China is a country with exuberant cultural traditions, yet little of which has been paid attention to in rapidly urbanizing context in contemporary China. Lineage refers to the organized group of descendants of a single ancestor by which the lineage membership is determined. Despite the disappearance of many villages in the city, the ancestral hall often survived as the symbolic tie between the single-lineage villagers. Previous studies on Chinese rural restructuring mainly focus on the societal and cultural consequences. What these two aspects in studies of rural areas tend to vanish, or only take it implicitly, is the spatial processes that is closely related to the societal and cultural restructuring. Therefore, this paper intends to apply the sociological architecture thinking in space syntax methodology to explore the social logic behind the transforming spatial character of the typical lineage architecture, the ancestral hall. Taking two typical ancestral halls located respectively in Liede and Zhucun urban villages in Guangzhou as the research objects, the paper has unfolded the relationship between the morphological characteristics and behavioral patterns of villagers. Through field survey and mapping and face-to-face interviews in the Leide and Zhucun villages, it is found that (1) The newly-built ancestral hall in Liede village shows great difference compared with the old one in Zhucun village owing to the need to adapt to the new social functions, which is embodied in such transformation in spatial form as the breaking of axial symmetry pattern and the declining position of the sacred space in the overall spatial organization; (2) The decline and restructuring of spatial functions and the correspondent spatial organization highly conforms to the waning of the lineage consciousness, in which many traditional sacrificing activities are replaced by entertainment activities, and recreation and feasting have become the primary activities for villagers in the ancestral halls. Compared with the old ancestral halls, the newly-built ones in the central locations, as in our Leide case, evolved into non-excluded space that is aimed at profit-generating in the course of urbanization; (3) As the representative for lineage culture, the evolving spatial morphology of the ancestral halls is the intuitive evidence of lineage culture's recession and reconstruction, reflecting the changing mode of villager behaviors; (4) In the time of the couple made??families after the 20th century, the lineage consciousness of villagers is in the gradual recession, especially when the overall cultural environment for traditions has changed drastically. To sum up, the study not only provides new perspective for studying the traditional architectural type and traditional villages, but also in practical terms gives valuable suggestions to the protection and regeneration of traditional architecture and milieu in the context of rapid urbanization.

As an essential attribute, rurality is the key to the survival of the villages. However, in the face of intense internal and external restructuring and differentiation, their rurality has been damaged, neglected or even buried in different degrees. This paper takes 12 traditional villages in Suzhou as the research objects, divides them into four categories according to the development paths, and constructs an index system of traditional villages to evaluate their own rurality. The result shows that the traditional villages in Suzhou have basically maintained a high level in rurality. But the compositions of rurality in different development paths have different characteristics. Rurality of skill-based villages is enhanced and balanced, which is driven by industry. Rurality of tourism development villages is polarized in one-sided activation. Self-exploration of comprehensive development villages maintains balanced rurality. And life service-oriented villages face the danger of rurality decay in urban-rural interaction. It is believed that the protection and development of traditional villages should be guided by the overall balanced improvement of rurality and choose an appropriate development path.

Based on the theory of living state, this article aims to build an index system of the living state of traditional villages according to material heritage system, intangible heritage system and village residents system. The author obtained these data through literature review, field survey, questionnaire survey and local interview and other methods to quantitatively evaluate the living state of three different types of traditional villages in Xiangxi, Hunan Province. The results shows that: First, the problem of inactivation is relatively common among these villages, and Dongshan village has the worst living state, then Xiaoshi village, and Disun Miao village has the best living state. Second, from the perspective of the system level, material heritage is the most important factor affecting the living state of traditional villages; and from the perspective of the element level, demographic structure, historical buildings and pattern texture are the main factors that affect the living state of traditional villages. Third, from the perspective of system level, intangible heritage is the main factor that leads to the inactivation of traditional villages in Xiangxi area; from the perspective of elements level, population, traditional skills, and natural ecological environment are the main factors that lead to the inactivation of traditional villages. In general, the living state of tourism traditional villages is better than that of urbanized villages and traditional villages. However, there still has some differences between active contribution factors and inactivation factors in different types of villages.

