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Rural multifunction in Shanghai suburbs: Evaluation and spatial characteristics based on villages
Abstract
The multifunctionality of the suburbs of mega-cities has gained increasing attention among scholars and practitioners in the last few years, for its higher demand and impact on the urban growth poles. This study aims to develop a conceptual model of multifunctional development in urban suburbs and provide a quantitative indicator system at village level to explain the relationships among different rural functions under the influence of urbanization. The conceptual model advances the theoretical discussion on rural multifunctionality from agriculture land to urban suburbs. By analyzing 160 villages of Qingpu District in Shanghai, this study shows that the suburbs have developed their regional multifunctional characteristics with significant spatial differences and conflicts among functions. Spatial location and village committee play an essential role in rural multifunctional development. We suggest that rural development should focus on the dominant function and the reduction of low-efficiency industrial land.
... In China, village-scale statistics are very scarce. Most existing studies of rural evaluation are based on field surveys (Gu et al., 2019;Li et al., 2020). How to measure resource potential at the village level through a convenient framework based on macro data has been less covered in existing research. ...
... Candidate villages or communities need to possess a relatively high dominance of resources, particularly in the agricultural sector. The resource dominance of RCs, as suburban villages, encompasses various aspects such as location, transportation, humanities, industrial base, and natural resources (Gu et al., 2019;Li et al., 2020). 2) Resource preference: Resource preference plays a pivotal role in measuring rural development, and it is characterized by the integration of production, living, and ecology. ...
... 1) MRD has become the current trend , and the multi-functionality of suburban villages is regarded as an effective solution to provide functions and values to meet the diverse needs of urban and rural development (Gu et al., 2019). But combining multiple functions as a whole is not an easy task. ...
Promoting sustainable development in rural areas through industrial transformation has emerged as a global consensus. The rural complex, characterized by its integration of industrial elements, serves as an advantageous target for China's rural transformation and development. However, the lack of accurate assessment and identification of industrial resource potential has impeded the progress and growth of rural complexes. Therefore, there is a pressing need for an evaluation framework that includes screening and identification functionalities to effectively guide the industrial transformation of rural complexes. Commencing with a precise definition of rural complexes and an explanation of relevant policies, this study combines qualitative theoretical constructs with quantitative multi-criteria decision-making models. Additionally, the study incorporates the gravity model to measure the impact of urban radiation on rural areas. The resulting framework for evaluating industrial resource potential consists of "3 + 7" Modules. Subsequently, utilizing Changsha as a case study, the effectiveness of the evaluation framework is verified across 804 administrative villages. The findings classify these villages into three regions, revealing a circular distribution pattern characterized by decay from the urban center towards the periphery, except for education. Moreover, all modules demonstrate significant spatial autocorrelation. Infrastructure and the ecological environment exert a substantial influence on other industries, while notable syn-ergies exist among the Internet, culture, tourism, and science & technology innovation. Finally, based on the findings, five development suggestions are proposed, focusing on spatial integration and construction mechanisms. The study strengthens the theoretical understanding of rural complexes, provide a practical decision-making tool for project approval processes and the diagnosis of rural industries, and enhance the strategic investment approach toward rural revitalization.
... With ongoing socioeconomic development in rural China, the primary function of rural area has changed from solely agricultural production to diversification, leading to corresponding alterations in the rural landscape and environmental responses [1,2]. Non-point source (NPS) pollution is the main source of eutrophication, which refers to diffuse pollution from agriculture, street runoff, and atmospheric deposition [3]. ...
... The Land 2023, 12,1936 3 of 17 questions: (1) What is the optimal research scale for identifying the relationship between rural multifunctional development and NPS pollution? (2) What are the primary rural multifunctional indicators influencing the spatial heterogeneity of NPS pollution? (3) In rural multifunctional development, how does the interaction between different functions impact NPS pollution? ...
... rural multifunctional development and NPS pollution? (2) What are the primary rura multifunctional indicators influencing the spatial heterogeneity of NPS pollution? (3) In rural multifunctional development, how does the interaction between different functions impact NPS pollution? ...
In the context of rural development and transformation, it is crucial to identify the impact of rural multifunctionality on non-point source (NPS) pollution. This study applies the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), geographical detector, and principal component analysis in Liyang, a typical hilly subbasin in China, in order to assess the rural multifunctional development that influences the spatial differentiation of NPS pollution and detect the interactive effects of rural multifunctionality. The R2 and NSE demonstrated that the calibrated SWAT model successfully simulated NPS pollution in Liyang. The village scale was identified as the optimal research scale for examining the rural multifunctional development on NPS pollution distribution. The rural multifunctional indicators, such as the proportion of vegetable farming, sowing area, and grain farming, would influence NPS distribution. The number of family farming cooperatives, the area of pond farming, and the nature reserves area were also significant. The rural multifunctionality in Liyang could be classified into five categories: grain production, mixed agriculture, ecological conservation, leisure tourism, and industry and business function. The superposition of rural multifunctionality has a strengthening effect on NPS pollution, especially when the ecological conservation function is combined with the grain production or modern agriculture function. The study could provide NPS pollution control strategies for policymaking in rural multifunctional development.
... This differential prompts the government to exchange land quotas from the periphery for more valuable urban center development quotas, resulting in a government-led land quota planning focus on the urban center. This not only overlooks the developmental space of rural peripheries, exacerbating rural decline driven by urbanization [12], but also marginalizes the original inhabitants of the urban-rural interface as they are unable to share in land value increments, leading to the "urban-rural interface dilemma" [13]. Urban and rural areas are an indivisible organic whole. ...
... Urban middle and high-income residents demonstrate a certain market demand for rural residential real estate in "peripheral" areas [12]. This demand can be met through spatial substitution methods by enabling "peripheral" collective operational construction land to enter the market "off-site" on a small scale via "area-wide coordination," or to realize an indirect "off-site market entry" after conversion to state-owned land. ...
Against the backdrop of an urban-rural dual structure, governance structure significantly influences the fairness and sharing of land value increment profits from land consolidation in various regions. This paper develops a spatial-institutional analytical framework, reflects on the traditional government-led land quota planning management mechanism and advocates optimizing governance structures in land consolidation to facilitate urban-rural element flows and the sharing of land value increment profits. This paper selects two comprehensive land consolidation cases in the Fenghua District and Cixi City of Ningbo, representing government-led and village collective self-organized governance structures. The research shows that the Fenghua case adopts a government-led state-owned enterprise coordinated governance structure, which state-owned enterprises bear operational risks and the majority of profit sharing, while village collectives, as landowners, are insufficiently protected in benefit sharing. The Cixi case employs a government-embedded village-town governance structure, with the village collectives as the main operating body, allowing collective construction land to enter the market to ensure the sharing of community profits. Both governance structures promote the bidirectional flow of urban-rural land resource elements; the former significantly drives urban development, while the latter ensures better benefit sharing for village collectives. The research proposes that optimizing governance structures and improving land quota allocation mechanisms can further stimulate various entities’ participation in land consolidation and land value activation.
... Current studies on assessing the status of village development have primarily focused on village functions or efficiency, with the goal of determining the status and background circumstances of the flow of the village's many aspects [9][10][11]. The village functions are a visible depiction of the village's elements and reflect the village's underlying conditions for development [12]. ...
... To reflect the nonagricultural function of the village, we chose the number of nonagricultural production industries and the value of nonagricultural production output. They all provide stable work and a source of income for the village's residents [9]. As a result, the agricultural land area per capita, the number of non-agricultural industries, labor force, and disposable income per capita were chosen to assess the village's agricultural production function. ...
China is currently at a crucial stage of rural revival and transformation growth. Accurate measurement of rural development status is able to provide decision-making services for rural revitalization plan implementation. To address this issue, combining with effectiveness concepts and on the basis of the widely recognized “production–living–ecology” perspective of rural development in the world, this study proposes an innovative technical evaluating system for rural effectiveness. We constructed a rural effectiveness evaluation index system and measurement model, as well as a four-quadrant approach to identify the effectiveness of villages, selecting Xintai county, a typical resource-depleted city, for empirical analysis to verify the evaluation technical system. The results show that (1) 220 villages had comprehensive effectiveness, accounting for 27.8% of the total; the amount of effectiveness for villages in terms of the production, living, and ecological dimensions were 204, 229 and 195, respectively, and they clearly displayed heterogeneity in terms of spatial distribution. (2) The following are village effectiveness dominant types: the function dominates the comprehensive effectiveness. For each dimension, there is a functionally dominant type. (3) Bivariate Moran′s I analysis revealed the relationships’ internal effectiveness. In the same dimension, there was a conflict between efficiency and function. In each dimension, trade-offs were found between the production function, ecological function, living efficiency, as well as production efficiency, ecological function, and efficiency. Synergies were found among the production function and ecological efficiency. Living efficiency had synergies with production efficiency and ecological efficiency. This research enriched the theoretical approach of assessing rural development status and can help guide the rational conversion of village elements to achieve village transformation and sustainability development, as well as providing technical assistance for the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy.
... Living function is the ability of a country to provide living environment and living security for its residents. Ecological function shows how a country can cope with external disturbance, regulate itself and maintain ecosystem stability [29,34]. ...
... The results show the differentiated characteristics of rural PLE functions and multifunction clearly at the micro-scale. Previous evaluation based on administrative units could hardly reflect the specific features of multifunction within the evaluation unit [29,51], however, multifunction varies within a township or village, as is shown in Figure 3. From Table 2, we can note that both the average and maximum values of ecological function index in Miyun District are higher than those of production and living function index, indicating the ecological function is the dominant function in this district. While, in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region, production and living functions are stronger than the ecological function [30], showing that rural multifunction is influenced by geographical, economic and social conditions, and has a scaling effect. ...
Rural areas are a natural, economic and social complex with multiple functions. Identifying rural multifunction scientifically is the basis for promoting efficient rural spatial planning and sustainable development strategy. In this paper, we calculated and characterized the rural production-living-ecological (PLE) functions at a grid scale of 300 × 300 m in Miyun District by establishing an evaluation index system. Several types of rural functional area were identified with the help of an ISO cluster unsupervised classification tool. Three main results were found as follows. (1) The values of the production, living, ecological functions and multifunction ranged from 0–0.101, 0–0.204, 0.009–0.241 and 0.009–0.302, respectively. Ecological function was dominant in this area. (2) The overall spatial patterns of production and living functions showed the characteristic of being “high in the south and low in the north”, and areas with high values were almost distributed around urban areas and the Miyun Reservoir. While for the ecological function and multifunction, they possessed the opposite characteristics to production and living functions, with high values concentrated in the mountainous areas in the northwest, northeast, east and south of Miyun District. (3) According to the clustering results, rural multifunction of Miyun District was divided into four types: ecological conservation, employment and residence, recreation and potential development, with the area proportions of 44.22%, 17.92%, 20.73% and 17.13%, respectively. Each functional type showed a characteristic of agglomeration. In the future, the study of rural multifunction at micro scales should be paid more attention to better understand the functional differences within the country. This research can provide a decision-making reference for demarcation of rural production-living-ecological space and compilation of spatial planning.
... At the beginning of the 21st century, scholars gradually began to use multifunctional theory to replace the framework of "postproductivism" to explain a series of changes in rural areas. e principle for selecting the indicators for measuring rural multifunction was discussed [11][12][13] and then a wider range of versatile applications was further proposed [14,15]. During this period, the multifunctional theory was also widely used in rural development policies [16]. ...
... Many scholars have explored the multifunctionality of the rural areas from the perspective of farmers, while others from the perspective of land [17,19]. More studies are needed on general rural areas with universal significance rather than typical areas such as suburban areas [13] and "villages within cities." Moreover, the status quo, evolution process, and influence factors for rural multifunction have received extensive attention from scholars [20][21][22]. ...
