12 pages, via online journal, Rural settlements in China have been experiencing unprecedented transformation since the economic reforms of the late 1970s. This paper examines population movement over the post-reform era and how this affects settlement patterns in an inland nonmetropolitan county-level city region with a well performing economy. It is found that the settlement size distribution in Gongyi is generally transforming from a traditional rural pattern to one that features an urban system, taking place in the form of “in situ urbanisation” and “rural urbanisation”. Without experiencing mass out-migration and in line with the transition of China's political economy, Gongyi has developed its local urban system in parallel with the life and spatial cycles of city-based urbanisation in China. From the perspective of urbanisation cycles, “in situ urbanisation” underpinned by relevant socioeconomic and political conditions is argued to be both theoretically meaningful and practically useful in the context of the evolving settlement systems in China and less urbanised countries.
9 pages, via online journal, The conversion of population and land from rural to urban areas has been widely explored; however, the spatial change in rural settlements and its relations to population changes involved in urbanization have been ignored. This paper aims to reveal the underlying human-land relationship from the perspective of rural settlement urbanization (RSU). Based on identifying the spatiotemporal characteristics of RSU in Wuhan city circle from 2009 to 2016, we analyzed the human-land relations using a combination of a dynamic coupling model and a decoupling model. The results showed that a total area of 27.77 km2 (accounting for 0.81% of the level in 2009) of rural settlements was converted to urban construction land from 2009 to 2016. Although the rural population decreased by 32.21%, the overall size of rural settlements increased by 104.62 km2, and 37 counties had a low-level coordination between population urbanization and RSU. Only 2 counties emerged with high-level coordination in this process. Additionally, the changes in rural settlements and rural population showed a strong negative decoupling; that is, the population decreased while the area of rural settlements increased. Combining the decoupling results with the coupling analysis, eight human-land relationship patterns in rural settlement urbanization were identified, and “strong negative decoupling–low-level coupling” was the main pattern observed in counties, which summarized the human-land relations in most RSU and should be given priorities in improving rural human-land relationships. The question of how to promote harmonious human-land relationships lies at the core of promoting balanced urban-rural development. This research could provide a decision-making basis for formulating a sustainable development strategy for urban-rural integration.
