Search Results (953)

Traditional villages preserve regional cultural memory and distinctive rural landscapes while embodying the historical evolution of human–land relationships. This study examines the spatial distribution and influencing factors of 221 nationally listed traditional villages in central Shanxi using GIS-based spatial analysis, standard deviational ellipse analysis, river and road buffer analyses, and the optimal parameters-based geographical detector (OPGD). The villages are significantly clustered in a multi-core, locally contiguous pattern oriented along a northeast–southwest axis. Most are located at elevations of 500–1000 m. Village frequencies vary nonlinearly with distance from rivers and roads, suggesting trade-offs among water access, hazard avoidance, and transport connectivity. Temperature, population density, GDP, and elevation show relatively strong explanatory power, while the interaction between urbanization rate and population density has the highest explanatory power. By linking historical formation conditions with contemporary development pressures, this study proposes a cultural landscape network organized around high-density village clusters, water-system and historical transport corridors, and major mountain–basin landscape units, supported by differentiated conservation zoning and context-specific rural spatial governance. These findings provide region-specific evidence for living heritage conservation and sustainable rural governance. Full article

Urban regeneration has become a central focus in global urban studies, increasingly linked to the dual imperatives of sustainability and urban resilience. According to Christopher Alexander’s theories of living structure and pattern language, traditional built environments emerge through progressive adaptation rather than top-down design. Moreover, historic urban fabrics evolve through continuous refinement of spatial solutions that simultaneously respond to environmental, functional, and social needs. Therefore, this study situates urban regeneration within a theoretical framework that recognizes traditional settlements as complex adaptive systems rather than static heritage. Chinese urban villages (Chengzhongcun) and Spanish Suelo Urbano no Consolidado (SUNC, Unconsolidated Urban Land) areas represent two contrasting forms of urban socio-spatial systems engulfed by urban expansion, both characterized by dense, historically rooted morphologies and incomplete infrastructure. As Chinese urban villages shift from a demolition–reconstruction model toward more sustainable regeneration approaches, this study compares Beijing’s Cuigezhuang and Málaga’s El Perchel through spatial analysis and stakeholder surveys. Alexander would argue that the demolition–reconstruction model disrupts the evolutionary processes that generate coherent urban fabrics. The research evaluates how differing planning systems foster or constrain sustainable development and social-spatial resilience in regeneration processes. Urban resilience is explicitly defined here as the capacity of urban communities and spatial structures to adapt to change, withstand pressures, and maintain social cohesion, accessibility, and local identity, while ecological and economic resilience are not measured in this study. Findings demonstrate that Spain’s incremental, participatory approach—anchored in Planes Especiales de Reforma Interior (PERI, special plans for inner urban renewal) and land readjustment (equitable distribution of costs and benefits) mechanisms—significantly outperforms China’s state-led demolition-based model in supporting long-term sustainability, heritage integrity, community cohesion, and spatial continuity. Spain’s legally embedded participation and in situ rehabilitation strategies offer transferable lessons for China’s evolving sustainable and resilience-oriented regeneration paradigm. Full article

Event-based tourism in coastal communities has primarily been studied through economic indicators such as visitor numbers, tourist spending, and multiplier effects, while research on small-scale recurring events driven by non-economic motivations remains limited. This study aims to uncover the meanings behind tourism event practices in coastal fishing communities in Polewali Mandar Regency, West Sulawesi, Indonesia. A qualitative approach with an interpretive ethnographic design was employed, with data collected through participant observation, in-depth interviews, and documentation of four annual events, namely Sandeq Race, Malauyung, Pammunuang, and Mallampei, held across three coastal villages. The findings reveal that event-based tourism in Polewali Mandar takes two primary forms: competition-based and religious-activity-based tourism. Neither form is driven by economic calculation; both are sustained by communal pride in maritime cultural heritage, institutionalized spiritual obligations, and binding social norms. These events function simultaneously as arenas for affirming maritime cultural identity, mechanisms for reproducing social solidarity, spaces for intergenerational knowledge transmission, and vehicles for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH), most notably through the close interdependence between the Sandeq Race and its underlying traditional boat-building practice. The study further finds that these events attract a distinct typology of visitors, ranging from local residents and domestic tourists with kinship ties to the host villages, to a modest but consistent stream of international tourists, and that their sustainability reflects a form of informal Community-Based Tourism (CBT) rooted in intrinsic social capital rather than institutional or industry-driven development. This study proposes the concept of pride-driven small-scale event tourism, referring to small-scale event tourism sustained by communal pride in cultural heritage and religious tradition rather than economic orientation, thereby expanding event tourism, religious tourism, and the CBT literature by foregrounding non-material dimensions as central to understanding coastal community-based tourism practices. Full article