The diverse value of rural areas has been gradually highlighted, and promoting the sustainable development of rural areas with the theoretical guidance of rural multifunction is the key to realizing rural revitalization. This study defined the concept of rural multifunction from the perspective of resident’s demands and divided it into five main functions including rural agricultural production, nonagricultural production, living, ecological environment, and social security. By constructing the evaluation index system of rural multifunction, we analysed the spatial distribution characteristics of 160 villages of Jingjiang in Jiangsu Province. And functional combinations were identified to select targeted rural development paths oriented by balanced development of rural multifunction. The results showed the following. (1) The development of various rural functions in Jingjiang city was uneven, and agricultural production function still dominated. (2) The villages with strong agricultural production function were mainly concentrated in the northwest, while the villages with a high level of nonagricultural production function were mostly distributed in the industrial parks or around towns. There is still much room for improvement in social security function, especially in areas dominated by nonagricultural production. Nonagricultural production function had a negative effect on the ecological environment function, which is contrary to the agricultural production function. (3) Balanced development rather than equal development of rural functions should be pursued to achieve multifunctionality. Scientific guidance for the functional growth of villages in Jingjiang city and theoretical support for the microscale evaluation of rural multifunction and its application were provided by the research results.
... The system and structure of rural multifunction are not static, but constantly change with the changes in human needs, social economy, and policy, so rural multifunction presents structural differences and spatial heterogeneity (Tan et al., 2019). For example, in addition to ensuring the basic functions for local life and production, rural areas will also provide leisure tourism functions (Gu et al., 2019) and cultural inheritance functions (Li et al., 2022a), according to the needs of citizens for rural areas, as well as the characteristics of rural areas. With the development of urbanization, the decline of the rural population, especially the loss of the labor force, has become the most important manifestation of rural decline (Li et al., 2019). ...
As the main form of global rural decline, the impact of rural population loss on the overall level and trend of rural multifunction is still unclear. Thus, it is crucial to reveal the characteristics and influencing factors of rural multifunction changes in depopulation areas which is important to actively deal with depopulation and promote sustainable development in rural areas. Based on an evaluation of rural multifunctionality from 2000 to 2020, the spatial statistical analysis method and a geographical model were used to reveal the declining characteristics of rural multifunction in the depopulation area, as well as the effects of the influencing factors in the whole region and under various population size areas. The results show that demographic changes had a significant impact on rural multifunction development. Compared to areas with population growth, the weakening of rural multifunctionality was more likely to occur in counties with depopulation. The negative impact of population shrinkage on rural multifunction development was shown in our results as an inverted “U” shape. In the process of demographic shrinkage, the dominant factors affecting rural multifunctionality in the whole region tended to be diversified, but the population urbanization rate was always the main factor. Among regions with different population sizes, natural factors played important roles in the development of rural multifunction, and depopulation enhanced the impact of economic factors. The interaction effect of natural, social, and economic factors was stronger than that of a single factor in rural multifunction. In the process of depopulation, the interaction effect was more and more polarized. The interaction effect of economic and natural factors enhanced, but which was the most stable in mid-population-size areas. Thus, to alleviate rural decline and realize rural revitalization, the trend of demographic change should be given attention to keep a moderate population size, as well as we should actively deal with the impact of population shrinkage on rural multifunction according to different stages of population shrinkage.
... 55,56 When city centers are densely populated and do not have enough area for recreation, urban residents turn to peri-urban areas. 57 The increasing demands of urban residents may often be incompatible with existing land use functions in peri-urban areas. 56 Therefore, implementing more adaptable and varied land use regulations in urban planning and managing peri-urban areas in a more equitable and environmentally conscious way is necessary. ...
The mode of production has evolved due to Western central liberalization, globalization, and capital accumulation, leading to a shift in urban sprawl. This has led to the emergence of urban peripheries, transitional zones where urban and rural activities merge. In Turkey, urban sprawl, decentralization, and fragmentation processes increase urban pressure on peripheral areas, eroding ties to the countryside. This study focuses on the demarcation of Izmir's peripheral areas, which are frequently subject to shifts in administrative boundaries due to legislative policies and socioeconomic changes. The study uses a quantitative methodology that integrates multi-criteria decision analysis with geographic information systems, utilizing Landsat satellite images and government data sources. The method employs a weighted overlay technique in GIS software, allocating weights to predefined criteria based on urban or rural indices. These criteria include land use, changes in land use based on spatial sprawl over 36 years (1986-2022), population size, density, and growth over the same period (1986-2022), slope in terms of suitability for settlement, change in land surface temperature, distance to the city center (30-50 km), and proximity to major transportation networks. The findings indicate that the province of Izmir is surrounded by a heterogeneous distribution of areas with varying degrees of urban and rural features, demarcated as inner and outer peripheries. The areas caught in the transition from rural to urban cannot fully urbanize, nor can they retain their rural characteristics. Therefore, special management and intervention are needed for peripheral areas because of the unique features that distinguish them from urban and rural areas.
... Therefore, to address the issue of capital region concentration, a new approach that goes beyond traditional population redistribution policies is needed, focusing on strengthening inter-regional networks and promoting urban polycentricity [5,6]. Furthermore, a strategy that promotes complementary development between regions and fosters balanced growth through tailored policies that reflect regional characteristics is essential [7,8]. This study's objectives are as follows: ...
This study analyzes inter-regional traffic patterns and network structures using origin–destination (OD) data. Block modeling, a method that clusters nodes performing similar roles within a network to identify functional regional structures, distinguishes passenger and freight patterns. Eigenvector centrality extracts central cities, while multiple regression analysis compares factors influencing flows in core areas. The findings reveal that (1) freight flows exhibit more active inter-regional movement than passenger flows, relying heavily on long-distance transport; (2) passenger hubs tend to be geographically central, whereas freight hubs are located in peripheral areas; and (3) passenger flows are shaped by regional characteristics, industrial structure, and infrastructure, while freight flows are influenced by regional characteristics, infrastructure, and land use patterns. Population density and industrial facilities significantly impact both flow types. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the distinct characteristics of passenger and freight flows, bridging gaps in the existing research. Moreover, it offers practical insights for policymakers aiming to promote balanced development and sustainable regional growth, emphasizing the integration of underdeveloped areas into broader strategies to address disparities and foster connectivity. By combining advanced analytical methods, this study establishes a novel framework for enhancing regional planning and policy formulation.
... Rural villages in Shanghai are notable in that their defining characteristics can be attributed in large part to their proximity to Shanghai's urban core. As one of China's 13 megacities, this is key in that megacities are shown to have a strong influence on villages that may surround it (Gu et al., 2019) and spatial conditions of these rural areas greatly differ compared to remote rural areas (Zasada, 2011). Shanghai rural areas can be characterized as multifunctional (Gu et al., 2018) providing economic, environmental, residential, and leisure and recreational functions, with higher levels of multifunctionality, especially economic and residential function, than other rural areas of China (Liu Yansui et al., 2011). ...
Rural areas are disproportionately affected by climate change due to their relative social and economic vulnerability. Particularly in a coastal region like Shanghai where sea level rise and natural hazards are worsened by climate change, it is crucial to address these problems. Despite this, there exists a knowledge gap on climate change vulnerability in Shanghai rural areas. This study assesses the climate change vulnerability of rural areas in Shanghai by constructing a climate change vulnerability index based on the IPCC framework for vulnerability. Statistical, geospatial, and biophysical data was collected on all rural areas in Shanghai, and factor analysis was performed on the dataset to extract 6 factors from a total of 21 indicators, with these factors making up 67.39% of total variance in data. These factors included: socio-ecological-built characteristics (21.8%), demographic pressure (13.32%), weather variability and climate hazards (11.41%), sponge city characteristics (8.42%), demographic sensitivity (6.86%), and landscape characteristics (6.09%). It was found that 542,377 (7%) of the total rural population in Shanghai was living in subdistricts with high CVI, including 62,891 children (8%) and 58,441 elders (8%). Based on the results of this study it is suggested that planners prioritize robust transportation networks during times of emergency, robust weather and storm monitoring systems, policies that aim to preserve agricultural land and promote ecological agriculture practices and provide additional resources for more vulnerable populations such as the elderly, children, and women to mitigate climate change vulnerability. This research study provides a scientific basis for local planners and policy makers to formulate risk management policies to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change and provides crucial implications for rural planning.
... However, existing studies state that conflicts exist between different production functions in rural areas, making it difficult to implement multiple functions as a whole [72]. Specific townships should develop their dominant functions based on local comparative advantages, rather than developing all functions indiscriminately [73]. The above analysis has shown that the coupling response models of RFD and RSE can be summarized into four types: vibrant model, traditional model, transitional model, and recessionary model. ...
Since the socio-economic reform in 1978, rural China has undergone drastic spatial restructuring, and the trend of multifunctional development and dynamic evolution of settlements in the countryside have become increasingly obvious. Functions and settlements are the important parts of rural areas. Rural multifunction is a new perspective to explore the diversified development paths of the countryside, and rural settlements provide basic support for rural multifunction. Clarifying the complex coupling coordination relationship between rural functional diversification (RFD) and rural settlement evolution (RSE), and identifying the spatial heterogeneity of their interactions is the key to promoting the rural revitalization strategy. This study analyzes the spatiotemporal changes in rural functions and rural settlements at the township level, alongside assessing various forms and the extent of coupled development. Therein, we consider the advantages of different coupling types of townships and propose four development paths for rural settlements to improve the adaptability of rural functions and settlements. The results show that: (1) The functions and settlements in the study area are characterized by significant spatial and temporal dynamics, indicating that the traditional mountainous countryside is in a process of rapid development and change. (2) The coupling coordination degree of RFD and RSE increases yearly, generally transitioning from the moderate imbalance to the basic coordination stage, and the coordinated townships have obvious spatial agglomeration. (3) Based on the elasticity coefficient model, this paper summarizes four coupling models of RFD and RSE to guide the optimization of rural settlement development paths. This research provides scientific guidance for developing countries in the spatial planning of rural territories and the optimization of rural settlements.
... In addition, the Euclidean distance from each village to the nearest town center was calculated in ArcGIS 10.2 (Tieskens et al. 2018). The road density reflected the accessibility of transport within the village (Gu et al. 2019). The main infrastructure concerns for multiple stakeholders were represented by the presence of restaurants, accommodations, and communal facilities. ...
Context
Sustainable rural development, closely linked to well-being of both urban and rural residents, is essential to achieving regional sustainability. Understanding the spatial characteristics vital for rural sustainability is fundamental to rural sustainability assessment, regional ecosystem services provisioning, and human well-being research.
Objective
This study aimed to construct an indicator system to assess rural sustainability from multiple stakeholders' perspectives, and examine the spatial characteristics that affect rural sustainability from the perspectives of villagers, tourists, and the government.
Methods
This study proposed indicator systems for each group of stakeholders at the scale of administrative villages. It assessed the rural sustainability of Huzhou, one of China's most developed rural areas, by using multi-source and innovative datasets. Spatial heterogeneity of rural sustainability was examined by hot spots and gradient analysis and the spatial characteristics of rural landscapes were quantified from the dimensions of natural, humanistic, and infrastructural characteristics. The spatial random forest model was adopted to identify effects of different spatial characteristics on rural sustainability.
Results
Our results showed that hot spots of rural sustainability mainly concentrated in proximity to urban areas and scenic spots, showing a decreasing and then increasing trend with increasing distance. Compared with humanistic and infrastructural characteristics, natural characteristics of villages were more important to rural sustainability. The relationship between rural sustainability and spatial characteristics varied among different stakeholders. Natural characteristics had the greatest impact on rural sustainability from the perspectives of villagers and tourists, and humanistic and natural characteristics were more important from the perspective of governments.
