Reflections on the Improvement of Rural Human Settlement Environment from the Perspective of Beauty and Livability

The construction of beautiful and livable villages is one of the important tasks of ruralrevitalization in the new era, and the development of rural areas attaches more and more importanceto the improvement of human settlement environment. By investigating the construction status andexisting problems of Zhaoba Village in Nanjing, it tries to take “beauty” and “livability” as the planningrequirements. The village positioning is planned accurately, and the functional layout is carried outreasonably. According to the characteristic industries, landscape features and infrastructure of ZhaobaVillage, humanized construction strategies are put forward, thus improving the quality of human settlementenvironment in Zhaoba Village.

Model-Based Systems Engineering Approach to Design a Human Settlement to Better Serve Displaced People

The challenge of transitioning from temporary humanitarian settlements to more sustainable human settlements is due to a significant increase in the number of forcibly displaced people over recent decades, difficulties in providing social services that meet the required standards, and the prolongation of emergencies. Despite this challenging context, short-term considerations continue to guide their planning and management rather than more integrated, longer-term perspectives, thus preventing viable, sustainable development. Over the years, the design of humanitarian settlements has not been adapted to local contexts and perspectives, nor to the dynamics of urbanization and population growth and data. In addition, the current approach to temporary settlement harms the environment and can strain limited resources. Inefficient land use and ad hoc development models have compounded difficulties and generated new challenges. As a result, living conditions in settlements have deteriorated over the last few decades and continue to pose new challenges. The stakes are such that major shortcomings have emerged along the way, leading to disruption, budget overruns in a context marked by a steady decline in funding. However, some attempts have been made to shift towards more sustainable approaches, but these have mainly focused on vague, sector-oriented themes, failing to consider systematic and integration views. This study is a contribution in addressing these shortcomings by designing a model-driving solution, emphasizing an integrated system conceptualized as a system of systems. This paper proposes a new methodology for designing an integrated and sustainable human settlement model, based on Model-Based Systems Engineering and a Systems Modeling Language to provide valuable insights toward sustainable solutions for displaced populations aligning with the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development.

Characteristics and Protection Approaches of Human Settlement in Ancient Villages of Jiangxi: A Case Study of Ancient Dongyuan Zengs' Village

Ancient village as a precious historical and cultural heritage of China is hailed as the "eco-museum" of classical folk cultures and "living fossil" of rural history culture. This paper elaborated human settlement characteristics of ancient Dongyuan Zengs' Village, Jinxi County from the perspectives of village environment, history evolution, village layout and village building, and explored the substantial content of village human settlement protection, and proposed specifi c approaches of protecting the human settlement, such as ancient village layout, history and culture, and provided references for protecting human settlement of the ancient villages.

Climate Suitability Assessment of Human Settlements for Regions along the Belt and Road

Climate is one important environmental variable that affects human life.As the regions along the Belt and Road(B&R)encompass vast territories and large populations,it is significant to assess climate suitability for human settlements,which will influence the migration of various surrounding countries.We selected seven regions including 65 countries along the B&R for the research area and adopted the temperature-humidity index(THI),to assess the climate suitability.We analyzed the spatial characteristics of THI and the correlation between population distribution and THI,the results of which enabled us to adjust the THI classification criteria.We finally assessed the climate suitability of each region.The results reveal that outside the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau,the THI values generally tend to decrease from west to east as longitude increases and downward with increasing latitude.The population distribution is significantly correlated with the THI.Regions with relative suitable climate,including high suitability areas(HASs),moderately suitable areas(MSAs)and low suitability areas(LSAs),account for 50.62%of the total area and encompass in excess of 90%of total population.These areas are widely distributed in the southern regions of 45°N latitude,again with the exception of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.Critical suitable area includes 19.48%of the entire area and 8.98%of total population.The non-suitable area accounts for less than 30%of total area,concentrated in the cold high-latitude and high-altitude areas.

Difficulties and Countermeasures of Rural Human Settlement Environment Governance in Tianjin

The course of rural human settlement environment governance in Tianjin could be roughly divided into four stages:germination,initiation,promotion and deepening.After the development for nearly 20 years,rural human settlement environment governance of Tianjin is faced with many difficulties,such as imperfect village construction planning,poor use effect of sewage facilities,low participation of farmers,and insufficient financial investment.Therefore,some countermeasures and suggestions are put forward,such as scientific planning and overall consideration,innovating financing mechanism,encouraging diversified investment of funds,and strengthening the publicity of rural human settlement environment governance.

