It is of great significance to explore the future urbanization path of China under the background of the slowing urbanization. Based on the multi-source migration data, this article discusses the relationship between urban administrative hierarchy, urban size and urban population attractivity. With the increase of urban administrative hierarchy and urban size, the urban population attractivity increase. The attractivity of municipalities (province-level city), provincial capital cities and separately planned cities are higher than that of ordinary prefecture-level cities, especially far higher than that of county-level cities (counties). Measured by the number of people attracted by the existing population per capita, the attractivity of separately planned cities, provincial capital cities and higher-level and larger municipalities (province-level city) is basically in the same range, which means that these cities are already close to the maximum city size. The population attractivity of county-level cities (counties) is increasing dynamically, while those of other cities are decreasing. Rural migrants are more inclined to migrate to low-level cities than urban migrants. The new urbanization policy, which takes counties as important carriers, is necessary to advance the urbanization process and promote the coordinated development of urban and rural areas. The policy is also in line with the trend of population migration, and adapts to the urbanization of rural areas. In view of the lack of population attractivity of county-level cities (counties), the transfer of rural population to county-level cities (counties) would be a policy-supported urbanization, which is simultaneous with the spontaneous migration to high-level cities. The organic combination of market and government is precisely the advantage of China’s governance. In addition, the provincial capital cities of the eastern, central and western regions almost have the same population attractivity. Therefore, the urbanization of different provinces can form a system with provincial capital cities as the center in the context of population returning to the central and western regions. While provincial capital cities begin to face agglomeration diseconomy, the development of sub-center cities is important.

Education equity is an important basis of social equity. The spatial inequity of basic education resources is a key issue that needs to be solved urgently in China. However, there are still some deficiencies in the existing research. Firstly, the existing research scale of educational accessibility is concentrated at the municipal, county or community level; Secondly, the existing national or regional accessibility research focuses on the evolution of city accessibility in the region in the context of the development of high-speed rail, expressway and other transportation networks; Thirdly, there is a lack of precise calculation of the time spent by residents arriving at educational facilities at the national level. Based on POI, DEM, transport network, land use, population grid data, this study analyzes the accessibility patterns of basic education facilities nationwide by using the methods of cost-distance grid analysis, population-weighted Gini coefficient, and two-variable Moran’s Index calculation, and evaluates the multi-scale fairness of basic educational accessibility. The study found that: 1) The 15-minute isochron of primary and secondary schools covered 79.7% and 78.8% of the population of the country respectively, and the terrain with high accessibility was mainly plain and basin, mostly distributed in urban agglomerations and metropolitan areas; 2) At the county level, the “high level” and “high balance” of accessibility are clustered and distributed. The two-variable Moran’s Index of population coverage and accessibility variation coefficient are –0.602 and –0.587, respectively, that is, areas with high service levels and their surrounding areas tend to be well balanced; 3) At the provincial level, the “high level“ of accessibility does not coincide with the “high balance”. The Gini coefficient in Beijing and other areas with high accessibility of basic education reaches more than 0.7. Generally, the more complex and diverse the natural geographical environment, the lower the fairness of accessibility of basic education between counties. It is suggested to strictly regulate the withdrawal and merger of schools in rural areas, give play to the role of inter-regional transfer payment in improving basic education facilities, and provide good travel conditions for primary and secondary school students.