Conclusion
This study revealed the relationship between rural sustainability and spatial characteristics at the administrative village scale from multi-stakeholder perspectives, which helps to guide rural landscape planning and governance, and improve the contributions of rural landscapes to regional sustainability.
... It shows that efforts must be taken by the governments to provide basic facilities such as infrastructure, employment and public services to the sso-formedrural areas [3]. The traditional settlements expand the scope of the public sector services for rural areas by creating industrial nodes and thereby improving the township [4]. Because of the intensive urbanization that increased the urban construction, the traditional HS are facing intense impacts, which leads to the deterioration of the classical landscape, lack of investment, mismanagement, and migration of longer-term [5], [6]. ...
The vitality of traditional villages (VTV) is a reference indicator for measuring the hollowing out of traditional villages. Human settlements in the world are based on the access and availability to the chief vitality factors of the geographical region. The traditional villages of China are the potential candidates for improving vitality optimization, as their development is still in the stage of infancy. This work proposes a framework that integrates complex subsystems of the traditional village human settlements with the vitality factors. The issues in these traditional villages are analyzed under the umbrella of social life, domestic life and agriculture, which is the primary occupation of people in traditional villages. Further, the work identifies the contemporary computing technologies and communication technologies used in various applications of intelligent sensor technology. This work associates the various subsystems of the villages, namely strategic, social, economic, resource and environment subsystem, and information subsystem, with the factors influencing dimensions of development, namely resources, service chain, sustainability, technology and institution. This framework can be further extended to include more elements of vitality factors.
... With the rural non-agricultural trend accelerating, all kinds of production factors gradually lost their importance and badly needed restructuring. Optimizing village space based on the township central village-space organization structure is an effective choice for rural grassroots systems (Gu et al., 2019;Han, 2020). Achieving this goal is key to rural space reconstruction and involves building a scientifically and reasonably structured village level (He et al., 2020). ...
Rural revitalization is a strategy proposed by China to address the imbalance and insufficiency of urban and rural development. The purpose of village system reconstruction is to optimize the rural spatial structure and realize the efficient allocation of resource elements, which is of great significance to the overall revitalization of rural areas. This research adopts the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), the multi-index comprehensive evaluation method, and the GIS spatial analysis, taking Zhiyang Town as a case, reconstructing the index selection of the village-level system, putting forward a set of complete classification systems through the selecting village scale, resource conditions, social economic development level, industry, and other related data index, and building a village-level evaluation system. The 25 villages in Zhiyang Town were divided into four classes. Different development paths are proposed for different levels of villages. The evaluation of the village development level and reconstruction path of the village hierarchy system has certain practical guiding values for rural construction, which are of great significance for realizing rural revitalization.
... Without these factors, it is impossible to comprehensively and accurately investigate important long-term rural development (Wang et al., 2021). In addition, China's rural development function follows a unique development path (Gu et al., 2019). Fourth, owing to the limitations of village and town data collection, spatial econometric models are mostly verified based on prefecture-level cities and counties. ...
Rural decline has become a global problem. To address this issue, the division of rural functions and identification of driving factors are important means of rural revitalization. Taking the town area as a unit, this study conducts a division and evolution analysis of rural regional functions in Jiangsu province in coastal China by constructing an evaluation system using the spatial econometric model to diagnose endogenous and exogenous driving factors of rural multifunction formation. The results show that the functions of agricultural supply and ecological conservation have decreased, while the functions of economic development and social security have increased. Agricultural production functions are concentrated in northern and central Jiangsu. The economic development function is mainly based on industrial development , and is the strongest in southern Jiangsu. Social security functions are concentrated in suburban area, county centers, and key towns. High-value areas of ecological conservation are concentrated along lakes, the coast, and hilly areas of southern Jiangsu. The multifunctional development of villages and towns is affected by endogenous and exogenous factors, including economic geographic location, natural resources, economic foundation, human capital, traffic conditions, market demand, infrastructure, and environmental govern-ance. Natural factors have a significant impact on the supply of agricultural products and the formation of ecological conservation functions. The effects of socioeconomic factors on these four functions differ significantly. This study expands the theory of rural development functions, the classification and zoning paradigm, and the quantitative study of driving mechanisms. The results provide a reference for practical value and policy significance for the reconstruction of rural functions and rural revitalization.
... The added value of agriculture has improved people's quality of life, and the demand for landscape beautification and recreation has become increasingly vigorous. Rural regional scenery based on environmental advantages has become an important resource for the tertiary industry economy [93]. On the other hand, the improvement of infrastructure makes rural transportation and location conditions more convenient, stimulating residents' travel and consumption to a Fig. 8. ...
Several major changes in China's land policy, economic system, and development strategy have contributed to the continuous transformation of rural patterns and urban-rural relations. The deepening of urban-rural interaction has led to an increasing complexity of rural territorial functions, and the importance of territorial multifunctional mechanisms in the dynamic process of rural development in China has been highlighted. However, the current choice of a rural development model lacks comprehensive thinking that combines the functional mechanisms of rural areas with the elements of the development environment. In this paper, we define and identify the functions of rural areas in Gansu Province, China, and analyze and construct a rural development model by analyzing the interaction between the mechanisms of rural regional functions and the “rural revitalization” strategy. We find that under the control of “rural revitalization,” a sustainable development tool, the countryside is constantly developing into a multifunctional complex, and its development mode should be dynamically adjusted according to functional changes. Finally, we summarize the general evolutionary cycle of the multifunctional system of rural regions and attempt to extrapolate the dynamic developmental village type classification process of “rural revitalization” from the perspective of rural regional functions in China.
... Studies by Liu et al. [60] show that land rents have heavily impacted areas surrounding Shanghai. After investigating 160 villages in the Qingpu district of Shanghai, Gu et al. [61] found that rural areas on the outskirts of Shanghai are evolving multifunctionally, and solely focusing on agricultural production is no longer the most viable livelihood option in Shanghai's rural areas. ...
Reducing regional inequality is one of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations. However, a persistent regional disparity known as the “Mezzogiorno Trap” presents a significant challenge. The underdeveloped regions that fall into the “Mezzogiorno Trap”, even though they can narrow the gap with other regions through substantial support, see the disparity widen again when the level of assistance starts to decline. This paper proposes a methodology for identifying the “Mezzogiorno Trap”. By employing this approach and combining panel data on Chinese agriculture from 2015 to 2021, it is discovered that despite the overall development of the Chinese agricultural economy during this period, the “Mezzogiorno Trap” still exists. The paper analyzes the reasons behind the “Mezzogiorno Trap” in the Chinese agricultural economy and presents constructive recommendations based on the research findings. The research process demonstrates that this methodology is better suited for studying regional disparities in specific economic sectors, and the obtained results are more stable and reliable.
... Traditional settlements could extend the radiation scope of public services for rural areas, create industrial nodes, and improve township integration [1]. However, due to extensive and intensive urban construction, traditional settlements have faced severe impacts, leading to the destruction of the traditional landscape, insufficient investment and management, and longer-term residents leaving [2][3][4][5]. ...
Sustainable urban forms (SUF) guide spatial creation, significantly revitalise the development of traditional settlements, and are an essential theoretical support for urban design. At the same time, the emergence of quantitative spatial analysis technology further promotes the visualised evaluation of the performance of spatial vitality in urban design. However, current research rarely studies the spatial vitality of traditional settlements with quantitative spatial analysis from the SUF perspective. Therefore, this research takes Anren Ancient Town in Chengdu, Western China, as an example to propose a design based on sustainable urban form theory to raise local spatial vitality. Then, it introduces the vitality evaluation system based on the urban form index (UFI) with three measurement methods: Space Syntax, Spacemate, and MXI, and conducts a comparative spatial vitality evaluation of Anren Ancient Town’s status quo to explain the process of how the design scheme came about. The results found that urban design proposals based on the principles of compactness, mixed land use and diversity in SUF design guidelines can effectively improve the vitality of traditional settlements. The high vitality of an urban settlement could be achieved by combining SUF-based design guidelines and UFI-based evaluation systems. The spatial vitality evaluation system based on the SUF could assist and optimise decision-making in design and act as a paradigm for urban design or urban regeneration in traditional towns.
... In addition, taxonomic methods can linearly sort items in the form of scores or grades based on the same village evaluation indicators to provide more granular classification and prioritization. The similarity between the spatial morphological characteristics of villages and the functions of land use are important parts of the classification of villages, through which the socioeconomic characteristics and the development potential of villages can be identified [23,24]. Most of the classification results can accurately evaluate the development status of each village and identify villages with similar characteristics but cannot provide accurate spatial optimization opinions. ...
Land fragmentation hinders sustainable development in rural areas by reducing the efficiency of land use, and it could be mitigated by optimum allocation of land resources. However, most land use allocation models address micro-scale interaction, which is not conducive to the arrangement of the specific implementation plan. Facing such issues, this study proposed a village classification method (LUEOVC) that can provide specific optimization strategies for each village according to different optimization objectives. Specifically, we used a multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm to find the best land use adjustment strategies under different land use optimization objectives, and the pros and cons of these strategies are based on land use efficiency evaluation. The proposed village classification method can reflect the impact of the optimal allocation of different types of land resources on the land use efficiency of each village. The results of experiments conducted in Xinxing County, Guangdong Province showed that the village-based land use optimization strategy provided in this method can improve the land use efficiency of the cultivated land with the most serious fragmentation in the study area by 0.9%. The method also enables planners to compare the costs and gains under different objections, so as to better help decision-makers in formulating land use optimization strategies for different villages.
... At the international level, more attention is paid to regional cooperation across national borders, especially international cooperation within the EU [10][11][12]. Differences in national economic development levels, social and cultural environments, infrastructure construction levels, labor quality levels, governments' governance levels, legal and regulatory systems, market environment construction, and economic operation management mechanisms and concepts all have an important impact on the multinational layout of parks [13,14]. ...
At present, collaborative industrial parks (CIPs) in the Yangtze River Delta Region (YRDR) have become an important spatial strategy for coordinating regional development. However, existing studies tend to focus on individualized micro-studies, ignoring the regional-scale production space reconstruction by the geographical expansion of CIPs. Based on this, this study takes the YRDR, where the development of CIPs is relatively mature, as an example and systematically analyzes their geographic expansion process and driving mechanism. The results found that CIPs in the YRDR have gone through three stages：the exploration period of CIP construction under the guidance of assistance policies; the blowout development period of CIPs under the demonstration effect; and the complete cluster formation period of CIPs. Regional central cities, such as Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and underdeveloped cities, such as Tongling and Xuancheng, are core nodes, with Shanghai–Nantong; Shanghai–Anqing; Nanjing–Huainan; Wuxi–Xuzhou; Suzhou–Suqian; and Jiaxing–Lishui being important elements in the flow channel. The CIP network is basically formed. During this period, the degree of all nodes increased to 134, the network connection rate increased to 2.26, and the network complexity was more significant. Furthermore, CIPs are essentially a form of capital re-territorialization and space restoration organized and coordinated by the government (provincial government or central government). In the meantime, the market and the social environment, such as residents’ living standards, urban development foundation, urban transportation, and urban investment, also have an important impact on the geographic expansion of CIPs. In the regression results, the coefficients of popu, finance, labor, and passenger are significantly negative, but the coefficients of wage, gdp, freight, and govrd are significantly positive.
... In other words, it remains unclear how the functions are distributed and affected by each other in the urban fringe. In addition, previous studies associated with the evaluation of LUFs usually took administrative cells as their basic unit [26], but they cannot meet the requirements of land use management in this relatively small study area. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the characteristics of LUFs on a more detailed scale to pointedly and scientifically guide land use practices. ...