Evaluation and Improvement Measures of Rural Human Settlements in Licheng District of Jinan City

Based on the data of rural human settlements in Licheng District of Jinan City in 2016,the evaluation system of rural human settlements composed of four subsystems（ social economy,infrastructure,public environment,and construction management） was constructed. According to the comprehensive scores of various administrative villages calculated by means of multi-index comprehensive evaluation method and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method,the human settlements of 521 administrative villages in Licheng District were divided into four types： excellent,good,average,and poor. Moreover,the spatial differences in the evaluation results of rural human settlements were analyzed using GIS spatial analysis technology. Finally,based on the evaluation results of rural human settlements in Licheng District,some measures to improve and control rural human settlements in different types of villages at various development stages were proposed to fully improve the quality of rural human settlements.

Fringe View: Problems and Construction of Human Settlement Environment for "Village-in-City"

The construction of human settlement environment is one of the important contents in the domain of sustainable development. We try to annotate human settlement environment for "village- in-city" from the angle of fringe view. According to the macro-system thought of human settlement environment science, the evolvement, which can be generalized into four phases, connotation and problems (including social, economic, and environmental problems) of "village-in-city" are discussed primarily in this paper. Some domestic and international researches and practices are also summarized and assessed in the paper. Based on the analysis, some appropriate clues and suggestions for the construction of "village-in-city" have been put forward.

Quality Construction of Public Space from the Perspective of Human Settlement: A Case Study of Public Space in the Downtown Area of Mianyang City, Sichuan Province

Concept, connotation and property of urban public space were interpreted, guidance of human settlement science for the construction of urban public space analyzed. Taking quality construction of public space in the downtown area of Mianyang City for example, this paper proposed that urban public space should be constructed from the perspective of human settlement to create positive spaces that satisfy human needs, ensure sustainable development of urban public spaces, and drive the development of a harmonious and prosperous city.

Water Adaptability of Traditional Mountainous Human Settlements in Mentougou of West Beijing

The climatic environment,landscape environment and settlement environment of traditional mountainous human settlements in Mentougou of west Beijing are summarized.Based on the analysis from the perspective of water adaptability,the spatial database of water adaptability of traditional mountainous human settlements in Mentougou of west Beijing is constructed,and the experience of water adaptability construction of settlement location,irrigation and water conservancy,flood control and soil fixation in river beach and gully areas is summarized.The landscape system of water adaptability of traditional mountainous human settlements in Mentougou of west Beijing embodies the typical wisdom of water adaptability construction contained in traditional mountainous human settlements,and has high reference value in the related research of water adaptability.

Analysis of the Choice of Return Mechanism of PPP Model in Rural Human Settlement Improvement under the Rural Revitalization Strat­egy:Research Based on the Perspective of Evolutionary Game

The improvement of rural human settlement environment is a significant direction of the rural revitalization strategy.Based on the finite rational evolutionary game theory,a cooperative behavior evolutionary game model of rural human settlement environment improvement PPP model with local government,social capital and rural residents as the main game players with the reward mechanism of Government Payment and one with the reward mechanism of Viability Gap Funding are constructed.Comparing the total project revenue of two reward mechanisms,the thesis will obtain the effects of choosing the reward mechanism of rural human settlement improvement PPP.Finally,available suggestions are made to the decision of the reward mechanism of PPP project about rural human settlement environment,thus promoting the application and development of PPP in rural environmental management and to promote sustainable improvement of rural habitat improvement.

Human Settlement Analysis Based on Multi-temporal Remote Sensing Data： A Case Study of Xuzhou City, China

To evaluate urban human settlement, we propose a human settlement environment development index(HSEDI) model by choosing vegetation coverage, land surface temperature, impervious surfaces, slope, wetness, and water condition as the evaluation factors. We applied the proposed model to Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China. Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper(TM) images from 1998 to 2010 and digital elevation model(DEM) data with a 30-m resolution were used to calculate the values of the six evaluation factors. The HSEDI value in Xuzhou City was found to be between 2.24 and 8.10 from 1998 to 2010, and it was further divided into five levels, uninhabitable, moderately uninhabitable, generally inhabitable, moderately inhabitable, and inhabitable. The best HSEDI value was in 2007. The generally inhabitable region was about 100.98 km^2, covering 30.87% of the total area in 2007; the moderately inhabitable region was about 170.58 km2 covering 52.15% of the total area; the inhabitable region was about 32.03 km^2, covering 9.79% of the total area; the percentage of the uninhabitable region was zero; and that of the moderately uninhabitable region was very small, less than 1.00%. Moreover, we analyzed the habitability in the respect of spatial patterns and change detection. Results show that the degraded regions of habitability quality are mainly located in the urban fringe and the improved regions are mainly located in the main urban and rural areas. Reason for the degraded habitability quality is the rapid progress of urbanization. However, the increase in urban green spaces and the construction of the main urban area promoted the improved habitability quality. Besides, we further analyzed socio-economic and socio-demographic data to confirm the results of the habitability analysis. The results indicate that the human settlement in Xuzhou City is in a satisfactory condition, but some efforts should be made to control the possible uninhabitable and moderately uninhabitable regions, and to improve the quality of the generally inhabitable regions.

