Identifying the Static and Dynamic Relationships Between Rural Population and Settlements in Jiangsu Province, China

Rapid urbanization has triggered large rural population floating into cities, which in turn affects rural human-land relationships. The actual human-land relationship involves the coupling level of a time point and dynamic change of a time interval. However, few studies have identified the rural human-land relationship from these two perspectives. This study combined static coupling analysis with a dynamic decoupling model to analyze the relationships between rural population and settlements from 2009 to 2018 in Jiangsu Province, China. Although the static coupling degree in Jiangsu Province was relatively high, the decoupling analysis found that the rural human-land relationship in most counties was uncoordinated. There were 11 combination types based on the coupling and decoupling relationships. The most common two types (accounting for 76.74%) were recession decoupling with high-level coupling and strong decoupling with high-level coupling. Although the majority of counties had a high-level coupling degree, an uncoordinated change in rural population and rural settlements was observed in these counties. Counties with relatively reasonable human-land relationships accounted for only 12.79% of the total. The combination features for each type were identified and differential policies were proposed for optimizing human-land relationship in rural areas. This study would contribute to our understanding of the multiple relationships between rural population and settlements involved in different patterns and processes, and expect to provide theoretical and methodological support for promoting rural revitalization and sustainable development in practice.