The Impact of Population Transition on Land Value and Planning in Rural Areas

Dear Colleagues,

Against the backdrop of accelerating urbanization and industrialization in developing countries, the decline of rural populations has become an inevitable trend. In China, remarkable achievements in urbanization and population mobility driven by industrialization, coupled with aging rural populations, are fundamentally reshaping the functional attributes and value systems of rural land. These transformations unfold across two interrelated dimensions: on the one hand, population outflow has led to widespread land idling and, on the other, the return of migrant workers has raised demands for actualizing rural land value and optimizing resource utilization. Consequently, rural land is undergoing a historic shift—evolving from a "means of survival" to "development capital," and from a "single-function entity" to a "multidimensional value carrier."

Today, land is no longer merely a natural resource or production factor; its economic, social, and ecological value has become increasingly prominent, and critical initiatives such as rural land use optimization, consolidation, and marketization fundamentally depend on reforms to the rural land system. Against a backdrop of finite land resources and escalating development demands, the challenge of fully unleashing the potential of rural land, maximizing its value, and advancing rural revitalization has emerged as a central theme in academic discourse.

The practice of multifunctional land use in rural areas—manifested not only in the physical transformation of land use patterns but also in the deep reconstruction from "production factor" to "diverse value carrier"—has become widespread. Going forward, the core proposition of implementing the Rural Revitalization Strategy lies in fostering a new ecosystem for coordinated "population–land–industry" development, all the while safeguarding food security, ecological integrity, and farmers' rights. This profound reconstruction is set to trigger a paradigm shift in rural planning, demanding innovative approaches to balance developmental imperatives with sustainable land governance.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) that provide insights into rural man–land relationships, rural land value, rural land use planning, and rural land system reform.

This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:

• Rural man–land relationships;
• Rural–urban migration and rural population transition;
• The economic, social, and ecological value of rural land and its multifunctional utilization;
• The urban citizenship of migrant workers and rural land circulation;
• Rural land system reform;
• Rural planning and sustainable land governance.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Prof. Dr. Huiguang Chen
Prof. Dr. Taiyang Zhong
Dr. Changjun Jiang
Prof. Dr. Wojciech J. Florkowski
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• rural population mobility
• the urban citizenship of migrant workers
• rural aging
• rural land function
• rural land value
• rural land consolidation
• rural land use plan
• rural revitalization