Spatio-temporal Dynamic Patterns of Rural Area Development in Eastern Coastal China

The aim of this study is to evaluate the current state of rural area development at the county level in the eastern coastal China. An evaluation index system including 18 factors was developed, and a rural development index (RDI) was constructed to evaluate rural development state in 2000, 2004, and 2008. The quantitative evaluation indicated the following results. 1) This study derived four dominating components by means of principal component analysis, which can explain 78.2% of the total information, namely agricultural production input, the basic condition of agriculture, the comparative effectiveness of grain production, and the household′s own basic conditions. 2) Since the turn of the new millennium, the rural area in the eastern coastal China has experienced a rapid development in general. Well developed, developed, moderately developed and undeveloped rural areas respectively occupied 29.32%, 22.33%, 21.91%, and 10.51% in 2008. 3) The countryside had maintained a sound momentum of developing trend between 2000 and 2008, while the rural development in the eastern coastal China lacked sustainability. And 4) industrialization, urbanization, original economic basis, and location are four major driving forces of the disparity of rural area development in the eastern coastal China. Given these results, the strategies and policies for the improvement of each rural group were put forward.

Assessing Suitability of Rural Settlements Using an Improved Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution

Land suitability assessment is a prerequisite phase in land use planning; it guides toward optimal land use by providing information on the opportunities and constraints involved in the use of a given land area. A geographic information system-based procedure, known as rural settlement suitability evaluation(RSSE) using an improved technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution(TOPSIS), was adopted to determine the most suitable area for constructing rural settlements in different geographical locations. Given the distribution and independence of rural settlements, a distinctive evaluation criteria system that differed from that of urban suitability was established by considering the level of rural infrastructure services as well as living and working conditions. The unpredictable mutual interference among evaluation factors has been found in practical works. An improved TOPSIS using Mahalanobis distance was applied to solve the unpredictable correlation among the criteria in a suitability evaluation. Uncertainty and sensitivity analyses obtained via Monte Carlo simulation were performed to examine the robustness of the model. Daye, a resource-based city with rapid economic development, unsatisfied rural development, and geological environmental problems caused by mining, was used as a case study. Results indicate the following findings: 1) The RSSE model using the improved TOPSIS can assess the suitability of rural settlements, and the suitability maps generated using the improved TOPSIS have higher information density than those generated using traditional TOPSIS. The robustness of the model is improved, and the uncertainty is reduced in the suitability results. 2) Highly suitable land is mainly distributed in the northeast of the study area, and the majority of which is cultivated land, thereby leading to tremendous pressure on the loss of cultivated land. 3) Lastly, 12.54% of the constructive expansion permitted zone and 8.36% of the constructive expansion conditionally permitted zone are situated in an unsuitable area, which indicates that the general planning of Daye lacks the necessary verification of suitability evaluation. Guidance is provided on the development strategy of rural settlement patches to support decision making in general land use planning.