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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 8 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1536231
This article is part of the Research Topic Enhancing Food Security and Trade Resilience in Sustainable Agricultural Systems View all 8 articles

An Approach to Addressing Rural Depopulation in the Black Soil Region: Insights from the County Urban-Rural Settlement System

Provisionally accepted
Zuopeng Ma Zuopeng Ma 1*Yao Tong Yao Tong 2Jibin Liu Jibin Liu 3Guolei Zhou Guolei Zhou 1Yanjun Liu Yanjun Liu 4Xin Wen Xin Wen 1Pingyu Zhang Pingyu Zhang 1,5
  • 1 Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, China
  • 2 School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing, Beijing, China
  • 3 School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Jilin Jianzhu University, Changchun, China
  • 4 School of Geographical Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin Province, China
  • 5 College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    In the context of rural depopulation, spatial reorganization of settlements is widely recognized as a critical strategy to alleviate the human-land contradiction and enhance land use efficiency in the black-soil region. Using Yushu County as a case study, this paper explores an approach to the spatial optimization of urban-rural settlements in the black soil region. Currently, the urban-rural settlement system exhibits a distorted structure characterized by an excess of small settlements and a scarcity of large and medium-sized settlements, while the rank-size curve illustrates the phenomenon of "raising head, craning neck and drooping tail". Rural development potential displays a pronounced high-high and low-low aggregation pattern. In light of this, the consolidation of settlements should be implemented at two scales: administrative villages and towns. In areas with high potential for rural development, merging natural settlements into the central settlement within an administrative village is recommended. In areas with low potential for rural development, the relocation and consolidation of natural settlements should be guided by the ideal service radius of central settlements within a town. This approach could preserve the original social relations to the greatest extent, thus facilitating the effective implementation of rural restructuring strategies.

    Keywords: urban-rural settlements, Spatiotemporal trajectory, Spatial reorganization, black-soil region, Yushu County

    Received: 28 Nov 2024; Accepted: 24 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ma, Tong, Liu, Zhou, Liu, Wen and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Zuopeng Ma, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.