As the transition zone between urban and rural, the metropolis fringe is an area where various functions permeate and compete fiercely with each other. Understanding land use functions (LUFs) and their relationships are crucial for both urban and rural sustainable development. In this study, we established a conceptual framework of land use multifunctions in the urban fringe and proposed an improved evaluation method to quantify LUFs at the grid scale. The bivariate spatial autocorrelation method was used to explore the trade-offs among LUFs. Taking Qingpu District in Shanghai as a case study, we found that LUFs displayed pronounced spatiotemporal heterogeneity. The economic- and social-dominated functional trade-off mainly occurred in the east part of Qingpu, whereas the ecological function dominated in the west. Human preference and corresponding policies were the key factors leading to these trade-offs. Additionally, land use function zoning was proposed to resolve existing conflicts. These findings can provide scientific information for efficient land use management in the metropolis fringe.
... There are also some studies on rural communities in general [14,15]. However, studies of suburban rural communities focus more on industry and tourism [16,17] and less on the vitality of the suburban rural public space itself. Space is a carrier of people and their behaviors, which are affected by the physical difference and environment of space. ...
The vitality of public space in rural communities is an important symbol of rural revitalization, especially in suburban rural communities. Previous studies focused on rural industries and ignored the effects of the spatial environment on different groups of people. Hence, this study takes the public space of suburban rural communities as an example and uses Global Positioning System (GPS) and cognitive mapping data to establish a new vibrancy assessment system for tourists and residents, respectively. The effects of the public space environment and space vitality in suburban rural communities are revealed through ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models. The results suggested that: (I) There were pronounced seasonal changes and spatial distribution differences in the space vitality of tourists, while residents were concentrated in fixed public spaces. (II) For tourists, the public space vitality in rural communities was affected by seven factors, including accessibility, seats, green looking ratio, recreational facilities, water area, plant species richness, and plant color composition. Green looking ratio and water area had a negative impact. For residents, the public space vitality in rural communities was affected by five factors, including shelter facilities, seats, accessibility, space type, fitness facilities. Only fitness facilities had a negative effect. Our research proposed a feasible and effective method to assess the vitality of rural public space in rural communities, and the finding from this study provides significant implications for the development and planning of suburban rural communities oriented by vitality.
... These results were probably related to Lin'an District seizing the historical development opportunity of "Turning counties into districts", steadily developing agriculture, accelerating the integration of industry and city, and hastening the transformation of the "Two Mountains" while having insufficient and imbalanced development in its rural areas. This phenomenon has been gradually emerging in some rural areas in China, such as Beijing and Shanghai [63,64]. ...
Evaluating and revealing the spatial differentiations of quality of rural life (QRL) is the basis for formulating rural revitalization planning to promote rural transformation and achieve common prosperity. Taking the Lin’an District of Hangzhou city in China, an economically developed mountainous area, as an example, this study explored the connotation of QRL from the perspective of common prosperity and constructed a QRL evaluation framework involving living, employment, consumption, and leisure aspects. Then, based on multi-sourced data of 270 administrative villages as the assessment unit, we revealed the spatial patterns of QRL and proposed optimization paths to improving QRL. The results showed that (1) differences in the spatial distribution of quality of rural living, employment, consumption, and leisure of Lin’an District were significant, presenting stepped, block clustering, irregularity, and scattered patterns, respectively. (2) The overall QRL was mainly at a low level, clustered spatially, distributed in a strip pattern, and with obvious road directionality. (3) Based on the evaluation results of QRL, we divided the 270 administrative villages into six types of improvement: livability, employment, consumption, leisure, and balanced and lagged development types. This study could provide a scientific cognitive basis for the improvement of QRL and a useful reference for rural revitalization in China.
... The change in rural ecological space not only reflects the status of ecological development but also the contradiction and conflict between different functional spaces [78]. Considering that the PLE space in the countryside is highly integrated [79], the mechanism of influencing factors on ecological space changes is complex. ...
Urban fringe areas are locations that compete between urban development and ecological protection; their ecological spatial boundaries face the risk of erosion and degradation. Previous studies have so far focused on the core area inside the ecological space. However, research on the ecological boundary zone has so far been insufficient. The delineation of ECR is based on large-scale administrative units, while it is less precise at the level of small-scale rural areas. This study selected Paifang village in Nanjing City as the study area and built a Bayesian network model to predict the ecological space boundary for 2030. The study also identified the driving factors and their mechanisms affecting the changes in the rural ecological space in an urban fringe area and put forward targeted suggestions for its protection. The results suggested that: (1) The ecological space of Paifang village will expand in 2030. Specifically, agricultural land has the greatest potential for restoration of ecological space, followed by shrubland and grassland, and water bodies and their surrounding areas are potentially shrinking ecological space. (2) Artificial construction activities will disturb the ecological space, with the change in agricultural land being the main factor affecting the change in the ecological space boundary. (3) The Ecological Conservation Redline has a significant effect on the protection of the rural ecological space. The results of this study can provide a reference for rural planning and the formulation of protection policies in urban fringe areas.
... Chinese Journal of Population, Resources and Environment journal homepage: www.keaipublishing.com/cjpre cussed the classification of rural multifunctionality (Gómez-Limón and Arriaza, 2013;Gómez-Limón et al., 2012;Gómez-Sal et al., 2003;Gu et al., 2019). In general, rural areas have three basic functions: production function (PF), living function (LF), and ecological function (EF) (Fang & Liu, 2015;Yang et al., 2020a). ...
Rural areas are multifunctional and often have production, living, and ecological functions. The high-quality and balanced development of these three functions is key to sustainable rural development (SRD). Thus, the evaluation of SRD based on rural multifunctionality is of immense significance. This study clarifies the relationship between multifunctionality and sustainable rural development. An evaluation index system with six sub-components was established for calculating the SRD. In addition, we included 129 counties from the Sichuan Province in our case study, and used this index system to analyze the characteristics of rural multifunc-tionality for evaluating the SRD. The results showed indisputable evidence of multifunctional development. At the county level, rural multifunctionality faces the challenge of insufficient and uneven development, particularly in production functions. Significant spatial differences existed in rural multifunctional development, and
the suburban counties generally performed better. Moreover, a mutually reinforcing relationship between production, living, and ecological functions was established; however, there was still a significant gap in realizing SRD. Our results emphasize the necessity of a differentiated SRD strategy that should be formulated and implemented based on rural multifunctionality differentiation rules. Our study offers useful guidance for realizing rural multifunctional and sustainable development.
... The presence of a plurality of welldeveloped industrial sectors induced some observers to argue that Zhujiajiao features a more harmonic sociocultural environment compared to Liantang [70] . They pinpointed that Liantang's traditional agricultural production prevailed over the other economic sectors, resulting in an incomplete industrial development. ...
Heritage tourism in Chinese historic sites has gained importance and has become a widely adopted development strategy that uses architecture and urban ensembles to sell cultural experiences. These sites, immersed in heritage settings or traditional ambiences, embody an extraordinary dimension of Chinese tangible and intangible culture, which call for in-depth studies and critical understanding. This paper discusses how a condition of fragility has materialized under the aegis of economic boosts. The impact of cultural tourism on historic sites is assessed by considering two similar water towns expressing exceptional cultural values, Zhujiajiao and Liantang. The methodology envisaged ethnographic tools to highlight how development strategies have altered local communities, discussing the consequences on physical authenticity and sociocultural equilibriums.
... In the studies related to land use change in rural settlements, scholars have focused on national [30,31], provincial [32], regional [25,33,34], and basin [35,36] scales of study, and used research methods such as the landscape pattern index method [37], neighborhood buffer analysis [38], spatial autocorrelation analysis [39], and sample zone analysis [40] to explore the core issues [41,42] of the spatial layout of rural settlement land use, driving mechanisms of land use evolution, and spatial optimization and reorganization. In the study of rural settlement development, scholars have devoted themselves to the study of rural settlement development types and patterns [12,17,43], development potential [44], multifunctionality [13,45,46], and sustainable development [47,48]. Several studies have analyzed rural settlements, land use, and rural settlement development separately. ...
Rural settlements are the basic spatial units of rural geography research, and it is essential to explore the dynamic changes in land use on a rural settlement scale to promote the development of the rural revitalization strategy. The study took different rural settlement types in karst trough valleys as examples and applied geographic information mapping trajectory models, buffer zone spatial analysis, the nearest neighbor index, and other research methods. We explored the land use dynamic change in the buffer zone of different settlement types in the karst trough valley from 1964 to 2021 in the long time series and micro-spatial dimensions. We analyzed the homogeneity, variability, and coupling characteristics of land use evolution in typical settlements. The results indicate the following: (1) From 1964 to 2021, the karst trough valley settlements as a whole showed an aggregation state, and the settlements could be classified into four categories: expanding settlements (ES), atrophic settlements (AS), balancing rural settlements (BS), and decreasing settlements (DS) according to the settlement life cycle theory and settlement development index measurement. (2) Different expansion and shrinkage of land use buffer changes exist for different settlement types. The closer the ES is to the location of the settlement center, the richer the land use type; the further the AS from the settlement center, the richer the land use type; the BS is not affected by the distance; and the DS settlement shows dynamic changes. (3) Land use dynamic change in settlements is driven by multiple integrated factors, and there is variability in the driving factors of different settlement types. (4) In this paper, through a case study, we propose the research idea that land use change (LUCC) reflects land use transformation (LUT) in different rural settlement types from a settlement-scale perspective, and land use transformation further causes the development of rural settlement transformation (RUT). Our study revealed the LUCC—LUT—RUT interaction feedback mechanism of karst trough valley settlements in Southwest China. This study aims to enrich the theoretical research framework of rural transformation at the settlement scale, on the one hand, and to provide case studies for developing countries with karstic mountain valley landscapes, such as China, on the other.
... Different land use types reflect different land use function [56], and different land use patterns and intensity of use will form different dominant function. Therefore, based on the research results of "Rural Multi-functionality" [57], "Agricultural Multifunctionality" [58], and "Land Use Multi-functionality" [59]and combined the research content of this study, we constructed the land use function classification on-site investigations and corrections of the mountain system and the basin system boundary in study area. Finally, the boundary between the mountain system and the basin system were obtained (Fig. 2). ...
... The characterization of the spatial changes in rural settlements can set up bases for exploring the transformation patterns, evolution paths, and policy recommendations Gu et al., 2019;Hu et al., 2019). Generally, it is difficult to fully illustrate the entire process of the spatial variation with limited indicators because the spatial transformation of rural settlements is a complex process involving mutual conversion between rural settlements and other lands (Liu J. et al., 2014). ...
Under rapid urbanization, rural China has undergone a drastic transformation, especially in the metropolis. Revealing the evolution laws of rural settlements is critical for effectively providing references. Although many previous studies demonstrated the transformation laws of rural settlements from multiple scales, few focused on the spatial differentiation within the metropolis. This study constructed the spatial conversion intensity index, conversion structure significance index, and landscape metrics to investigate the spatial differentiation characteristics, classify the transformation patterns, and reveal driving mechanisms of rural settlements in the Pudong district at the township level. The results demonstrated a significant decrease in the size of settlements, and the values decreased from urban-rural fringe to exurban area. The conversion structure of settlements varied within urban-fringe, suburban, and exurban areas. The morphology of settlements became more regular and compact, but to a varying degree. Based on these findings, three transformation patterns were summarized: the rapid disappearance pattern, the physical decay pattern, and the orderly transformation pattern. Further analysis indicated that they were mainly caused by urban encroachment, limitation of geographic conditions, and planning policies separately. These conclusions reveal the spatial differentiation characteristics of rural settlements in the metropolis of developing countries and provide scientific guidance for sustainable rural development.
