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Sustainable Rural Resiliences: Challenges, Resistances, and Pathways in New Processes of Rural Revitalization Around the World

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 2192

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Angel Paniagua

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Spanish Council for Scientific Research, 28007 Madrid, Spain
Interests: rural geography; smart villages; rural development
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is the second edition of “Sustainable Rural Resiliences: Challenges, Resistances, and Pathways”, with a focus on new processes of rural revitalization around the world.

Based on the progress made in the first edition of “Sustainable Rural Resiliences” and the evolution of rural areas around the world, this new edition focuses on revitalization processes in rural areas. These processes raise significant questions in the medium and long term, primarily regarding their benefits for rural areas and the relevance of place-based approaches and local populations. Therefore, this new edition of “Sustainable Rural Resiliences” aims to analyze, from multiple time–place and geographical perspectives, the infinite micro-processes at place level in the revitalization of rural areas. The goal is to establish the value—not always positive—of different rural revitalization approaches for rural areas. Specifically, this Special Issue seeks to build upon the existing literature on strategies of resistance and degrowth as pathways to rural revitalization, the relevance of smart villages, the value of new materialism in traditional (or new) settlements, changes in traditional and identity-based landscapes, and finally, the distancing approach for rural areas around the world [1].

Reference

1. Paniagua, A. 2025 Rural distanciation: A new geographical approach to remote rural areas. Scottish Geographical Journal 2025, 141, 181–195.

Dr. Angel Paniagua
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 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.

Keywords

  • rural areas
  • geographical processes
  • rural revitalization
  • degrowth strategies
  • resistance
  • rural distanciation
  • local–global

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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50 pages, 2018 KB  
Article
Medical Financial Assistance and Sustainable Livelihood Resilience in China’s Rural Revitalization Process
by Yarong Wang, Shuo Gao, Weikun Yang and Shi Yin
Sustainability 2026, 18(6), 2795; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18062795 - 12 Mar 2026
Viewed by 497
Abstract
Rural revitalization has emerged as a core agenda in the global pursuit of sustainable development, with its success fundamentally hinging on enhancing the resilience of rural households to withstand shocks and restore their livelihoods. In contrast to mainstream research that primarily examines whether [...] Read more.
Rural revitalization has emerged as a core agenda in the global pursuit of sustainable development, with its success fundamentally hinging on enhancing the resilience of rural households to withstand shocks and restore their livelihoods. In contrast to mainstream research that primarily examines whether Medical Financial Assistance (MFA) reduces medical burden, this paper focuses on MFA as ex-post cash compensation and investigates whether and how it affects the sustainable livelihood recovery of low-income rural households following health shocks, thereby providing empirical evidence for understanding the foundational role of health security in rural revitalization. A quasi-natural experiment is constructed by leveraging the institutional feature that MFA eligibility is activated by exogenous health shocks. Using two-wave balanced panel data (2021–2022) from a nationally designated deep poverty-stricken county in Hebei Province, China, the Propensity Score Matching–Difference-in-Differences (PSM-DID) method and mediation models are employed for causal identification and mechanism testing. The findings indicate that (1) MFA significantly promotes household income recovery. It enables recipient households to recover per capita net income by an average of approximately 13.2% (p < 0.01), demonstrating a protective recovery effect, and simultaneously recovers per capita non-farm labor income by an average of approximately 13.8% (p < 0.05), revealing a developmental recovery effect. The latter is partially mediated by the non-farm labor participation rate (mediation ratio 51.7%, Sobel Z = 2.10). This finding validates the “time release effect,” demonstrating that MFA stimulates endogenous dynamics by restoring health capital and releasing labor previously constrained by family care responsibilities. It thereby extends the application of health capital theory from the individual to the household level. (2) Mechanism analysis shows that the protective recovery effect is fully mediated by the amount of MFA received (mediation ratio 326.7%, Sobel Z = 12.85), providing empirical evidence for precautionary saving theory in the context of targeted social assistance and revealing the potential productive attributes of the social safety net. (3) Heterogeneity analysis reveals clear group targeting and shock thresholds. The protective effect is concentrated among elderly households, while the developmental effect is primarily evident in middle-aged households. Both recovery effects manifest significantly only for households experiencing major disease shocks, confirming the theoretical expectation of “conditional effectiveness,” namely that policy effects are systematically moderated by household life-cycle characteristics and the severity of health shocks. This study demonstrates that MFA serves both as a safety net and an empowerment tool, but its effectiveness is highly contingent upon household characteristics and shock severity. By uncovering the foundational mechanisms through which health security contributes to rural household resilience, this study provides empirical evidence from China for building sustainable poverty prevention systems in the global process of rural revitalization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Rural Resiliences: Challenges, Resistances, and Pathways in New Processes of Rural Revitalization Around the World)
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30 pages, 1109 KB  
Article
The Impact of Urban–Rural Integration Policies on Regional Sustainable Development
by Tonglaga Han and Ying Zhou
Sustainability 2026, 18(6), 2784; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18062784 - 12 Mar 2026
Viewed by 576
Abstract
Against the backdrop of coordinated advancement in new urbanization and rural revitalization strategies, the integration of urban and rural areas serves as a core approach to dismantling the urban–rural dichotomy and driving high-quality regional development. The enabling effects of its policy implementation on [...] Read more.
Against the backdrop of coordinated advancement in new urbanization and rural revitalization strategies, the integration of urban and rural areas serves as a core approach to dismantling the urban–rural dichotomy and driving high-quality regional development. The enabling effects of its policy implementation on regional sustainable development have garnered significant attention. As pivotal conduits where urban and rural elements converge, peri-urban fringe zones have emerged as the primary arena for policy implementation and impact realization. Using panel data from 268 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2015 to 2024 as the sample, this study treats the establishment of urban–rural integration pilot zones as a quasi-natural experiment. Employing a multi-period Difference-in-Differences model, instrumental variables method, and spatial econometric model, it systematically investigates the impact effects, operational mechanisms, heterogeneous characteristics, and spatial spillover effects of urban–rural integration policies on regional sustainable development. Findings reveal that urban–rural integration policies significantly promote regional sustainable development. This conclusion remains robust after endogeneity treatment and stability tests, with policies demonstrating stronger enabling effects on ecological sustainability than on economic and social sustainability, forming a development pattern characterized by “ecological priority and multidimensional coordination”. Policies achieve synergistic enhancement of regional economic, ecological, and social sustainability through three pathways: optimizing urban–rural factor allocation, establishing ecological co-governance systems, and advancing equitable public services. Policy effects exhibit significant heterogeneity: the stronger the urban baseline conditions, the more pronounced the policy’s enabling effect, while excessive population concentration exerts a marginal negative impact on ecological sustainability. Urban–rural integration policies generate a significant positive spatial spillover effect, accounting for 38.9% of the total effect. This spillover gradually diminishes with increasing distance within a 120 km radius, with geographic distance and administrative barriers serving as core constraints. This study provides empirical insights and practical pathways for optimizing urban–rural integration policy design and advancing regional sustainable development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Rural Resiliences: Challenges, Resistances, and Pathways in New Processes of Rural Revitalization Around the World)
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Review

