Rural Settlements Restructuring Based On Spacial Interaction Theory

Land and population, as the core elements of rural development in China, are experiencing significant changes with the advance of series strategies, such as new type urbanization, agricultural modernization and balancing urban and rural development. These changes especially demonstrated in the acceleration of urban-rural population and resource flow. Rural settlements is the habitat of peasant households and the core element of the man-land relationship, its space evolution is experiencing a sudden transition. As the major hand grip of “The Beautiful Countryside” construction and also an important measure to boost the new type urbanization in China, the rural settlements restructuring achieves enormous effects in promoting living standard of peasant households and improving the rural human settlements. However, in the practice of rural restructuring, there are various of factors give rise to the insufficiency of spatial interaction and interflow among the rural settlements, and thus impede the rural construction of places suitable for living in, convenient for employment, and pleasant to travel around. Concretely, without enough attention of the connection and interaction among the rural settlements, neglecting the transition and reform of spatial function of rural settlements, ignoring the various demands and preferences of the service objects under the current time background, the restructuring practice still holds plenty of shortcomings, such as inefficient resource sharing, unbalanced spatial structure and invalid spatial integration.Accordingly, this article use spatial interaction theory to build a research framework(Spatial Distribution Character and Problem Diagnosis—Spatial Interaction Relationship—Spatial Restructuring Path and Implementation) to study the rural settlements restructuring, take Dazhu Village in Hechuan District of Chongqing as the sample to establish a peasant household-rural settlements database. Start with analyzing the spatial distribution character of rural settlements and problem diagnosing, consider straightening out the spatial interaction relationship among rural settlements as the core element of restructuring, reconcile the village environment condition combine with the demand of peasant household, the restructuring path can be set. Then, the target that restructuring the rural settlements become a place“ interact and interflow, system balanced, function fused ”, can be finally realized.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) First, the general discrete character of the spatial distribution of the rural settlements in Dazhu village is clumped, but there is a random difference between communities. The distribution pattern is basically composed by 3 distribution model: spot, ribbon pattern and bulk. This spatial distribution depends on the given environment of Dazhu village, and it is affected complexly by various of issues, such as terrain, resource and the social-economic situation. Second, the distribution of rural settlements is much influenced by the spatial factor including terrain, water head site and main roads. Classify the terrain from level 1 to 10, then the distribution index present a trend increased at first and then decrease, level 1 to 3 have the superiority of the settlements distribution, level 2 have the strongest preference and the distribution index will reach the peak value here. As for the water head side and main roads, the superior area distribute in the buffer zone from 0 to 100 meters and 0 to 200 meters, also, along with the expansion of each buffer zone, the distribution index present a decrease trend respectively. Third, after the diagnosis, the construction of rural settlements in Dazhu village displays imperfections in four different aspect: the extensive use of land, the weaken of system core, the lost of spatial function and the problems in building rural human settlements.(2) By using the spatial interaction theory, the interaction relationship among rural settlements is clearly emerged. According to the character of rural settlements, the public service system, and the character of peasant households, the evaluation index system is built, which will authentically convey the general quality of rural settlements. Also, based on the gravity model, the intensity and level of the spatial interaction among rural settlements will be objectively reflected. First, four different spatial interaction types in Dazhu village are decided by the quantity and direction of the link line of the maximum gravity among the spatial interaction units. Specifically, they are the series conduction type, the parallel conduction type, the dikaryon convection type and the polymeric radiation type. Second, by merging the massive rural settlements nodes based on their spatial affiliation, five core nodes will be obtained. And third, the spatial effect range of these five core nodes will be formed by drawing and correcting their radiate extent. Therefore, straighten the spatial interaction relationship of the rural settlements in Dazhu village.(3) Along the restructuring paths under the guidance of spatial interaction relationship, the target to restructure a “ interact and interflow, system balanced, function fused ” rural settlements, can be finally realized. To begin with, according to the second conclusion above, five core nodes is obtained. Thus, based on the spatial interaction relationship, reconcile the village environment condition combine with the demand of peasant household, five rural settlements group will be established at these core nodes. Then, in accordance of the dependence and mutual complement relationship of the spatial function, together with the living condition and industrial character of peasant households within the radiate area, three different types of leading function will be given to the five groups. Concretely, they are production-oriented type, service-oriented type and living-oriented type. The peasant households belong to production-oriented group are highly dependent on the land and mainly earn productive income, the peasant households belong to service-oriented group are part-time development type household and their income are mainly management revenue, the peasant households belong to living-oriented group are almost out of agricultural production and earns salary as their income. Finally, based on the spatial interact affiliation, the living-oriented group is chosen to be the central village, the production-oriented group and the service-oriented group is chosen to be the basic village, and a bow and arrow shape unbalanced spatial structure of rural settlements system is established. Therefore, a two level rural settlements system which takes central village as the core and basic village as the supplementary is constructed. And thus, the restructuring target to build a “ interact and interflow, system balanced, function fused ” rural settlements is eventually realized.