Human Settlement Evaluation in Mountain Areas Based on Remote Sensing,GIS and Ecological Niche Modeling

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the world's highest and largest plateau.Due to increasing demands for environment exploration and tourism,a large transitional area is required for altitude adaptation.Hehuang valley,which locates in the transition zone between the Loess Plateau and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau,has convenient transportation and relatively low elevation.Our question is whether the geographic conditions here are appropriate for adapted stay before going into the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.Therefore,in this study,we examined the potential use of ecological niche modeling(ENM) for mapping current and potential distribution patterns of human settlements.We chose the Maximum Entropy Method(Maxent),an ENM which integrates climate,remote sensing and geographical data,to model distributions and assess land suitability for transition areas.After preprocessing and selection,the correlation between variables and spatial autocorrelation input data were removed and 106 occurrence points and 9 environmental layers were determined as the model inputs.The thresholdindependent model performance was reasonable according to 10 times model running,with the area under the curve(AUC) values being 0.917 ± 0.01,and 0.923 ± 0.002 for test data.Cohen's kappa coefficient of model performance was 0.848.Results showed that 82.22% of the study extent was not suitable for human settlement.Of the remaining areas,highly suitable areas accounted for 1.19%,moderately for 5.3% and marginally for 11.28%.These suitable areas totaled 418.79 km 2,and 86.25% of the sample data was identified in the different gradient of suitable area.The decisive environmental factors were slope and two climate variables:mean diurnal temperature range and temperature seasonality.Our model showed a good performance in mapping and assessing human settlements.This study provides the first predicted potential habitat distribution map for human settlement in Ledu County,which could also help in land use management.

Empirical Research on Carrying Capacity of Human Settlement System in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, China

Using the theories of population carrying capacity and ecological elasticity in other fields for reference, the connotation of regional human settlement system was defined from the viewpoint of the complex relationship among the factors such as regional population, resources, environment and economic and social development in the context of China′s rapid urbanization. Then the concept and characterization methods of the regional human settlement carrying capacity were proposed by means of population scale. Furthermore, a model of carrying capacity-pressure-state-response(CPSR) on regional human settlement system was established by referencing pressure-state-response(PSR) model, and the Catastrophe Theory was introduced to determine the corresponding standards of multi-criteria programming and evaluation. Taking Dalian City, Liaoning Province, China as an example, an empirical analysis on evaluation of human settlement system from 2000 to 2012 was carried out. The results showed that the carrying capacity of human settlement system in Dalian was fluctuating between 9.6 × 106 to 10 × 106 persons with a quantitative stage of the dynamic regulation. During the research period the load index of human settlement system in Dalian dropped from 0.96 to 0.84 with a lower pressure of human settlement system than the national average level. And the emergency response grades of human settlement system in Dalian were kept in grade Ⅱ(orange warning) or grade Ⅲ(yellow warning). Human settlement system of Dalian was in slight security state as a whole, but the load had a tendency of increase in recent years. The related departments should pay close attention to regional human settlement system and take active measures to improve human settlement by both intensity control and total quantity control. By comparison, analysis and discussion, it was considered that the results were basically accordded with the current situations of human settlement in Dalian, and the evaluation results were more reliable, visualized and easily applied in practice. Therefore, the above-mentioned concepts, characterization and evaluation methods of the regional human settlement system and carrying capacity could provide a new thought and method for quantitative evaluation of human settlement.

Evaluating the suitability of different terrains for sustaining human settlements according to the local elevation range in China using the ASTER GDEM

The topographical suitability assessment of human settlements(SAHS) creates a solid foundation for regional population distribution and socio-economic development. Local elevation range(LER) is an important factor that can be used to assess the suitability of different terrains for sustaining human settlements. However, current digital elevation model(DEM)-based LER products suffer from some challenges typically because of their subjectively selected neighborhood scales and coarser spatial resolution. In this study, we initially determined the optimal statistical window and then calculated the appropriate LER with the finer resolution data of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer Global DEM(ASTER GDEM) products for China. Then, the appropriate LER was used to evaluate the topographical SAHS and its correlations with the national gridded population distribution(1 km × 1 km) in 2010. The results show that the optimal statistical window for calculating a 1 arc-second(about 30 m) resolution GDEM LER for China can be determined using a 51 × 51 grid unit(width × height) within a rectangular neighborhood, corresponding to an area of about 2.34 km^2. Secondly, the LER values in the southern and western China were greater than those of the north and east, showing a trend which consistently reflects the general spatial features of landforms. Finally, the relationship between GDEM LER and population density was highly correlated with the R^2 value of 0.81. It showed that 85.22% of the Chinese population was located in areas where the LER is lower than 500 m. The topographically suitable area within China decreased from the southeastern coastal zone towards the northwestern inland areas due to transition from plains and basins to plateaus and mountains. The total area of moderate to high suitable level was 423.84 × 10~4 km^2, or 44.15% of the total land area, with 88.17% of the national population. Our study demonstrates the usefulness of appropriate LER in evaluating the topographical SAHS as well as its significant impact on population distribution.

