Orginal Article
Bin Yu, Yan Lu, Juxin Zeng, Yuanyuan Zhu
In the context of both contemporary human development transformation and humanism booming, ‘living space’ has become a new perspective for human geographers to investigate the change of human-environment relationship, and the spatial view of integrating ‘pattern-connotation-implication’ has also become a new thinking to interpret the interaction of human activities and environment. So far, the researches on living space have focused mainly on the urban areas and their element space and space form. In contrast, little attention has been paid on the rural areas, juxtaposition space and three-dimensioned research. Rural living space refers to a polymer formed by the overlapping of everyday activities for rural residents in a certain territory, such as dwelling, employment, consumption and leisure, and also an organic body where spatial form, spatial implication and spatial meaning are inherently associated with each other. Due to differences in development environment and concrete national situations, post-modernization and counter-urbanization in developed countries has contributed to the post-rurality in rural space. There have been two highlights on rural living space in western academic circles. One indicates the diversification of living subjects in rural area in the context of post-productivism and the heterogenization of living space, and the other refers to life experience and spatial construction with respect to vulnerable groups who are “otherized” by urban social living or marginalized in space. Rural region in China has kept going through function transformation and spatial reconstruction, so it is a unique significance for the livable construction of rural living space. At the present stage, there are also two distinct characteristics studying on rural living space at home. From the view of contents, studies on changes in dwelling space and employment space of rural residents have been played more attention, while studies on consumption space and leisure space are as sparse as morning stars. From the view of methods, the empirical analysis in spatial forms has occupied a leading position, while the structural analysis in spatial implication and humanistic analysis in spatial meaning are expected to carry forward. Notably, it is hard for western studies on rural living space to be standardized. Studies on China’s rural living space own their distinct context. Effective analysis framework can be made from the view of space mutually unified by form, implication and meaning, applying the rational of deconstructing spatial pattern by environment, perceiving spatial connotation by relationship and interpreting spatial implication by impacts, and powerful analysis tools can be created based on various methods of spatial behavior analysis, employing the research methods of combing quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, spatial analysis and statistical analysis; Which will focus on mainly exploring the features, mechanism and effects of the changes of the rural living space to reveal the change laws of rural human-environment. The expected achievements might amplify the research viewpoints, contents and methods of rural geography, and provide theoretical support for the sustainable development of the rural areas.