This study addresses the research gap concerning how rural cultural–tourism integration contributes to regional economic resilience, a relationship that remains underexplored despite growing policy interest in rural revitalization. Using cross-sectional data for 285 Chinese prefecture-level cities in 2020, the study constructs a multidimensional ACT (agriculture–culture–tourism) indicator system and employs XGBoost regression with SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) analysis to examine the nonlinear associations between ACT factors and economic resilience. Spatial analysis reveals significant positive spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s I = 0.412) and pronounced regional disparities. Machine learning results indicate that traditional village numbers and primary industry value-addedness are the most important predictors, with SHAP dependence analysis revealing threshold effects and diminishing marginal returns. An illustrative micro-level case study of 140 social media posts from Guangzhou provides interpretive evidence on how low-intensity, leisure-oriented tourism experiences mediate the translation of ACT resources into economic outcomes. The findings suggest that ACT integration is associated with stability-oriented resilience buffering rather than transformative growth, highlighting the importance of functional integration, product diversification, and institutional capacity for enhancing regional economic resilience. Full article

Traditional villages in ecologically sensitive areas face structural dilemmas between preservation-induced stagnation and excessive commercialization under the combined pressures of rural revitalization and ecological protection. This study investigates the spatial differentiation and revitalization strategies of 250 nationally recognized traditional villages in the Xin’an River Basin from a resilience-inspired spatial planning perspective. GIS-based kernel density estimation and the Nearest Neighbor Index were applied to characterize spatial distribution patterns, while GeoDetector was used to evaluate the explanatory power of key natural and anthropogenic factors. The Minimum Cumulative Resistance (MCR) model was used to construct revitalization-suitability zones; resilience capacities were not directly measured; instead, they were used as heuristic planning concepts for interpreting the three consolidated priority regions: Core Conservation (absorptive), Moderate Revitalization (adaptive), and Ecological Conservation (transformative/reserve). The results reveal a pattern of small-scale clustering and large-scale dispersion. A total of 69.2% of the villages were located within 1.5 km of rivers, and 95.2% were situated below 500 m in elevation. Distance to rivers (q = 0.2345) and distance to roads (q = 0.1441) showed the highest explanatory power among the eight candidate factors. The framework provides resilience-inspired spatial guidance for balancing heritage conservation, ecological protection, and rural revitalization. Full article

Existing studies on cultural landscape genes in traditional villages have largely focused on the identification of objective elements, while paying insufficient attention to the associations between tourists’ subjective perceptions, Place identity, and Satisfaction. Taking the five nationally recognized traditional villages in Wuxi, China, as case studies, this study constructs an association model linking cultural landscape gene perception, Place identity, and Satisfaction. The model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling based on 392 tourist questionnaires. The results indicate that Perceived Environmental Character, Perceived Settlement Morphology, Perceived Architectural Characteristics, and Perceived Cultural Attributes are all significantly and positively associated with both Place identity and Satisfaction. Place identity is also significantly and positively associated with Satisfaction. In terms of the standardized path coefficients, Perceived Settlement Morphology shows a relatively strong association with Place identity (β = 0.285), while Perceived Architectural Characteristics shows a relatively strong association with Satisfaction (β = 0.257). The model explains 41.2% of the variance in Place identity and 54.1% of the variance in Satisfaction. Both the direct paths between the four dimensions of cultural landscape gene perception and Satisfaction and the indirect paths through Place identity are statistically significant, indicating that Place identity plays a partial mediating role. This study extends Cultural Landscape Gene Theory from the identification of objective landscape elements to the levels of tourist perception and tourism evaluation, and reveals that Place identity may constitute a psychological pathway linking cultural landscape perception with Satisfaction. In practice, the perceptibility of village spatial patterns, architectural appearance, environmental characteristics, and cultural content should be comprehensively maintained to enhance tourists’ Place identity and overall experience evaluations. Full article

