The″core-periphery″structure is the main pattern of the spatial distribution of industries .A correct understanding of the nature and dynamics of the formation of this structure is essential to the choice of the location and the scientific distribution of an industry .Traditional research,with the homogeneity of firms as its basic premise,uses the general and ambiguous term″industry share,″or a sum of the index of representative firms,to describe the regional differences in the spatial distribution of industries,which has an unfavorable impact on the theoretical and practical development of the spatial distribution of industries . This article borrows the basic ideas of META in its systematic review and analysis of the latest domestic and international research on the spatial distribution of industries from the perspectives of″market share″and″productivity effects .″We find that the spatial structure of heterogeneous firms has coupling duality,and the imbalanced spatial nature could be better explained from the perspective of productivity .This led us to a comparison of the dynamics between the formation and evolution of the dual-space structure .Our discovery is that in the supposed quantitative space of homogeneity,the dynamics of the regional transfer of representative firms basically originated from the static comparative advantages outside the industry and the dynamic comparative advantages within the industry,or from an integration of the two .Under the assumption of heterogeneity,however,the selection effect is the fourth force besides the traditional agglomeration and dispersion forces,and has both the agglomeration effect and competition effect . Further analysis shows that heterogeneous labor input,the external economies,trade cost and the heterogeneous demand or preference will affect the evolution of space structure by respectively influencing a firm's productivity and competitiveness . In unitary space,the trajectory of spatial evolution is basically a unidirectional transfer from higher gradient center to lower gradient periphery,while in dual-space,it is a bidirectional transfer,i .e .,the firms with lower productivity in the center move outward to the periphery and the firms with higher productivity move inward to the center .Extensive analysis shows that the technological chain,spatial chain and value chain are multi-coupled,which also confirms the space effect of modular division under the assumption of heterogeneity . In contrast to the traditional expectation of narrowing the gap in regional development under the policy of the gradient transfer of industries,the spatial sorting resulting from the selection of heterogeneous firms would enlarge the gap,which requires more refined and differentiated policies as well as considerations of the spatial arrangement and development strategies of the industry from the perspectives of technology and consumer value . The main significance of this article is its proposition of the spatial duality of industrial distribution and an analysis of the dynamics and possible factors of influence from the perspective of firm heterogeneity .It focuses on the description and definition of space and its mechanism of evolution using META methods . However,as the focus is on theoretical description,this framework is far from being perfect .Furthermore,because of the limitation of space,we have not looked into all the factors of the practice and application of policies .