Integrated development in urban and rural areas has led to a new form of urban–rural interdependence, which promotes rural territorial functional evolution and land use changes. Rural land use transition, showing the synchronous development between cities and villages, is an important window through which to observe integrated development in urban and rural areas. We focus on uncovering the association between rural land use transition and urban–rural integration development (URID), put forward a dynamic relationship assumption between rural land use transformation and URID stages based on the transmission mechanism of urban–rural linkages, and undertake empirical analysis using the panel regression model with the data of county-level administrative units in Shandong Province, China. The results show that rural land use transition has maintained a close association with URID, and that the changes in cultivated land, forest land, and surface-water area are highly related to URID. There are different leading urban–rural linkages in rural areas around big-sized cities, mid-sized cities, and small-sized cities, which determine whether rural areas are in different URID stages of high, medium, or low levels. Further, rural areas can take different actions to promote URID at different stages through strengthening or introducing urban–rural linkages driven by economies of scale and deepening urbanization. This provides a reference for developing countries to formulate rural land use policies on achieving the goal of URID.

In response to the challenges of rural chronic poverty caused by insufficient self-development ability, establishing a development model conducive to poverty alleviation and stimulating rural development potential have become core tasks of deepening rural revitalization. Resources and environment play an important role in invigorating rural vitality. Based on symbiosis theory, we have constructed a new conceptual framework to analyze dynamic performance of rural areas in population, industry and facilities, and dynamic constraints in resources and environment. Using an improved TOPSIS evaluation method and panel Tobit model, we have selected 106 rural revitalization model towns from Shandong province as research samples, empirically analyzed the performance of rural vitality and its resources and environment constraints, explored differences of rural vitality performance and vitality constraints of different village types, and put forward long-term mechanisms to maintain rural vitality. Results show that from 2012 to 2019, rural vitality of rural revitalization model towns in Shandong province was gradually improved, among which industrial development had contributed the most; agriculture-tourism towns are more dynamic than industrialized agriculture towns and characteristic agricultural towns. Through analysis of resources and environment constraints on rural vitality, we found that resources had the greatest impact on rural vitality, and the short-term constraints of total amount restriction on rural vitality were not obvious; binding force of ecological environment on rural vitality changed from weak to strong and increasingly became the bottleneck restricting rural vitality. We have further proposed a long-term mechanism to stimulate rural vitality from the aspects of promoting comprehensive utilization of rural residential land, strengthening concept of ecological priority and green development, taking the road of urban–rural integration, and promoting integrated development of rural industries.

The migration of populations from rural to urban areas is a typical phenomenon of urbanization in developing countries. Based on Lacanian psychoanalysis theory, this study analyzes the decision-making mechanism of the willingness of rural populations settling in cities (RPSC), and analyzes the key factors that affect the willingness of RPSC by using the binary Logit regression method based on survey data in Changyi, China. The results show that the willingness of RPSC is a realistic choice under the joint action of the ‘mirrored’ incarnation and the ‘non-mirrored’ order. Among the factors, ‘age’, ‘ethnic groups’, ‘educational attainment’, and ‘social intercourse’, representing the ‘mirrored’ incarnation, and ‘communities’ safety gap’, ‘healthcare services policy’, ‘public housing policy’ and ‘employment insurance gap’, representing the ‘non-mirrored’ order, are significant in affecting the willingness of RPSC. These findings validate the adaptability of psychoanalysis to analyze the willingness of RPSC, and increases the understanding of individual willingness and behavioral choice in the context of a specific social background, which can provide decision-making reference for urban and rural planning and public policy makers.