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18 pages, 239 KB  
Review
Exploring Sustainable Rural Materiality in Remote Areas: A Geographical Perspective of Ten Years of Research
by Angel Paniagua
Sustainability 2026, 18(4), 2033; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18042033 - 16 Feb 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 597
Abstract
The scope of this research is to contribute, through qualitative bases and case studies, to the relevance of old and new materialities in the process of rural change and restructuring in remote rural areas. The research on rural materialities can be found in [...] Read more.
The scope of this research is to contribute, through qualitative bases and case studies, to the relevance of old and new materialities in the process of rural change and restructuring in remote rural areas. The research on rural materialities can be found in cultural studies of heritage, modern geographical history and postmodern rural geography, based on post-structural and Deleuzian geographies, mainly geographies of heterogeneous associations and experimental and vibrant materiality. Geographic materialities allow multiple approaches in rural geography. A first approximation allows us to distinguish between old and new materialities. In each old and new category, it is possible to use different approaches: qualities of place, more-than-human, rural change, assemblage theory, material design, emotional geographies and cultural heritage. The sustainability-related outcomes are the rural material styles reviewed. Styles of research on old materialism are based on (1) qualities on place, (2) heritage and its effects in place, and (3) rural restructuring. The new change in the conceptualization of the material world is based on reconstructed local materialism and dissolved traditional rural communities. The styles in new rural materialities in the rural geographical field are (1) rural restructuring processes and new materialities, (2) material values and sophisticated visions of the countryside, (3) ensembles and material lives, and (4) emotional negotiations and feelings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Rural Resiliences: Challenges, Resistances, and Pathways in New Processes of Rural Revitalization Around the World)
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