... For instance, rural communities with leisure entertainments and cultural heritage are encouraged to focus on the development of culture functions and strengthen the support function to assist the development of rural tourism. It is important that the culture function has attracted attention and been incorporated into the sustainable landscape management [62]. Where neighboring rural communities have similar LFs, attempts could be made to form rural communities into an area for development. ...
There is a complicated and contradictory relationship between landscape functions and human activities, especially in the suburban rural communities of metropolises. Previous studies focused on human interference to landscape function, ignoring the impact of landscape functions on human activities. Hence, the present study is focused on the impact of landscape function (based on ecosystem services) on human activities in suburban rural communities of China. The study evaluated the intensity of human activities based on big data; furthermore, the authors analyzed the spatial distribution characteristics through spatial autocorrelation, and probed into the spatial variations in the relationship between human activities and landscape functions using ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models. The result indicates that there are obvious spatial distribution differences in the intensity of human activities in suburban rural communities; that is, the intensity decreases from the inner to the outer suburban areas. Positive influencing factors of human activities are construction area, bus station, road network density, and leisure entertainment, among which, construction area is the principal driver; cultural heritage, hydrological regulation, and provision of aesthetics are negatively or positively correlated with human activities in various regions. The results offer insights for the sustainable development of rural environment in suburban areas and the big data-driven rural research.
... The research content mainly focuses on the evaluation of rurality and the analysis of influencing factors, while the measurement of the rural development level within the micro unit is less. The existing research mainly focuses on the identification of rural development types [29,30], the construction of rural evaluation indicators [21,25,31], the spatial and temporal differentiation characteristics of rurality [13,32,33], and the evaluation of rural development and transformation. Zhang Xiaolin et al. conducted a long-term exploration on the interpretation of the concept, classification, evaluation method, and index system of rurality, evaluated the rurality of different scales and regions in Jiangsu Province, and explored the evolution and influence mechanism of the rural spatial pattern [34][35][36]. ...
The development of rural areas is a significant component in social and economic activities. It is very important for optimizing the allocation of rural production and living factors, promoting the integration of urban and rural areas and sustainable development to identify the characteristics and main types of regional rural development. In this paper, 169 villages in Jingyuan County were selected as the research object, and the evaluation index system of rural development level was constructed from the perspective of “Factor-structure-function”. The rural development level and spatial structure characteristics of Jingyuan County were analyzed by using rural development index, regional function index, nearest neighbor index, and exploratory spatial data analysis, and the types and specific paths of rural development were determined. The results showed the following: Rural development of Jingyuan County is at a low level, which is characterized by “high in the south and low in the north”. The level of rural development shows significant spatial dependence in the global space, and the spatial agglomeration characteristics are obvious, which are manifested as strong agglomeration dominated by resource endowment and cultural function and weak agglomeration dominated by production function and location relationship. The local space is characterized by stable high value and high value (H-H), low value and low value (L-L) bidirectional agglomeration. According to the spatial characteristics of the rural development level, the “4 + 10 + 6 + 2” system of rural development type identification in Jingyuan County was constructed, and finally it was determined that policy leading and characteristic protection are the dominant types of rural development. Based on this, this paper put forward specific paths and development models of different types of rural development in Jingyuan County from seven dimensions: industry, population, land, tourism, space, culture and ecology, so as to provide ideas and references for the integration of urban and rural areas, the implementation of rural revitalization strategy, and sustainable development in the western poverty-stricken areas.
... Location is another stable variable that affects rural evolution. Villages near metropolis or major transportation lines are more inclined to develop nonfarm industries and get involved in urban markets to make more profits (Gu et al., 2019;He et al., 2019;Li et al., 2019). In Jiangsu Province, villages in South Jiangsu are more accessible to urban market due to its advantageous location adjacent to the core of Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration, one of the growth poles in China. ...
Rural evolution is a multifaceted combination of social, economic and ecological changes. Existing research about rural evolution focused on the socioeconomic transformation but paid inadequate attention to the ecological aspects and the links to external settings. In this research, we structured the cognition of rural evolution with a social-ecological framework, evaluated the sustainability of rural evolution with multisource data, and analyzed its external driving forces. Taking Jiangsu Province as a case study, we found that, (1) Rural evolution showed spatial heterogeneity in Jiangsu Province. From 2000 to 2015, rural evolution in South Jiangsu demonstrated a sustainable trend, while the rural system in North and Central Jiangsu was on the decline. (2) Population, social outcomes and ecological environment were predominant internal variables that determined the trend of rural evolution. With developed economy, good human well beings and large immigration, South Jiangsu surpassed North and Central Jiangsu in terms of rural sustainability. Although North and Central Jiangsu got higher scores on ecological environment, it was not sufficient to offset the negative effects of population loss and economic depression on rural sustainability. (3) Both the socioeconomic and ecological settings at larger scale had effects on rural evolution. Flat terrain, mild climate, advantageous location, good socioeconomic base as well as progress in infrastructures, globalization and marketization provided favorable conditions for rural development. However, over rapid urbanization had negative impacts on rural sustainability due to the urban-biased policy. Based on the results, we proposed to develop small towns and promote bottom-up urbanization to reconcile the conflicts between rural development and urbanization. To pursuit rural sustainability, a problem-driven, solution-oriented approach was also needed to avoid one-size-fits-all implementation of policy design.
... At present, there are many studies on rural function, but the existing studies mainly focus on rural function classification and evaluation [20,[50][51][52][53] and rarely introduce methods for measuring regional differences in rural function; as such, it is difficult to reveal the reasons behind rural regional differences. From the perspective of rural organism theory and regional difference measurement, this study extends the previous studies by using an evaluation model and GIS to measure and evaluate rural functions in south Anhui Province, China, and using Spearman's correlation coefficient and Moran's I index to analyze the interaction, spatial difference, and influencing factors between rural functions. ...
Rural areas are a type of self-organized regional living environment, with multi-functional symbiosis between humans and land; their functional attributes are function superposition, function difference, and dominant function. The evolution of rural functions is a gradual process and follows the general law of the development of self-organizing systems, which evolutes from the state of general development, competition without rules, and, finally, to an order controlled by the dominant function. By constructing an indicator system and measurement model of rural function evaluation, this study took 11 towns in a hilly area of Jixi County as regional units to analyze the differentiation characteristics and rules of rural functions; the functions include agricultural production functions, nonagricultural production functions, life and leisure functions, and ecological functions. The results show the following: (1) The index of agricultural production functions, life and leisure functions, and ecological functions in Jixi County is higher, while the index of nonagricultural production functions is lower; (2) all towns have at least one function belongings to the “high state strong potential zone”, and some towns show a weak comprehensiveness; (3) the interaction between different functions should be considered when determining the dominant functions of the towns; (4) the formation mechanism of a dominant function has a high correlation with its main influencing factors; and (5) nine types of characteristic village are determined, according to the coupling of village characteristic resources and town dominant functions.
... Second, there was only one rural community dominated by the regulating function. Ecological regulation function is not only the foundation of rural development around cities, but is also a barrier of regional ecological security [40,41]. Finding a balance between ecology and development has been a huge challenge; inefficient industrial land should be reduced in future planning to reduce pollution sources. ...
Suburban rural landscape multifunction has received increasing attention from scholars due to its high demand and impact on main urban areas. However, few studies have been focused on suburban rural landscape multifunction because of data constraints. The present study quantified the four landscape services based on ecological service system, i.e., regulating function (RF), provision function (PF), culture function (CF), and support function (SF), determined the interaction through the Spearman correlation coefficient, and ultimately identified the landscape multifunction hotspots and dominant functions through overlay analysis. The result indicated that suburban rural communities have exhibited the characteristics of regional multifunction, and the landscape multifunction hotspots accounted for 64.2%; it should be particularly noted that, among single-function, dual-function, and multifunction hotspots, both support function, and culture function was dominant, while only one case was found in which the regulating function was dominant. Furthermore, all landscape functions other than SF-CF exhibited certain correlations. The study suggests that planning and management should be performed in future in combination with landscape multifunction to ensure the sustainable development of suburban rural communities.
Rural vitality is the life force expressed by a combination of endogenous dynamics and external influences. Exploring the complex relationship between rural functions, elements and flows could achieve sustainable rural development. This study constructed a theoretical framework guided by the four functions of production, living, ecology and culture with the support of mobile big data. Furthermore, the network centrality of villages was estimated to reflect the intensity of urban-rural social mobility ties. The results indicated marked spatial disparities in rural vitality, and the coupling of ecological-cultural vitality has a high degree of coherence. Four rural vitality grades were identified: high level (38, 14.08%), medium-high level (66, 24.44%), medium-low level (110, 40.74%) and low level (56, 20.74%), covering 270 administrative village units. The flow intensity of social linkage elements is consistent with rural vitality and the socioeconomic spillover effect of urban centers on neighboring villages was noticeable. Topographic complexity negatively affected the living function, mainly in the T1 and T2 terrain gradients; the rural ecological function was not fully correlated with urban adjacency, and proximity could lead to adverse effects such as urban sprawl and resource destruction. The application of this study is to explore the importance of “flow” by utilizing mobile big data to refine the evaluation unit to the village scale. Accelerating the construction of network coverage and information interconnection and promoting the elemental flow of people, transportation and information between urban and rural areas are important ways to enhance rural vitality.
Public service facilities are the basic material carrier of social services. It is of great significance for the operation of social justice and the improvement of residents’ wellbeing. In the process of rapid urbanization, the demand for traffic convenience and diversity of public service facilities in rural areas has been further improved. Since the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, it is more necessary to meet the public service needs of human daily life within a certain space. The huge gap between urban and rural infrastructures, human living conditions, and supporting public services such as education, health, and culture has become a key bottleneck constraining the integration of urban and rural areas. It is appropriate to focus on the requirements for the construction of daily life circles and prioritize the satisfaction of villagers’ increasing demand for public services in regions characterized by high levels of urban–rural integration. The behavior preference of public service facilities significantly affects the choice of residential areas. The existing research on village layout optimization focused on the spatial pattern, landscape morphology, influencing factors, and other contents. To some extent, the preference for equalization of public services in the context of urban–rural integration has been ignored. Uneven distribution and low utilization of public service facilities in villages resulted in an inability to adapt spatially and functionally in response to the renewal of urban–rural relations. Taking a highly developed urban and rural integration area named Wuxi City of Jiangsu Province in China as an example, this paper combines the current situation of public service facility allocation and the transport situation of residents in rural areas to build a life-circle system of different levels. On this basis, combined with the optimization goal of public service facilities and the constraints of agglomeration coverage, we try to determine the village layout optimization scheme under the construction of both the daily life circle and location-allocation model. The study can effectively adjust the allocation of public resources in rural areas and solve the problems of irrational village layout leading to long travel distances. It can also serve as a reference for improving the situation of lagging rural public service functions and promoting urban–rural equalization.
Under the wave of globalization, some cities in China, especially the so-called “megacities” are entering or have already entered the stage of post-suburbanization. The study places Shanghai suburbs in the post-suburbanization landscape and takes Qingpu New Town as an example to systematically analyze the development and formation mechanism of post-suburbanization spaces. This study reveals the features of the post-suburbanization in China as follows. Firstly, In China, post-suburbanization is achieved based on industrialization as well as on the promotion of urbanization. Although urbanization has strengthened other functions of suburban spaces aside from living and production, the production attributes of suburbs remain stable. Secondly, post-suburbanization space with the new town as the development model is an important path for a new round of suburban space growth, it has expanded the space for capital accumulation in metropolitan areas, thus promoting the possibility of reorganizing economic activities within metropolitan areas. At the same time, it focuses on the integration of industries and cities, and the simultaneous development of urbanization and industrialization. In turn, this promotes the accumulation of capital centered on the urban environment and manufacturing production. Furthermore, China’s special institutional circumstance enables its government to organize various actors to form a growth alliance, which will act together in the production of post-suburbanization space.