To investigate the traditional village living environment adaptability to desertification and topography, the suitability evaluation index system and weight of traditional Buyei traditional villages in the rocky desertification area human settlement were quantified using Delphi method and comprehensive weighting method. We calculated human settlements environment suitability value and threshold to comprehensively analyze the human settlements environment suitability. The results showed that 10% of the traditional Buyei traditional villages were located in the rocky desertification areas with high intensity and extremely high intensity and had the tradition of selecting the best environment. The index system of residential environment suitability was composed of five first-level indices (economy, historic culture, ecology, society, and building environment suitability) and 26 second-level indices. This index system was applicable to villages in karst regions. The comprehensive environmental suitability value (2.81-3.77), the economy value (0.77-1.17), the historic culture value (0.39-0.50), the ecology value (0.83-1.07), the social environment value (0.38-0.53) all decreased with the increasing intensity of rocky desertification, but the suitability value of building environment did not change, which ranged from 0.43 to 0.51. Rocky desertification had profound and synergistic impacts on economy, historic culture, ecology and social environment. The floor level of the human settlement suitability threshold was 2.93. If the threshold was lower than 2.93, it could be considered to move or take measures to improve its value. The suitability value (3.56) of traditional village living environment in mountain slope was higher than that in depression (3.42) and valley (3.16). The human settlement suitability of traditional villages in rocky desertification area was higher than that of ordinary villages, but was lower than that of normal landform, with the differences in economy and ecology being the main reasons. To improve the living environment of traditional villages in rocky desertification areas, we should strengthen the comprehensive control of rocky desertification and policy support, develop ecological economy and tourism, protect historic culture or choose ecological migration. This research could provide theoretical base for the planning and construction of village living environment protection in karst areas.

Cultural landscape protection compensation is a new topic in modern human geography. In this paper, we firstly proposed the theoretical framework of cultural landscape protection compensation of traditional villages, and then set up the cultural landscape protection compensation model on the basis of proposed theoretical framework. Finally, we discriminated the driving factors and offered a proof to the model, which takes Xiangxi nationality autonomous prefecture in Hunan province as a case study. The results can be concluded as follows: (1) From the aspects of the traditional architectural style, the location and pattern of villages, dynamical inheritance of the intangible cultural heritage of villages, and the level of their social and economic development of villages, traditional villages in Xiangxi conforming to the implementation conditions of cultural landscape protection compensation. (2) From the aspects of landscape characteristics and values, external market recognition, self-loss, government management, etc., cultural landscape protection compensation of traditional villages in Xiangxi conforms to the proposed cultural landscape protection compensation model. (3) From the aspects of its driving factors, cultural landscape protection compensation features of the 82 traditional villages in Xiangxi are in accordance with the comprehensive driving mode of landscape characteristics, government management, external market and self-loss. (4) In the traditional villages of Xiangxi, the cultural landscape protection compensation can be divided into three types, namely, social and economic compensation, historical and cultural compensation, and natural environment compensation. The factors of each type, such as social economy, historical culture, natural environment, all influence the structure of the compensation model.

Since they were inscribed on the World Cultural Heritage List, ancient villages in rural China, which used to be relatively stable and closed communities, have embraced economic change that happened to the ways of life for the local residents as a result of the newly introduced economy and the flood of visitors. This paper takes Diaolou complex, a UNESCO Would Heritage site in China as a case study. It is found, after a seven-year study, that there is a significant correlation between the level of tourism development and the civic participation of local village residents. In this paper, a comparison is made between the conditions in three different ancient villages before and after they were recognized as World Cultural Heritage Sites. With a further analysis of the data provided by the current local authorities and travel agencies concerning the main sources of income and the new economic structure, we found that there are some discrepancies in tourism development among the three ancient villages. Furthermore, to provide a plausible explanation of the interaction between tourism development and the construction of local civil society and citizenship, this paper first articulates the concept of "citizenship" in the literature, and then examines the results from in-depth interviews and field researches.It is found that tourism development does bring about citizenship, viewed as a universal value, in the three adjacent ancient villages with similar governance patterns and similar traditions. In explaining the cultivation process and transformation mechanism of citizenship in traditional Chinese societies, this paper contributes to the studies in moral geography in China.