Evaluation of the Rural Human Settlement in Shandong Province

Taking Shandong Province as the research object,this paper uses the principal component analysis method to evaluate the status of the rural human settlement in Shandong Province.It establishes the evaluation index system of the rural residential environment in Shandong Province,including living environment,economy,infrastructure,public service facilities,and ecological environment,in total five comprehensive index,and 20 secondary indexes.Through measurement and sorting of rural human environment development level of Shandong Province in 2010,the 17 cities are divided into-excellent,good,ordinary,poor-four development areas and are analyzed based on the restriction factor in the development of the region.

Factors influencing the quality of rural human settlements in a peripheral metropolitan area based on a structural equation model:A case study from Beijing

Rural human settlement is a significant indicator of the living standards of rural residents,and its improvement can contribute to promoting the positive interaction between inhabited environment and the social,economic,and resource environment in the countryside.Based on 557 valid questionnaires of satisfaction evaluation of human settlement in the peripheral metropolitan area of Beijing,this paper analyzed the elemental characteristics and factors influencing human settlement quality using multivariate statistical analysis and a structural equation model.The result shows that,first,the rural residents in a peripheral metropolitan area of Beijing are generally satisfied with the quality of human settlement(satisfaction rate is 66.2%).Specifically,the natural and social environment of the countryside is excellent and harmonious and corresponding standard of countryside infrastructure is advanced,but the quality of public services and follow-up management of facilities are in urgent need of improvement and the imbalance between revenue and expenditure of rural households has led to a continuous increase in the pressures of life.Second,factors such as social atmosphere,appearance of the village,entertainment,living costs,fundamental public services,and production costs have significant effects on human settlement quality in this peripheral metropolitan area,with social atmosphere as the main one.Living costs and supporting services are the main constraints to improvement in the quality of human settlement.

Human Settlement Science-oriented Analysis of Rural Tourism Attraction System

Human settlement resources belong to tourist resources in a broad sense. Rural areas with excellent human settlements have become favorable tourist destinations. From the perspective of human settlement science, tourism attraction system model can be established by factors of harmony of rural ecology, harmony of rural life, harmony of rural production and harmony of rural culture. Concrete strategies for improving rural tourism attractiveness based on science of human settlements were proposed from the perspectives of optimization of ecological environment, education of original residents, upgrading of agricultural landscapes and products, and construction of rural tourism culture.

Improvement of Rural Human Settlements and Rural Planning Strategies From the Perspective of Public Goods

Rural human settlements cover the environment and facilities related to rural production, life and ecology, and belong to the category of rural public goods. Due to the long-term implementation of the strategy of giving priority to the development of cities, the supply of rural public goods in China has been in a state of inadequacy. From the perspective of public goods supply, rural human settlement projects can be divided into three categories: public welfare projects, quasi-public welfare projects and operational projects. Because of its particularity and complexity, quasi-public welfare projects often become weak links in rural human settlements. We should give full play to the respective advantages of the government, enterprises and village collectives, and work together to promote the effective supply of rural public goods. In this process, rural planning should shoulder the responsibility as a means of public policy and governance. Rural planning needs to clearly define the future-oriented rural system, pay attention to peopleoriented facility needs, and provide a variety of services. Through guiding rural construction and allocating public resources, the countryside planning will be an important part of rural revitalization strategy.

Village Renovation Planning Based on The Sciences of Human Settlements: A Case Study of Former Xukou Village in Xuzhou

In recent years, the disorder of rural space, the gradual decline and extinction of traditional culture, the destruction of natural environment, the excessive consumption of natural resources and so on all lead to the increasingly backward problem of rural human settlements. Under this background, people also gradually turn their attention to the renovation and planning of rural human settlements. Based on practical investigation, this study analyzed the importance of village renovation planning and summarized the basic principles of village renovation planning. Based on the theory of The Sciences of Human Settlements, applying rigorous comprehensive research methods, it put forward the main contents of village renovation planning: land use planning, economic and industrial planning, comprehensive renovation of residential environment, renovation of residential buildings, environmental improvement, infrastructure renovation and construction management measures. This study took Xukou Village renovation planning of Peixian County, Xuzhou City as an example, systematically and comprehensively analyzed the existing problems, and put forward targeted renovation strategies to build a village renovation planning system and to provide good experience and reference for the sustainable development of rural human settlements and provide reference and basis for the government to formulate relevant policies and take corresponding measures and solve practical problems.