In recent years, alternative agricultural production has gradually become an important support for sustainable food systems, and an important hand in interpreting the complex interrelationships within social-ecological systems. This article takes Yinlin Farm in Conghua District, Guangzhou City, as a case study site to explore the vulnerability problem of alternative agricultural production from the perspective of social-ecological system and the formation mechanism of the resilience network of alternative agricultural production. The study shows that: 1) The vulnerability problem of alternative agricultural production is mainly due to the structural political economy elements in the social-ecological system, including the asymmetry of agricultural subsidy policy, the damage to soil structure and instability of germplasm resources, and the non-mainstream nature of the agricultural market. 2) The mechanism of forming a resilient network of alternative agricultural production from the perspective of the social-ecological system includes the resilient social relationship network of linking subjects and norms, the resilient knowledge exchange network of scientific and local integration, and the resilient consumer market network established by mutual trust and identity. 3) The formation of a resilient network of alternative agricultural production is essentially a process of building the resilience of the social-ecological system, and alternative agricultural production and the social-ecological system are mutually constructive. The study reveals the formation mechanism of the resilience network of alternative agricultural production from the perspective of the social-ecological system, which enriches the connotation and extension of the resilience theory in the field of agricultural production; and discusses the possible development trend of the resilience network of alternative agricultural production at the practical level, which provides a reference basis for the construction of China’s sustainable agricultural policy and guarantee system.

Traditional settlements have been often considered as the key parts of the excellent cultural heritages in China. Trying to forwarding the traditional settlements to serve the national strategic needs is the big challenges in this era. For example, traditional settlements can promote the inheritance project for the Chinese excellent traditional cultures and building the cultural confidences of China. However, there is a lack of fruitful research findings or reports on the dedicated research framework in the fields of traditional settlement landscapes. This will lead to the lack of effective theoretical tools or methods in face of analyzing and understanding the traditional cultural features of traditional settlement landscapes in depth. In order to solve this issue, the main purpose of this research is to prove that the cultural landscape genome maps of traditional settlements (CLGMTS, proposed by Chinese scholars since 2015) can be used as the scientific language of the traditional settlement landscapes through combining the theory of cultural landscape gene of traditional settlements (CLGTS, proposed by Chinese scholar in 2003). The main theoretical contributions of this work can be described as the following. First, the article systematically details the corresponding concepts, features, the nature of connotations, and the state-of-the-art of CLGTS, and further describes the scientific characteristics and meanings of CLGMTS. Second, it draws the core features of the scientific language of traditional settlement landscapes which is defined by CLGMTS through the perspective of scientific languages in the natural scientific fields. Third, the study makes it clear that CLGMTS can be characterized as the scientific language of traditional settlement landscapes through its core concepts, core framework, and technical framework. Fourth, it analyzes and discourses the scientific meanings of CLGMTS defined as the scientific language of traditional settlement landscapes in terms of the functions, methodologies, and philosophical senses. Finally, through this study, CLGMTS which is the results of multiple disciplines merged in depth on the areas of traditional settlement landscapes, such as modern informatic technologies, natural scientific methods and theoretical models, scientific philosophy, etc.

The relationship between built environment and urban vitality is a key research topic in the field of urban and rural planning. This article takes subdistrict as the research unit and the central urban area of Shenyang as the research area. Using multi-source big data such as Baidu heatmap data, building contour data, road network data, remote sensing image data, and POI, and applying a multi-scale geographically weighted regression model (MGWR model), this article explores the impact mechanism of built environment indicators on urban vitality in five dimensions: density, diversity, design, destination accessibility, and transportation station distance. The research results indicate that: 1) urban vitality exhibits a gradually weakening circular structure from the center to the periphery, and the built environment has a significant spatial heterogeneity in its impact on urban vitality; 2) The five indicators of commercial service centrality, road network density, building density, functional mix, and subway station density have a strong positive impact on the urban vitality of each street, and there is a clear spatial differentiation pattern; 3) The greening rate and bus stop density have a negative impact on urban vitality on all streets, and the impact intensity of greening rate is higher than that of bus stop density; 4) The impact of population density on urban vitality is negative except for Maguanqiao Street, and the coefficient of influence is relatively small, with a weak degree of influence. 5) The density of road intersections has a positive impact on the urban vitality of the 12 streets in the western central urban area, with a small coefficient of influence and a weak degree of influence. However, it has a negative impact on the other streets, and the negative impact is significantly stronger than the positive impact.