The article discusses the essence and concept of sustainable development, the results of the agro-ecological assessment of the given territorial community lands, and determines the indicators of the goals of sustainable development that can be used in the local territories. The author has worked on scientific materials in Ukrainian and international professional publications and outlined the prospects for further scientific research in this direction. The general scientific, ecological, sociological, and mathematical research methods are used in the work. A brief analysis of indicator systems for forecasting the state of the environment is provided using the example of the settlement of Velyka Snitynka. It was established that the excess content of heavy metals in the soil is mainly related to the incorrect use of mineral fertilizers. It has been investigated that the assessment of the ecological state of water bodies in rural areas is an important indicator for the development of a strategy for sustainable development: the main contribution to water pollution is made by anthropogenic sources, in particular, the livestock complex and domestic manure storages and dumps. It was determined that the air quality index is a relevant indicator: exceeding the average daily concentration of fine dust indicates the need to develop programs for local monitoring of the atmospheric air.
Mixed land use provides an important means of promoting the intensive and efficient use of land resources and stimulating endogenous development power in rural areas. This paper selected Pingba Village in Chongqing as the research area; the land use status data and the social and economic data on rural settlements in the study area for 2021 were obtained through field visits and interviews. Moreover, the land use types in the rural settlements were subdivided according to the principle of dominant function. Based on these subdivisions, a land mixed-use measurement system for rural settlements was constructed to analyze their levels of mixed land use. Furthermore, the influences of natural environmental, social, economic and other factors on mixed land use were comprehensively explored. The results showed that, overall, (1) the mixed land use of rural settlements in the study area was at a medium level and showed significant spatial variability, and rural settlements in the high, medium and low mixed land use index zones accounted for 12.5%, 35% and 52.5% of the total, respectively. (2) The differences in the natural environment determined the level of mixed land use and the basic pattern of its spatial differentiation. Social and economic factors, such as resident population and average household income, were key impact factors. Rural tourism resources, homestead agglomeration policies and other factors had important impacts on the level of mixed land use. In conclusion, the research suggests that mixed land use is an important way to boost rural revitalization. In the future, village planning could introduce the concept of mixed land use to improve the efficiency of land use, optimize the land use structure according to local conditions and promote the integrated development of rural primary, secondary and tertiary industries. In addition, it is necessary to scientifically and rationally guide rural settlements to agglomerate appropriately to improve the utilization efficiency of land resources and public service resources.
Multifunctional land use (MLU) has been treated by many countries and regions as an effective path for balancing conflicts between limited land resources and the social, economic, and ecological sustainable development demands resulting from urbanization. Peri-urban areas are significantly influenced by urban and rural development. Urban residents' perceptions to peri-urban areas are critical for influencers of relative policies. This study aims to account for urban residents' perceptions of MLU in peri-urban areas to bring attention to land-use issues from a demand perspective. We developed a conceptual framework based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs to illustrate the relationship between urban residents' needs and MLU in peri-urban areas. We selected Shanghai, Wuhan, and Chengdu as representative metropolises in East, Central, and West China, respectively, and surveyed urban residents in these three metropolises to understand their needs and views with regard to multifunctional peri-urban land use. The results show that urban residents perceived 14 land-use functions of peri-urban areas as significant and recognized esteem needs and self-fulfillment as most important, followed by safety needs, physiological needs, and social needs. The most significant needs of China's urban residents with regards to MLU in peri-urban areas, residence and retirement, should be addressed in policymaking and planning. In addition, media and communication also play important roles in terms of mediating and establishing communication between residents, farmers, and policymakers.
In the process of rapid industrialization and urbanization, China's rural settlements are undergoing rapid differentiation and reorganization. Their spatial pattern and multifunction have attracted much attention. In the Loess Hilly Region of China, topographic factors are deeply involved in the formation and evolution of the spatial pattern and multifunction in rural settlements. Therefore, this paper proposed a new method of topographic gradient analysis based on micro-geomorphic units. Taking Tianshui City in Longzhong Loess Hilly Region as an example, we analyzed the gradient differentiation and spatial correlation of the spatial pattern and multifunction in rural settlements. The results indicated that: (1) The topographic gradient differentiation of spatial pattern in rural settlements was distinct. As the topographic gradients rose, the numerical distributions of TA, AREA_CV, MPI, PR, and SHDI were generally concentrated from high to low values. The numerical distribution of LFI was generally scattered from low to high values. In addition, the numerical distribution of AWMSI and AWMPFD showed the “arch bridge” pattern. (2) The topographic gradient differentiation of multifunction in rural settlements was distinct. The overall level of LF was relatively low, and the numerical difference was small. It had the characteristics of concentrated distribution and marginal distribution in geographical space. The overall level of PF was low, and the spatial distribution had strong urban directivity and significant topographic gradient differences. The overall level of EF was relatively low, and the spatial distribution had significant horizontal zonality and topographic gradient differences. (3) Rural settlements' scale, distribution, and structure were generally synergistic with LF and PF, but there were trade-off relationships with EF. Moreover, the trade-off/synergy relationships between spatial pattern and multifunction had significant spatial heterogeneity in terms of spatial distribution. This paper is significant for formulating settlement development and construction plans, guiding spatial reconstruction and functional reorganization, improving settlement living environment, and promoting rural revitalization.
Multifunctional rural development provides a powerful entrée into understanding sustainable rural transformation development against the context of rapid socio-economic growth with cascading effects on human-land relations. This paper attempts to summarize the stage characteristics of the multifunctional rural development and categorize China's rural areas by using both multi-factor comprehensive evaluation method and spatial analysis. Rural areas in China were encapsulated as four functional types-agricultural production function, economic development function, social security function, and ecological conservation function, and it was divided into 4 categories and 16 subcategories. The results indicated that the rural multifunctionality index presents obvious spatial heterogeneity during 2000–2015. Both the agricultural production function and social security function have shown an obvious increase, while the economic development function has much room for improvement. Recognizing the interaction between multiple functions is of great significance for implementation of strong multifunctionality pathways. The evolution of multifunctional rural is driven by both policy-oriented and market-induced forces. The results provide evidence for the cognition that multifunctionality is spatially complex, and contribute to the geography of multifunctionality.
The rapid advancement of urbanization and industrialization has blurred boundaries between urban and rural areas. The traditional urban-rural dichotomy fails to adequately account for suburbs—the wide, transitional, and mixed areas between the city and the countryside. The identification of suburbs is essential to the study of regional spatial structure, land-use transition, landscape analysis, and regional planning. However, existing delimitation methods of suburbs have limitations, such as singularization of index selection, simplification of judgment standards, and inaccurate judgment results. In response to the above problems, this study used multi-source geographic data and combined multi-logistic regression (MLR) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) to construct a suburban identification method using Jiangsu Province as an example by mapping its suburban boundaries and analyzing the landscape characteristics of its construction land. The results showed that: (1) the proposed method could be used to identify the spatial scope of suburbs, (2) this method was more accurate than the ones based on the traditional logistic regression model, and (3) types of construction land in the suburbs of prefecture cities in Jiangsu could be divided into internal consolidation, external expansion, and comprehensive management, demonstrating the practical significance of spatial identification of suburbs.
To understand rural sustainability, it is necessary to scrutinize the relationship between rural transition and economic growth. The article uses rural multifunctionality as an analytical lens through which to view the processes of the development of rural occupancy. There is a pressing need to ascertain how to quantify rural multifunctionality and reveal its spatial differentiation, as well as garner and investigate how multifunctional rural transition (MRT) responds to economic growth. This paper employed the concept of sample transect to compensate for data deficiencies in a long temporal series and established the indicator system from three different aspects-living function, production function, and ecological function-to measure MRT along China’s Yangtze River Transect. Our analysis showed that living function and production function display an increasing trend from underdeveloped western regions to eastern economically prosperous regions, and represent a high degree surrounding urban agglomerations, while economic growth only leads to a statistically insignificant decreasing trend in ecological function. The MRT resulting from multiple factors is much diverse, complex, and sophisticated; therefore, it should be understood within a framework incorporating both endogenous and exogenous factors. According to the results, it is thus important to formulate differentiated managerial countermeasures corresponding to the economic development level rather than the uniform regulations.
To understand rural sustainability, it is necessary to scrutinize the relationship between rural transition and economic growth. The article uses rural multifunctionality as an analytical lens through which to view the processes of the development of rural occupancy. There is a pressing need to ascertain how to quantify rural multifunctionality and reveal its spatial differentiation, as well as garner and investigate how multifunctional rural transition (MRT) responds to economic growth. This paper employed the concept of Transect to compensate for data deficiencies in a long temporal series and established the indicator system from three different aspects- “living function, production function, and ecological function”, to measure MRT along China’s Yangtze River Transect. Our analysis showed that living function and production function display an increasing trend from underdeveloped western regions to eastern economically prosperous regions, and represent a high degree surrounding urban agglomerations, while economic growth only leads to a statistically insignificant decreasing trend in ecological function. The MRT resulting from multiple factors is much diverse, complex, sophisticated, therefore, it should be understood within a framework incorporating both endogenous and exogenous factors. According to the results, it is thus important to formulate differentiated managerial countermeasures corresponding to the economic development level rather than the uniform regulations.
Study on agriculture resource development and poverty in the country border regions were rarely found. This paper investigates the strategic program in increasing agricultural production for poverty alleviation of smallholders and reducing agriculture resource conflict, by employing Interpretative Structural Modeling. The results show that, strengthening institutional management of agriculture local resource potential should be more focused on institutions in the border regions (districts level) to avoid resource conflict in agriculture. Among the 10 strategic programs was revealed, there are three programs to encourage agricultural development and help poverty reduction in borders region. They are (1) the application of primary product processing techniques (for the farmers), (2) secondary product processing techniques for downstream (for industries), and (3) price policy improvement in borders local market (for the government). These three programs are the driving force for agricultural development in help rural poverty alleviation. In addition, local community needs more social supports and public services improvement in the border region.
The planning of rural land depends, to a large extent, on the agreed-upon agrarian and forestry development model. Within the framework of agrarian multifunctionality, to evaluate different development alternatives and their effect on territorial planning, its multiple dimensions must be considered as well as the interests and needs of the stakeholders. This work thus addresses the comprehensive evaluation of development alternatives for the rural area of a municipality of the Basque Country (Spain) through the implementation of a multi-criteria evaluation method with social participation. The results show, firstly, the existence of trade-offs between the functions to be promoted in the various development models evaluated. Secondly, the results indicate the need to reverse recent trends in the sector and the convenience of moving towards an agro-livestock model of greater ecological and local character, independently of the followed forest model. In fact, the evaluation carried out also reveals, thirdly, the existence of more or less latent conflicts, in particular with regards to forest policy.
The article explores the role of peri-urban agriculture in Italy through a comparative analysis of seven metropolitan areas. The structural dynamics of farms are assessed through the micro-data from the sixth Italian agriculture census, identifying six typologies of market-oriented farms that face in different ways the pressures and opportunities of peri-urban environments. The article shows that, although in the main Italian urban poles there is a significant share of farms passively absorbed by the urban forwarding, the most reactive farms are supplying an increasing number and variety of social and economic services to the urban population. Since diversification is becoming a specific business strategy developed by the most structured and market-oriented peri-urban farms, it can turn out to be a relevant asset to enhance the resilience of metropolitan areas and, more generally, to improve the connections between urban and rural areas.
