shows an obvious spatial agglomeration,the intensity of agglomeration is increasing.(2) The economic development zones of the five provinces have significant agglomeration on the spatial analysis scale within a certain region,and the degree and intensity of agglomeration have been greatly improved.(3) Five provinces and regions development zone as a whole industrial structure and fundamental change does not occur,but the number of economic development zone,leading industry as the strategic emerging industries and are a significant proportion of ascension,of different types of leading industry development zone in space presents obvious differences: the change of technology intensive industries tend to be in the “xi’anlanzhouyinchuan” agglomeration area concentration;On the one hand,laborintensive industries strengthen agglomeration along the border of “wuchangshikuitunkashi”.The capitalintensive industry as the leading industry in the “wuchangshikuitun kashi” border agglomeration belt and the “passageway” agglomeration area of xi’an and lanzhou city in xinjiang;Strategic emerging industries development zones gather in xi’an and urumqi.