The 18th CPC National Congress in 2012 figured out that the territorial space optimization was the primary task of the ecological civilization construction and to make production space intensive and efficient, living space livable and suitable, ecological space.This study systematically reviews the recent advances for the overall optimization of production space, living space and ecological space (PLES) by the method of literature review and summary induction. It is concluded that the present studies of the overall optimization of PLES were mainly carried out from the perspective of the utilization quality of land space, land suitability evaluation, resource environmental bearing-capacity and comparative advantage.But because of the short of recognition of the scientific intension of PLES and the incompleteness of quantitative identification and classification system construction, there are still problems that the technological approaches of the overall optimization of PLES may still have to overcome. The technological approaches of the overall optimization of PLES should build the theoretical basis and technical system of PLES identification and optimization aiming for Beautiful China Initiative by the theory of human-earth coupled systems. On the theoretical level, the initiative should give full consideration to the mechanism of material and energy transfer within the PLES system and the parsing of the transfer pathway, flow process and metabolic mechanism of water, soil, energy, carbon and other key elements of PLES system by the combination of the resource metabolism theory and the geographical pattern of PLES. On the technological level, it should pay attention to the development and application of the system simulation model and the multi-objective optimization model, and synthetically consider the dynamic mechanism between population, resources, environment and land space elements, and combine the results of evolution rule and the conflict and problem diagnosis of PLES, and consequently to achieve the overall optimization of PLES by the design of different scenarios and parameters.
