Dying villages to prosperous villages: A perspective from revitalization of idle rural residential land (IRRL)

Rapid urbanization has led to the sharp decline of some rural villages. Idle rural residential land (IRRL) is symbolic of rural decline, and the academic community is in urgent need of quantitative studies on the spatial pattern of IRRL from the perspective of geography. Taking Pinggu as a case area, we explored the spatial pattern and layout mode of IRRL and evaluated its utilizability and reuse under different spatial layout modes. Our findings show that the idle rate of rural residential land (RRL) in Pinggu, which is in a suburb of a metropolis, is more serious than that of urban land. The patches of IRRL are generally small and fragmented, showing the characteristics of overall dispersion and local agglomeration of the whole area. The agglomerative point type and scattered point type are the main spatial layout modes of IRRL. In villages, the spatial distribution of IRRL is characterized by a small and scattered point distribution, and large-area polygon agglomeration and belt agglomeration are relatively less common. The utilizability of IRRL in Pinggu decreases from the urban fringe to the surrounding rural area. The utilizability of the agglomerative polygon type, agglomerative belt type, and agglomerative point type in the urban suburbs and agricultural plains areas is higher, while the utilizability of the scattered strip type and scattered point type in the northern and eastern suburban mountainous areas is lower. Our research contributes to filling the gap in the geographical quantitative research on IRRL by exploring the interactions between humans and land under rural decline and providing a theoretical basis for the revitalization of declining rural areas and the coordinated development of urban and rural areas.