Urban-rural integration is not only the transformation process of social and economic structure, but also the shaping process of urban-rural transitional development, that is to say, urban-rural integration can provide dynamics for urban and rural transitional development, and urban-rural transitional development is the physical performance of urban-rural integration. This paper takes Huaihai Economic Zone (HEZ) as the study area to analyze the difficulties faced by urban-rural integration development, to investigate the status of urban-rural integration development with multi-dimensional quantitative measurement, and lastly to put forward the measures of promoting urban-rural integration development. The results are as follows: (1) The urban-rural integration in HEZ is facing the predicament of 'three deficiencies' caused by the 'two separations and one shear effect', that is, the separation of 'settlements and agriculture' in traditional agricultural areas, the separation of 'production and living' in resource-based cities, and the 'shear effect' in provincial border areas. These deficiencies lead to the insufficient internal dynamics for rural transformation, insufficient power for urban radiation to rural areas, and insufficient regional synergy among different provinces on urban-rural public service supply, respectively. (2) The state of urban-rural transformation in HEZ has the characteristics of multidimensional correlation of various driving factors, asynchronous urban-rural development speed and heterogeneity and disequilibrium in spatial pattern. Through comparison and cluster analysis, urban-rural transformation in HEZ can be classified into four types: urban-rural transformation lag, rural transformation lag, urban transformation lag and urban-rural transformation synchronization. Its spatial distribution has distinct provincial agglomeration characteristics, verifying that the correlation between urban transformation and rural transformation in HEZ is not strong, its coordination is also not enough, and it has the 'shear effect' among provinces. (3) The key measures of promoting the urban-rural transitional development of HEZ from urban-rural integration perspective lie in breaking through the predicament of 'dual structure' in urban-rural areas and the 'fragmentation' of regional development, enhancing the coordinated transformation and development of urban-rural areas by differentiated policies, and strengthening the cross-domain collaboration of urban-rural development in provincial border areas.