Analyzing the Causes of Spatial Differentiation of the Traditional Villages in Gansu Province, Western China

Abstract

The study and protection for traditional villages are very important for us to protect Chinese historical and cultural heritage. Data show that under the condition of rapid urbanization. The number and coverage of traditional villages in western China are decreasing. It is impossible to effectively protect a large number of rural settlements at the bottom of China's traditional settlement system. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the spatial survival status of traditional villages and protect them comprehensively and extensively. Using the digital elevation model (DEM) data of traditional villages in Gansu Province, China, published by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the attribute data obtained by the Statistics Bureau of Gansu Province, China, the nuclear density, the Mulan indices, the correlations between the heights and the centers are calculated and used to study the spatial different characteristics of the villages, and a number of results have been achieved: 1) In spatial differentiation, the spatial agglomeration of the villages is obvious and different, which can be seen by the distribution of the villages from along the upper reaches of the Yellow River to the southeast, and the distribution of prefecture-level cities is related to the landforms. 2) In vertical spatial distribution, the span of the altitude data is large. Among the villages, the Zagana Village in Diebu County of Gannan City is the highest and the Zhengjiashe Village in Bingkou Town of Longnan City is the lowest. With the increase of altitude, the number of traditional villages generally shows a tendency of decrease. 3) The spatial differentiation of the traditional villages has a clear normal distribution with the elevation, and the spatial differentiation is low, showing a distinct gourd-like structure; the eastern and southern regions are more concentrated, while the northern and western regions are less concen

Spatial Distribution and Land Use of Traditional Villages in Southwest China

“…Some studies explored the protection mechanisms and sustainable development modes of them by studying the production and lifestyle, architectural, cultural, and natural landscapes of the villages [10][11][12][13], but these studies paid more attention to qualitative description and analysis. With the development of geographic information system (GIS), research on the spatial distribution characteristics of traditional villages from the regional scale has gained more attention [14][15][16]. However, there is still a lack of research on spatial quantitative analysis that combines the influencing factors and landscape patterns of traditional villages [17,18].…”

Identifying the Spatial Structure and Influence Mechanism of Characteristic Protection Villages under the background of Rural Revitalization: A case study of Hubei Province, China

“…The evolution of CPVs is influenced by multiple factors, such as regional natural environment, topographic relief, elevation, transportation, selection criteria, economic development level, policy making, which can be divided into natural environment, resource endowment, socio-economic development, and policy environment in this study. Given previous studies (Qi et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2021;Yang et al, 2022;Li et al, 2023;Gong et al, 2022;Jin et al, 2022;Wang, D et al, 2020;Jin et al, 2020) and the data availability, this study selected key potential influencing factors to explore the influence mechanism of spatial evolution of CPVs, with county-level administrative as units.…”

Identification of Traditional Village Aggregation Areas from the Perspective of Historic Layering: Evidence from Hilly Regions in Zhejiang Province, China

“…The scale of these studies is classified according to administrative regions, including national scale, inter-provincial regional scale, etc. [1,21,22]. In the meantime, relevant studies have also analyzed crossadministrative geographical units, such as human geographical units divided by cultural attributes and watershed units divided by watersheds, etc.…”