Based on the analytical framework of the adaptability of farmers toward rural tourism in traditional villages, this study constructs an adaptive evaluation index system, and takes 327 households of 6 traditional villages in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, Hunan Province, as samples. Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) method is used to obtain data, and principal component analysis and cluster analysis are applied to analyzing the adaptability types, degree and influencing factors of farmer’s adaptability towards rural tourism in traditional villages. The results showed that: 1) The types of farmers' adaptability can be divided into 6 types: comprehensive adaptation, the cognition deficit, the ecological dominance, the policy deficit, the cultural dominant, and the lagging development, of which different types of characteristics are different. 2) The overall adaptability degree of comprehensive adaptation is relatively adaptive, and those of the other 5 farmers' adaptation are generally adaptive, but on the whole, the traditional village farmers in Xiangxi are adapting to the development of rural tourism. 3) Each adaptation type shows internal differences in the adaptability of the 6 factors that are policy, economy, culture, ecology, society and psychology, and other adaptation types in social, cultural and economic adaptability of the three factors are generally low except the farmers of comprehensive adaptation type. 4) The 13 impact factors of policy, social, ecological, economic and psychology factors, have obvious influences on the adaptability of farmers toward rural tourism, and the degree of influence are different. Finally, from the three aspects of farmers, communities and government, this article puts forward countermeasures and suggestions to improve the rural tourism adaptability of traditional village farmers.

As the main reception base and important tourism attraction, tourism village is the core element of the tourism destination system, and has also become one of the most important forms of rural urbanization in China. Integrating the method of PRA (participatory rural assessment), GIS technology and HD remote sensing images, this study aims to analyze the spatial morphology evolution of rural settlements induced by tourism through a comparative study of three tourism villages in Yesanpo tourism destination. The results suggest that there exists a "core-periphery" pattern of the spatial evolution of rural settlements. The closer to the core scenic spot, the higher degree of land-use intensity the village shows, as well as the more mature tourism function and greater change in landscape pattern. In the research, Gougezhuang shows an increase of the floor area ratio from 0.17 to 0.44, with the most mature tourism function and destroyed landscape authenticity as well and it has the lowest authenticity index of 0.448. Liujiahe has gone through a largest increase of 96.54% in construction land area, with moderately mature tourism function and relatively stable authenticity of 0.566. Shangzhuang, in contrast, has the lowest construction land scale and intensity, with the poorest tourism function and most well-preserved landscape authenticity of 0.942. Overall, in term of the spatial morphology, the three villages are characterized by "modern town", "semi-urbanization" and "traditional village", respectively, in corresponding to three land development types: "intensive reconstruction type", "enclave extension type" and "in situ using type". Tourism village is the basic spatial unit of rural tourism. The spatial evolution patterns of these three villages present the spatial characteristics of the touristization of traditional villages in different stages, and also has great representative value for the management of rural settlements in tourism destinations of China.

Traditional ancient villages are the crystallization of Chinese rural civilization. Carrying out this study is particularly important and urgent for the sustainable development and cultural heritage protection of the traditional villages in the ancient Huizhou. The study chose 119 national traditional villages of the ancient Huizhou by Ministry of housing and urban-rural development of the People’s Republic of China official which has already been released as the research object, and took the methods of literature analysis and GIS spatial analysis as the research way. And the distribution characteristics of the traditional villages in the ancient Huizhou were revealed from the temporal and spatial scales, which were mainly used by the method of the GIS technology. And the factors which affected the temporal and spatial distribution of traditional villages in the ancient Huizhou were also discussed. It is found that the spatial distribution of traditional villages in the ancient Huizhou is clustered, obviously in basin, adjacent water as well as the marginal area, and it presents the distribution pattern that the number of the traditional villages on the around is more than the middle. Specifically, Yixian county has the largest number of traditional villages and the highest distribution density, which has formed the main gathering area of the ancient Huizhou traditional villages, followed by the ancient Huizhou district and Shexian county has formed a secondary core area of ancient Huizhou traditional villages. From the time point of view, the Song Dynasty (Northern Song and Southern Song) and the Tang Dynasty are the main period of the formation of the ancient Huizhou traditional villages, these two dynasties retained the most ancient villages, and the scope distribute are also the most widely. Finally, the article focused on the natural environment, population, transportation, urbanization and economic development level and other factors, which ancient Huizhou traditional villages have showed those distribution characteristics. As well as the research has found that the basin terrain with surrounded landscape, the moved central plains immigrants with all ethnic, the road traffic with less development, the relatively backward social economy and the protection policies with local governments are all the very important conditions for the retention and renewal of the traditional Huizhou villages, and to a certain degree, it has already become the key factor for the spatial and temporal distribution that affected the traditional villages in the ancient Huizhou. And in the long run, it is helpful to study the whole distribution of the traditional villages, which can protect the traditional villages in the ancient Huizhou, and it is also helpful to explore the social, economic and cultural development in the historical period of the ancient Huizhou.