Agricultural ecosystems provide a range of benefits that are vital to human well-being. These benefits are dependent on several soil functions that are affected in different ways by legislation from the European Union, national, and regional levels. We evaluated current European Union soil-related legislation and examples of regional legislation with regard to direct and indirect impacts on five soil functions: the production of food, fiber, and fuel; water purification and regulation; carbon sequestration and climate regulation; habitat for biodiversity provisioning; and the recycling of nutrients/agro-chemicals. Our results illustrate the diversity of existing policies and the complex interactions present between different spatial and temporal scales. The impact of most policies, positive or negative, on a soil function is usually not established, but depends on how the policy is implemented by local authorities and the farmers. This makes it difficult to estimate the overall state and trends of the different soil functions in agricultural ecosystems. To implement functional management and sustainable use of the different soil functions in agricultural ecosystems, more knowledge is needed on the policy interactions as well as on the impact of management options on the different soil functions.
Food production on the urban-rural fringe is under pressure due to competing land uses. We discuss the potential to improve resilience for urban-rural regions by enhancing food production as part of multifunctional land use. Through studies of peri-urban land in the regions of Gothenburg (Sweden), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Gent (Belgium), recent developments are analysed. Arable farming has been declining since 2000 in all three areas due to urban expansion and recreational land use changes. In city plans, networks of protected areas and green spaces and their importance for human wellbeing have been acknowledged. Policies for farmland preservation in peri-urban settings exist, but strategies for local food production are not expressed in present planning documents. Among the diversity of peri-urban agricultural activities, peri-urban food production is a developing issue. However, the competing forms of land use and the continuing high dependence of urban food on global food systems and related resource flows reduces peri-urban food production and improvements in urban food security. The positive effects of local food production need to be supported by governance aiming to improve the urban-rural relationship. The paper discusses the resilience potential of connecting urban-rural regions and re-coupling agriculture to regional food production.
Urban and rural environments show clear differences in morphology, production mode and culture. With rapid urbanisation, these differences have become a major cause of urban–rural conflict. One of the most significant challenges arises from land acquisition, particularly in China, where cities have experienced substantial growth in the 21st century. Different types of risk are associated with land acquisition conflict in different Chinese cities. In this study, two types of cities are discussed: those with a historically low level of development but recent rapid economic growth, such as Yueqing; and cities that have maintained a relatively high level of development and experienced stable growth, such as Jiaxing. Land acquisition conflict in these two representative cities is then analysed in terms of property rights, access to resources and development. Analysis is performed at the institutional level to provide more accurate insights into the dynamics of conflict. The findings of the study suggest that different risk-management strategies are used in the two kinds of city, and that conflict is more likely to occur in cities with historically weaker development, such as Yueqing. To avoid such conflict, systematic risk-management strategies should be established in these cities.
The urban food question is forcing itself up the political agenda in the Global North because of a new food equation that spells the end of the ‘cheap food’ era, fuelling nutritional poverty in the cities of Europe and North America. This article explores the rise of the urban food question in the Global North through the multiple prisms of theory, policy and political practice. First, it explores the theoretical ways in which the food system is being framed in urban planning, urban political ecology and community food security. Second, it charts the rise of new urban foodscapes associated with urban agriculture and public health. Finally, it identifies a new urban food politics and asks if this constitutes a new social movement.
The implementation of new type industrialization and urbanization and agricultural modernization strategies lacks of a major hand grip and spatial supporting platform, due to long-term existed “dual-track” structure of rural-urban development in China as well as unstable rural development institution and mechanism. It is necessary to restructure rural production, living and ecological space by carrying out land consolidation, so as to establish a new platform for building new countryside and realizing urban-rural integration development in China. This paper develops the concept and connotation of rural spatial restructuring. Basing on the effects analysis of industrialization and urbanization on rural production, living and ecological space, the mechanism of pushing forward rural spatial restructuring by carrying out land consolidation is probed. A conceptualization of the models of rural production, living and ecological spatial restructuring is analyzed combining with agricultural land consolidation, hollowed villages consolidation and industrial and mining land consolidation. Finally, the author argues that a “bottom-up” restructuring strategy accompanied by a few “top-down” elements is helpful for smoothly pushing forward rural spatial restructuring in China. In addition, the optimization and restructuring of rural production, living and ecological space will rely on the innovations of regional engineering technology, policy and mechanism, and mode of rural land consolidation, and more attentions should be paid to rural space, the foundation base and platform for realizing urban-rural integration development.
China is experiencing rapid progress in industrialization, with its own rationale toward industrial land development based on a deliberate change from an extensive to intensive form of urban land use. One result has been concerted attempts by local government to attract foreign investment by a low industrial land price strategy, which has resulted in a disproportionally large amount of industrial land within the total urban land use structure at the expense of the urban sprawl of many cities. This paper first examines “Comparable Benchmark Price as Residential land use” (CBPR) as the theoretical basis of the low industrial land price phenomenon. Empirical findings are presented from a case study based on data from Jinyun County, China. These data are analyzed to reveal the rationale of industrial land price from 2000 to 2010 concerning the CBPR model. We then explore the causes of low industrial land prices in the form of a “Centipede Game Model”, involving two neighborhood regions as “major players” to make a set of moves (or strategies). When one of the players unilaterally reduces the land price to attract investment with the aim to maximize profits arising from the revenues generated from foreign investment and land premiums, a two-player price war begins in the form of a dynamic game, the effect of which is to produce a downward spiral of prices. In this context, the paradox of maximizing profits for each of the two players are not accomplished due to the inter-regional competition of attracted investment leading to a lose-lose situation for both sides’ in competing for land premium revenues. A short-term solution to the problem is offered involving the establishment of inter-regional cooperative partnerships. For the longer term, however, a comprehensive reform of the local financial system, more adroit regional planning and an improved means of evaluating government performance is needed to ensure the government's role in securing pubic goods is not abandoned in favor of one solely concerned with revenue generation.
MULTAGRI - "Special issue on "the concepts of multifunctionnality and their evolution" - Co-ordination : Patrick Caron, CIRAD ; Tristan Le Cotty, INRA
With the rapid development of urbanization, Shanghai is facing a situation in which the scale of construction land is reaching its “ceiling” in terms of city planning. Against the background of the "negative growth of construction land", Shanghai has issued policies in recent years about industrial land reduction beyond the Urban Development Boundary (UDB), in order to get extra urban construction land quota and control the disorderly spread of rural construction land. This article aims to identify the particular characteristics of different types of towns that cause the different responses to these policies and evaluate the impact of these policies on the interests of towns and villages. According to the response of towns, actively responsive towns and passive action towns are divided, which are caused by the towns’ characteristics, including economic strength, the demand for land development, the location and the compensation expectations of the farmers. After the industrial land reduction, the town-level tax revenue, the rent income of the village collective economic organizations and the local employability of the labor force will be reduced. However, industrial land reduction may directly reduce public management costs, reduce pollution sources, and improve the ecological environment. In addition, matching regional development policies are proposed to contribute to the implementation of industrial land reduction. Results of the present study can provide new theoretical reference for rural renewal, improve the existing reduction policies and be popularized in dealing with rural industrial land reduction issues in different regions in China.
To deal with the challenges of nature conservation and public recreation in a rapidly urbanization, many big cities in China have launched country parks programs. However, seldom literature focus on the accessibilities of country parks as public infrastructure. By calculating the spatial accessibility indexes based on the Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) method, this paper evaluates the spatial accessibility of 14 country parks to 240 streets/towns in Shanghai. Our analysis indicates that the spatial differences of the accessibility of streets/towns are significant; the accessibility in Shanghai's central city and the Chongming Islands are lower than those of other urban areas. Based off our results, the spatial accessibility of streets/towns is far from ideal, with 85% of streets/towns having an index value less than 0.0025. Most of Shanghai's residents in streets/towns require a travel time of more than 60. min. The authors suggest that country parks cannot be replaced by urban parks in Shanghai because of their unique functionality and attraction to residents. To improve the spatial accessibility of country parks, the authors advocate for the improvement of population distribution in Shanghai and the integration of road networks and public transportation sites to country parks. Our results for Shanghai are applicable to other big cities that experienced similar rapid urbanization in China, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.
The development of the new- type urbanization in the future has aroused great attention from the government and the public. Initially, this research predicts the urbanization and population dynamics on both national and provincial levels from 2015 to 2030. On this basis, this study examines the spatial variation of urbanization given the national urbanization rate of 70.12%. Furthermore, it estimates the national and provincial demands of investment in the new urbanization. The main conclusions can be drawn as follows: (1) The population and urbanization rate will reach 1.445 billion and 70.12% respectively from 2015 to 2030. (2) The demographic dividend will be vanished when population pressure reaches its maximum. The reproduction population will reach 70.16 million and a suburban population of 316.7 million will be urbanized, leaving an urban population of 386 million. (3) Although the urbanization rate of each province will increase during 2015-2030, the difference of urbanization rate and urbanization quality between provinces is substantial. In some provinces, urbanization quality and eco-social development are uncoordinated. (4) A total of 4,105,380 billion yuan is needed for the sake of new urbanization and the investment demand in each province varies largely: Guangdong province needs the most funding, which is 148.09 times as much as that of Tibet, which needs the least funding. In the final part, policy suggestions regarding the investment of the new urbanization are put forward.
Since early 2016, the expiration of a part of the land-use rights in China has elicited widespread public concern because of the ambiguous interpretation of relevant legal clauses. Land-finance-based urbanization is the primary fiscal source of Chinese local governments, but it has been considered unsustainable by many scholars. Numerous studies have been conducted on these two issues, but a comprehensive study that combines both issues is needed. This study attempts to analyze the relations between the two concepts from the perspective of demographic change in the following decades. It proposes a compensatory mechanism based on land-use term and property tax to deal with the renewal of land-use term and the unsustainability caused by land finance. Results provide an alternative approach for the local government to realize sustainable urbanization in the future.
Chinese urbanization has generated great impacts on the world since the reform and opening up. However, urban problems, e.g., environmental pollution, resources shortage, and traffic jam, have been more and more serious for urban management and development. Smart city has been put forward as an effective approach to achieve better urban management recently. Smart city aims to realize the integration of municipal service, business, transportation, water, energy source and other urban sub-systems through close combination of human wisdom and information communication techniques (ICTs). As a result, the link and synergy of information could be ultimately established with ICTs, e.g., internet, internet of things, cloud computing. Yet, few studies have been conducted to systematically link smart city with big data in China. This paper aims to put forward a development framework of smart city with Chinese characteristics against the background of big data. Key actions, including rational planning of city infrastructures, the establishment and improvement of long-acting mechanism, the effective performance of city managerial function, are proposed to realize the development idea. Meanwhile, this paper also investigates the risks embedded in development of smart city with Chinese characteristics, e.g., information safety, weak emergency responding capacity and poor independent research and development capacity of core technology. This study can facilitate Chinese local governments to systematically plan smart city before clinging the hot concept in a rush.
China's urbanization and industrialization process is replacing large amounts of farmland, which is strongly driven by the country's land finance regime, with the intensified regional/local competition for manufacturing investment opportunities pushing local governments to expropriate farmland at low prices while leasing land at high market value to property developers. The additional revenue obtained in this way, termed financial increment in land value, can drive local economic growth and provide associated infrastructure and other public services. At the same time, however, a floating population of large numbers of inadequately compensated land-lost farmers, although unable to become citizens, have to migrate into urban areas for work, causing overheated employment and housing markets, with rocketing unaffordable housing prices. This, together with various micro factors relating to the party/state's promotion/evaluation system, plays an essential role leading to serious economic, environment and social consequences, e.g., for migrant welfare, the displacement of peasants and loss of land resources, in need of immediate attention.