Traditional rural landscape evaluations have generally relied on ground-level photographs or videos. However, these approaches have limitations in spatial continuity, depth cues, and interactivity. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry and immersive virtual reality (VR) were integrated into a comparative rural landscape evaluation framework to assess landscape aesthetic quality. UAV-derived 3D village models were generated and deployed on PICO 4 headsets through Unity 3D and the Cesium plugin, providing evaluators with spatially continuous and 6DoF-enabled immersive representations of village scenes. The evaluation included ten landscape feature factors, including color harmony, vegetation richness, building layout harmony, openness of view, and sense of spatial depth. Ratings were collected from 75 valid participants across 17 villages, with village-level mean scores serving as the primary unit of inference. Paired-samples t-tests, subgroup sensitivity analysis, expert-only presentation-order sensitivity analysis, Pearson correlations, Steiger tests for dependent correlations, stepwise multiple linear regression, nested leave-one-village-out cross-validation (LOOCV), and bootstrap variable-selection stability analysis were conducted to examine differences between the 2D photo-based and VR-based conditions. The results showed that: (1) overall satisfaction was significantly higher in the VR-based condition than in the 2D photo-based condition (3.46 vs. 3.24); (2) the condition-specific regression models retained different landscape feature factors: sense of spatial depth and color harmony in the 2D photo-based model, and vegetation distribution pattern and environmental comfort in the VR-based model; and (3) the VR-based regression model had a higher condition-specific internal $R^2$ than the 2D photo-based model ($R^2=0.784$ vs. 0.569). Within the present dataset, the VR-based model also showed lower SD-normalized prediction error under nested LOOCV, while bootstrap resampling showed higher selection frequencies for the predictors retained in the VR-based model. Overall, the findings demonstrate the potential of UAV-derived immersive VR for rural landscape evaluation and provide new evidence on how presentation conditions influence landscape perception and evaluation. Full article

The diversification of rural development actors in China has promoted a shift from state-centered governance toward collaborative approaches, with rural operation emerging as an important pathway for resource mobilization and value creation. While existing studies have examined multi-actor participation, less attention has been paid to the institutional and socio-economic mechanisms through which polycentric governance shapes rural operation, particularly regarding market rationalities, contractual arrangements, and local capacity formation. This study develops an analytical framework conceptualizing rural polycentric governance as the interaction of institutional support, market embedding, and local agency, and examines rural operation transformation through changes in actors, rights relations, and industrial structures. Drawing on a case study of Huashu Village in Nanjing, this study explores how polycentric governance reshapes rural operation over time. The findings reveal a transition from traditional collective operation to government-led project-based operation, and ultimately to market-embedded polycentric collaborative operation. Specifically, institutional support, through property-rights reforms, policy incentives, and normative arrangements, provides foundations for multi-actor collaboration. Market embedding, through external capital, market-oriented management rationalities, and contractual norms, reshapes resource allocation and cooperative relationships. Local agency, through grassroots organization building, local resource activation, and actor capacity development, transforms external resources into endogenous development capabilities. Through continuous interaction and feedback, these dimensions jointly promote diversified actors, clarified rights arrangements, and integrated industrial development. This study expands the theoretical boundaries of rural polycentric governance by incorporating implicit governance dimensions, refining theoretical explanations of how polycentric governance enables rural operation, and providing empirical evidence on its complexity and dynamics for policy formulation. Full article

Rapid urbanization in China has intensified ecological degradation, loss of architectural and cultural heritage, and declining well-being in traditional villages. Existing conservation approaches often address ecological, economic, or physical heritage issues in isolation, while insufficiently incorporating residents’ quality of life (QoL) as a central criterion of sustainability. This study develops a human-centred traditional village preservation framework grounded in the ecovillage concept and a QoL-oriented sustainability paradigm, using Langde Miao Village in Guizhou Province as a representative ethnic heritage settlement. A mixed-methods approach combining systematic literature review, Delphi expert consultation, household surveys, and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to examine the interrelationships among ecological, cultural, social, and economic dimensions of sustainable built heritage. Based on valid responses, the empirical results indicate that the ecological dimension exerts the strongest direct effect on residents’ quality of life, followed by the cultural and economic dimensions, while the social dimension shows a comparatively weaker effect. The proposed framework provides a community-centred model for sustainable architectural heritage conservation and rural revitalization in traditional villages. Full article