As important carriers of Chinese civilization, traditional villages are endowed with rich and diversified values. Although the government and academia have implemented lots of programmes on protections and researches, the sustainable development still has a long way to go. Therefore, it is of profound significance to establish an evaluation system for the sustainable development of Chinese traditional villages and to evaluate the sustainable development level of Chinese traditional villages. Through long-term field survey of traditional villages, this study proposes that understanding the two basic attributes of community and heritage is the key to cognizing the sustainable development of traditional villages. Then it uses the analytic hierarchy process and Delphi method to construct the index system of community development subsystem and heritage protection subsystem, and applies an expert judgment matrix and the Delphi method to determine the index weights of the subsystems at all levels, and constructs the systems of data collection, assignment, and standardization for each secondary index. The comprehensive evaluation index is used to evaluate the development level of traditional villages, and determine the criteria for ranking. In order to better evaluate the sustainable development level of traditional Chinese villages, a coupling coordination model is further introduced to construct an evaluation system. Finally, through the evaluation of 10 traditional Lingnan villages in Guangzhou, Foshan and Zhongshan cities of Guangdong province, the validity of the index system is verified and further revised. This index system can not only promote the research paradigm of traditional villages, coupling degree and sustainable development assessment, but also widely guide and apply to the protection practices of traditional villages in China.

With the rapid urbanization process in China, the development of Chinese traditional villages presents a marginal characteristic compared with those urbanized areas. The paper studies 723 Chinese traditional villages, particularly in Hunan province. Along with the tool of ArcGIS 10.0, four key factors, namely, agricultural resources, economy, space composition and traffic system, have been carefully selected and used to investigate the impact of urbanization on the spatial distribution of villages. The study takes the scale of county as the basic unit. The core and edge regions of urbanization in Hunan province have been evaluated. The paper has superimposed two datasets, and the results show the marginalization tendency of traditional villages in Hunan province. Then the paper analyzes the formation mechanism of the marginalization feature of traditional villages, and puts forward some suggestions to help the conservation as well as sustaibable development of these Chinese heritages.

The ancient village possesses unique regional characteristics, integrated building structure, abundant material and intangible cultural heritage, and more importantly, they are still be used today. The rapid development of urbanization brings chances for the ancient villages and also deeply affects transformation of social economic structures of ancient villages. The thesis selects some representative old villages—historical cultural villages to analyze the balanced degree of spatial distribution of ancient villages, then discusses the influencing factors and finally puts forwards strategies to keep spatial balance of ancient villages and further lead simultaneous development of all the old villages in order to promote the progress of urban and rural integration. The study shows: (1) Chinese historic cultural villages have different characteristics in spatial distribution, spatial form, river system distribution, regional culture and transportation system. The majority of these villages are distributed along the river and are cultural centers, traffic hubs and birthplace of civilization in history; the villages form three centers, three sub-centers and four transition diffusion areas, and cultivate six cultural centers. (2) Chinese historic cultural villages mainly built in the Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties, have a long history. Among the villages, the Ming Dynasty dominates the number and spatial distribution. (3) The reasons for their spatial uneven distribution include the resource endowment, limited selection criteria, economic development level and regional policy making.