Rural Geography is a weak branch of Human Geography in China, especially with regard to its theoretical development and some basic concepts. First of all, this paper analyses rural definitions systematically from a multi-dimention point of view (occupational, ecological, socio-cultural). As an occupational definition, 'rural' means an area where farming is the main mode of production. As far as ecological definitions are concerned, it means a settlement whose population scale is smaller, outside urban area, with rural landscapes showing unmistakable signs of being dominated by extensive use of land, and with discrete spatial units isolated from the outside world. Socio-cultural definitions are in terms of clear differences in behavior and attitude between people in rural and urban area, such as ways of life, spatial behavior and aspirations. The author thinks that all the definitions are lack of delimitations of rural totally and essentially. Rural can not be summarized by a simple definition, because it is a complicated and indistinct conception. Difficulties of defining rural lie in dynamic evolution of the whole rural, unconformity among rural elements, relativity between rural and urban, and relevant rural-urban continuum, which makes the boundary between rural and urban more indefinite. To a certain extent rural is regarded as areas differing from urban greatly and the difference can be compared in many aspects such as production activities, ways of life, etc. The close extent between urban and rural represents different stages of rural development. The author suggests rurality should take place of rural definitions under the background of urbanization in the world of today. Rurality refers to the manifestation of rural characters which take urban as criteria of reference within a specified area. The author draws his conclusions. First, every region can be looked on as a unity of urbanity and rurality. The more urbanity a region is, the less rurality it will have. Urban and rural are continuous and there is not any broken locality between them. Second, the size of rurality index takes urban as unit of reference. Using different urban criteria can reflect difference of rurality and stages of its development. Finally, rurality is concerned with scale, index and method which are used in our research. We can weaken some rural characteristics and improve regional urbanity in practice such as village-town planning and regional planning by estimating rurality index of different areas. In order to be favourable to urban-rural planning and management we also need to put forward rural countermeasures concerned correctly.
With the rapid urbanization and industry development, China has witnessed substantial land acquisition. Monetary compensation is usually adopted to settle down land-lost farmers. However, in this manner of compensation, land-lost farmers find settling down in cities and achieving civilization difficult. Promoting entrepreneurship has been suggested to be a sustainable approach to settle down land-lost farmers. However, only a few studies have been conducted to investigate the effect of land expropriation on land-lost farmers' entrepreneurial action. Therefore, how to effectively promote entrepreneurship among land-lost farmers remains unknown. To mitigate this deficiency, this study examines the effect of land expropriation on land-lost farmers' entrepreneurial action through the case of Zhejiang Province in China. Regression is used to examine the effect of land location, amount of compensation, and entrepreneurship policy on land-lost farmers' entrepreneurial action. Land location has a significant positive role, whereas amount of compensation has a significant negative role in initiating land-lost farmers' entrepreneurship. The results of this study can facilitate the local government to make appropriate policies to promote entrepreneurship among land-lost farmers.
With the rapid economic development, social progress, and land use change in rural regions, rural territorial function and development orientation show more significant spatial differentiation and diversification. Using the well-developed Jiangsu province as a case, this paper quantitatively identified and calculated four rural territorial functions at county level, i.e., ecological conservation, agricultural production, industrial development and social security. Subsequently, the influencing factors of spatial differentiation on rural territorial functions for 63 regional units were analyzed; the dominated functions of each spatial unit were also identified. According to the case study, the multifunctional feature of rural territorial function was evident, however the function of industrial development was of significant dominance accompanying with the increase of dominant degree from northern to southern in Jiangsu province. The spatial agglomeration degrees of four rural territorial functions were low with variant agglomerative areas, that was, ecological conservation function was mainly distributed at coastal, surrounding lake and mountain areas, agricultural production function was mainly found in the northern and central parts, the industrial development function was predominately in the southern part, social security function which had the lowest spatial agglomeration was obviously distributed in municipal districts and their surrounding counties rather than other counties. The functional combinations of the 63 regional units were diversified and nine functional types were identified. Results of influencing factors analysis indicated that the natural geographical characteristics, spatial location, and economic development were the main influencing factors of differentiation on rural territorial functions, but their effects were of different intensities and directions for the spatial differentiation of four rural territorial functions. Specifically, the industry development function was mainly affected by road density, location advantage, FDI, GDP and floating population from other places; most factors were negatively related with the agricultural production function except the areas of important ecological function zones and cultivated lands; the relationships between the ecological conservation function and influencing factors were complicated, in which some more developed counties also had higher ecological conservation function; the social security function had very weak relationships with influencing factors owing to its complexity. This paper provided a scientific reference for identifying the rural development orientation, promoting the differential development, enhancing the characteristics and competitiveness of different counties; meanwhile, it was a meaningful supplement for the research of Major Function Oriented Zoning and related studies about territorial function.
Territorial function in various regions has a significant spatial heterogeneity and temporal variability. With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization as well as enhancement of geographic differentiation and diversity of man-earth areal system, territorial functions and regional development orientations has shown an increasingly strong trend towards diversification. Based on the definition of territorial dominant functions at the county level and the building of multi-functionality evaluation index system and index analysis model, this paper evaluates and grades the functions of economic development, food security, social stability, environmental protection and comprehensive function. The results are obtained as follows economy-oriented functional areas are mainly distributed in eastern coastal developed areas and peripheral areas of the metropolitan regions, such as Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Ji region. Grain-oriented functional areas are mainly distributed in the Northeast China Plain, the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, Sichuan Basin, central Hubei, eastern Hunan and other regions covered by a large area of plain. The social security function indexes are gradually weakened from coastal to inland areas and from north to south; Eco-conservation areas are concentrated in the Northeast China and southern Qinling Mountain-Huaihe River Line. Then based on the coupling of each dominant function and the evaluation of composite function at the county level, study areas are divided into two types: areas with strong function and areas with weak function. Finally, this paper explores the innovation mechanisms and favorable policies to enhance the dominant function of each county and optimize the allocation of production factors, including the financial transfer payment, ecological compensation, and government performance assessment, which provide a scientific guidance for regional harmony development and sustainable growth of county competitive power.
With the population increase and food consumption upgrade in China, the issue of food self-sufficiency attracts much attention from both Chinese government and international society. Under the circumstances of inadequate cropland resources supply and plenty of cropland occupied by urban construction, improving the utilization efficiency of arable land resources and increasing the cropland productivity have become the fundamental strategies of agricultural development in China. Since 1988, cropland improvement projects (medium-yield and low-yield field improvement and high-standard cropland construction) have been launched and implemented on a large scale, therefore a spatially explicit map for the distribution of high-, medium-and low-yield cropland was essential for cropland improvement planning. In this study, a new method for recognizing high-, medium-and low-yield field is developed based on cropland productivity, which is calculated by using a light use efficiency model and MODIS data with a 500-m resolution. This method can not only reflect the regional heterogeneity of cropland condition, but also express the spatial differences on a grid scale. At the same time, it effectively overcomes the shortage of statistical data based method in a county unit. The results show that the proportion of high-yield, medium-yield and low-yield cropland in China is 20.66%, 39.56% and 39.78%, respectively. About 3/4 of low-yield cropland is located in the hilly and mountainous regions, while 53% of the high-yield cropland is located in plain area. The five provinces with the largest area of high-yield cropland are Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Hebei and Anhui, which are all located in the Huang-Huai-Hai region. The sum of the high-yield cropland area in these five provinces accounts for 41.75% of the national total high-yield cropland area. In Heilongjiang province, Sichuan province and Inner Mongolia autonomous region, where the cropland area ranks the top three of China, the proportion of high-yield cropland area in each province only accounts for not more than 15%.
We examine how the system of "federalism, Chinese style" functions in the context of land allocation. China's land laws give provision of land a central role in local officials' growth promotion strategies. Requisitions of farmland by local authorities have engendered significant rural unrest. In response, the central government has attempted to re-establish control over the pace of urban land expansion by enacting regulations limiting conversion of rural land to urban uses. We derive theoretically the conditions under which non-compliance with such regulations is optimal. An econometric investigation shows that legal restrictions on farmland conversion had little or no effect on rates of farmland loss but did limit urban spatial growth. Our econometric evidence is consistent with limited enforcement of those legal limits on farmland conversion.
In contemporary sciences dealing with cultural landscapes, the concept of multifunctionality has gained increasing attention in the last decade. The scientific literature displays several attempts to frame the concept (e.g DeVries 2000; Anon 2001; de Groot et al. 2002) but there is much frustration regarding proper sets of broadly based definitions and clear statements concerning the authors’ scientific points of departure (Anon 2001). Multifunctionality is on the one hand used to characterize the activities in the primary production sector, and the land use reflecting the material consequences of the various demands set by the society on land territories — these approaches relate to the agricultural understanding of multifunctionality. On the other hand, multifunctionality is used to characterize the landscape per se. The primary production sector (i.e. agriculture, forestry, horticulture and related land dependent activities) is considered having a primary or main function (production), and related joint productions, typically including a mix of material and non-tangible goods as well as a mix of private and public goods (externalities). Production of food and fibres is generally considered the primary products in this context, but the primary sector produces other material goods too, such as CO2 sequestration, groundwater recharge etc.
Housing reconstruction is the top priority after the occurrence of natural hazards. The manner of providing housing not only matters to community recovery but also determines whether reconstruction is sustainable, particularly in rural areas in developing countries. Developing concentrated rural settlements (CRS) is sustainable and resilient in post-disaster reconstruction. However, such development has been reported in few studies before the reconstruction that followed the Sichuan Earthquake on May 12, 2008. CRS have been successfully implemented in several villages in Dujiangyan City, China through a policy of exchanging rural residential land. CRS were delivered in two different approaches, namely, unified planning/self-reconstruction and unified planning/unified–reconstruction. However, these two approaches have not been thoroughly investigated in previous studies. Therefore, the reasons for adopting the two different approaches and which approach is more effective remain unknown. The current study aims to fill in this research gap by comparing the two approaches in the aspects of social–natural basis, trigger event, participants, principles, revenue allocation, process, and implementation outcome involving four study cases in Dujiangyan City. Relevant information was collected through content analysis and interviews. The comparison indicated that neither approach is ideal. Each approach should first satisfy specific requirements to ensure the reconstruction's sustainability. A roadmap to deliver CRS during post-disaster reconstruction has been provided based on the comparison. The findings of this study can facilitate the decision-making process of local governments regarding CRS development during post-disaster reconstruction.
Post World War II suburban growth in Canada and the US has created concern over the long-term availability of farmland to meet food production needs. Subsequent efforts to provide legal protection to agricultural land continue to shape the development of the fringes of nearby urban areas. This paper employs the concept of “agriburbia,” suburban landscapes in which agriculture maintains a significant presence, to investigate the relationship between peri-urban farmland preservation efforts and local food movements. Through a case study analysis of Vancouver, British Columbia's suburb of Richmond, we assess the impact of a strict agricultural land use restriction on urban development. We highlight a dialectic between rural and urban that includes fruitful interactions between large-scale and commercial agriculture, small plot agriculture, and local food movements in both the agriburb and its neighboring city.
China faces the challenge of using limited farmland to feed more than 1.3 billion people. Accelerated urbanization has exacerbated this challenge by consuming a large quantity of high-quality farmland (HQF). It is therefore essential to assess the degree to which urban expansion has preferentially consumed HQF, and discern the mechanism behind this. We found urban areas in Beijing to expand at speeds of 48.97 km2/year, 21.89 km2/year, 62.30 km2/year and 20.32 km2/year during the periods 1986-1995, 1995-2000, 2000-2005 and 2005-2020, respectively. We developed an indicator of HQF consumption due to urban expansion, representing the ratio of HQF consumed to its proportion of overall farmland, and found its values were 2.21, 1.57, 1.99 and 1.10 for 1986-1995, 1995-2000, 2000-2005 and 2005-2020, respectively. Thus, although HQF has been overrepresented in the farmland consumed by Beijing’s urbanization, this phenomenon has decreased over time. Centralized expansion has contributed greatly to consumption of HQF. Topography and distances to urban and water bodies determine the relative consumption of HQF in urbanization.