In the kinship-based social structure of traditional China, traditional villages often exhibit strong clan organizational characteristics, which are reflected in their spatial layouts and settlement forms. However, existing studies on traditional villages have paid limited systematic attention to clan culture as an endogenous form of social organization. Taking traditional villages in southern Shanxi as the research object, this study classifies traditional villages from the perspective of clan culture based on clan-related characteristics and analyzes the typical spatial structural features of different village types. On this basis, GIS techniques are used to examine their spatial distribution patterns and to compare the spatial differentiation of different village types in terms of elevation, slope, road accessibility, and proximity to water systems. The results show that, from the perspective of clan culture, traditional villages in southern Shanxi generally present an “east-dense and west-sparse” spatial distribution pattern. Different types of traditional villages show certain differences in spatial distribution and natural-locational conditions. The distribution pattern of Clan-Space-Dominated Villages is relatively consistent with the overall distribution of traditional villages in southern Shanxi; these villages are mostly located in areas with higher elevation, greater terrain relief, and relatively weaker road accessibility. Multi-Clan-Partitioned Villages show a multi-scale and multi-node clustering pattern and are more often distributed in areas with relatively better road connections and gentler terrain. Family–Courtyard-Dominated Villages present a pattern of “overall dispersion with local clustering” and are mostly distributed in hilly and gully-developed areas. All three types of villages show a certain degree of proximity to water systems. This study provides a macro-scale analytical perspective for understanding the spatial distribution of traditional villages in the context of clan culture. The findings may offer a theoretical reference for the protection and renewal of traditional villages and contribute to their integrated conservation and living inheritance. Full article

As tourism shifts from sightseeing to experience-oriented consumption, understanding how tourist perception differs across heterogeneous destination types and spatial scales remains challenging. Using 23,439 Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) reviews archived for six destinations in Shangrao, China, this study compares mountain-type and rural comprehensive destination products. These are operational dominant-function categories rather than mutually exclusive geomorphological classes. The archive supports fine-grained sentiment, topic, and semantic-network analyses; annual temporal comparisons use the full 23,439-review corpus covering 2019–2025, whereas a separate subset of reviews posted from 1 August 2022 with official IP labels, aggregated into 2022–2024 province–year observations, supports Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (Pooled OLS) estimation. A hybrid lexicon–XLM-RoBERTa workflow, BERTopic, semantic co-occurrence analysis, and Pooled OLS are integrated in a cross-scale framework. Static results reveal shared strengths and weaknesses—high scenery and overall-experience evaluations but low price evaluations—alongside type-specific structures: mountain reviews concentrate on natural scenery, climbing effort, and accessibility, whereas rural reviews span village landscapes, cultural activities, accommodation, and nighttime experiences. Temporally, mountain demand retains a stable scenic core while accessibility concerns become more salient; rural demand shifts from traditional agricultural landscapes toward nighttime performances and other experience-oriented products. Cross-scale regressions identify destination- and dimension-specific correlates rather than causal drivers: urbanization is positively associated with several rural evaluations, while ecological contrast, climatic difference, and competing scenic resources are associated with more critical assessments in selected dimensions. The findings show that perception differences arise from the interaction of destination product structures and origin-region contexts, supporting differentiated accessibility management for mountain destinations and balanced product innovation, service improvement, and commercialization control for rural destinations. Full article

Traditional villages serve as the material carriers of traditional Chinese culture. Their cultural spaces, as concentrated reflections of rural humanistic spirit, face multiple crises, including the rupture of intergenerational transmission, functional decline, and spatial isolation. In mountainous counties, where the terrain is complex, resources are scattered, and locations are peripheral, the challenges of protecting and revitalizing cultural spaces are especially acute, yet holistic understanding at the county scale remains insufficient. Focusing on the 25 nationally listed traditional villages in Suichang County, Zhejiang Province, this study selected four representative villages as case studies: Hengkeng (steep-slope mountain), Caihe (gentle-slope hilly), Dushan (mountain-enclosed valley), and Changlian (river-valley plain). We established a comprehensive framework integrating a qualitative “text–space mutual corroboration” interpretation with space-syntax accessibility and isovist-based visibility analysis. The results demonstrate that cultural space nodes exhibit systematically higher accessibility and visibility than ordinary residences, and the coupling between the two dimensions differs sharply by type. Specifically, lineage culture spaces display high–high synergy; religious belief spaces show a low-accessibility–high-visibility mismatch; ritual education spaces occupy a moderate-accessibility–low-visibility position; meanwhile, basic livelihood and daily life spaces are accessibility-dominated. Furthermore, geographical type governs the coupling mode, shifting from linear mismatch on steep slopes, through axial synergy on gentle hills and centripetal aggregation in valleys, to axial serialization on plains. Based on these findings, four adaptive-reuse strategies are distilled. Complemented by a baseline information database and a prospective intelligent-evaluation framework, they provide transferable methodological guidance for planning and revitalizing the cultural spaces of traditional villages in mountainous counties. Full article

Climate change is one of the most serious global challenges, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise despite mitigation efforts. Household consumption accounts for approximately 72% of global emissions, indicating the central role of individual behaviors. Traditional measurement instruments, such as surveys and interviews, are costly, time-consuming, and subject to response biases. User-generated textual content provides an alternative source of evidence, and natural language processing (NLP) enables its analysis at scale. Despite this potential, existing reviews have not systematically mapped its use for individual-level climate behaviors. The main goal of this research is to address this gap through a scoping review following PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Systematic searches were performed in Web of Science, Engineering Village, and Google Scholar, covering January 2015 to April 2026. A total of 2580 records were screened, and ten studies met the inclusion criteria. These studies analyzed Twitter/X, Sina Weibo, Reddit, and e-commerce reviews, covering behaviors from green transportation to waste management. The findings demonstrate that topic modeling and transformer-based models are the dominant techniques, typically combined with sentiment analysis. Recent studies extend beyond describing climate discourse toward explaining behavior. NLP-based text analysis constitutes a scalable complement to surveys and a foundation for targeted climate interventions. Full article

Rural land is the spatial embodiment and physical manifestation of nostalgia. When people settle in cities, they become rural sojourners, returning to rural landscapes through travel. The rural history embedded in traditional landscapes is a treasure trove, and these landscapes provide ideal sites for nostalgic research. Tourism has proven to be a major driver for the development of traditional landscapes. This paper focuses on traditional villages with rich rural heritage and high cultural representativeness in the Huizhou region. This paper examined the nostalgic factors among 518 rural visitors to traditional villages. The results indicate that natural landscape (β = 0.30) and traditional agriculture (β = 0.20) directly influence visitors’ nostalgic experiences, while rural architecture and vernacular culture contribute to it indirectly through mediated pathways. The results also show that spiritual and historical nostalgia are the dominant aspects, while homeland nostalgia is relatively less significant in the Huizhou context. The study contributes to a better understanding of nostalgic experience in traditional villages and provides practical insights for balancing heritage protection and tourism development. Full article

Traditional villages commonly face functional decline and vitality loss amid modernization, which severely threatens the long-term cultural and ecological sustainability of rural heritage spaces. Commercial settlements, evolved along ancient trade routes, follow distinct spatial logics, yet existing studies rely heavily on qualitative descriptions, lacking quantitative frameworks that integrate spatial structure and functional vitality to support targeted sustainable heritage renewal. Taking the main street of Lanche Village, a typical commercial settlement along the Taihang ancient trail in southeastern Shanxi, as a case study, this paper establishes an analytical framework combining Space Syntax, Platform-derived geospatial POI data, and agent-based simulation. Core syntactic indicators (integration, choice, intelligibility) are calculated, and POI kernel density analysis and pedestrian flow simulation are conducted. The results confirm the traditional commercial logic of “post road as the axis, shop-front and residence-back” with high integration and accessibility of the main street. However, three key problems are identified: low spatial intelligibility (R² = 0.43), a significant vitality gap between southern and central sections, and a mismatch between high spatial potential and low functional vitality. Agent-based simulation further reveals pedestrian hotspots and “invisible boundaries” caused by closed street interfaces. This study identifies a context-dependent partial decoupling between spatial potential and functional vitality in declining commercial settlements, expanding the applicable boundary of classical Space Syntax vitality theory in recession-stage settlements. While overall spatial accessibility and functional density show a significant positive correlation consistent with classical expectations, local mismatch zones emerge under the mediation of closed street interfaces and functional inertia. Based on quantitative diagnosis, four micro-regeneration strategies are proposed: structural infill, functional insertion, morphological restoration, and placemaking, forming a complete workflow from diagnosis to intervention. This study constructs a multi-scale spatial vitality mismatch diagnostic framework, and proposes targeted renewal strategies corresponding to the diagnostic conclusions. Centered on revealing the decoupling mechanism between spatial potential and functional vitality, this study builds a matched multi-scale diagnostic workflow as supporting methodology, and puts forward targeted renewal suggestions corresponding to the identified vitality barriers. It also provides an actionable approach for the sustainable renewal of traditional commercial settlements. Full article