How to create a sustainable urban morphology for the development of cities has been an enduring question in urban research. Therefore, quantitatively measuring the current relationship between urban morphology and urban function distribution is the key step before urban planning practice. However, existing studies only examine the relationship at limited scales or with a single unit.

Previous planning for rural revival in towns has emphasized construction and government-led policies. However, we argue that the dilemmas of peri-metropolitan rural areas, such as Desakota in China, are far more complex faced with rural super village and hollowed village transformations.

In the context of the transition from “Native-rural China” to “Urban-rural China”, suburban villages have undergone rapid reconstruction of format, industry, and function.

The driving mechanism of soil quality (SQ) has important implications for arable land protection, sustainable agricultural development and ecological environment conservation. This study builds a “perception–response” theoretical framework to investigate how farmers’ land use behavior may affect SQ from the temporal and spatial perspectives.

Agricultural reclamation in coastal zones is effective for mitigating population pressure on the food supply. Soil properties are important factors influencing crop production in reclaimed coastal lands. This study aims to investigate the impacts of time and land use trajectories on soil physicochemical properties after reclamation.

It is essential to understand how urban plans affect urban growth patterns in order to improve current urban planning and management systems. Few studies have been conducted to analyse urban growth patterns of Shenzhen, an international megacity located in southern China, but none of them revealed the relationships between urban planning and urban growth patterns.

Though forest ecosystems play a critical role in enhancing ecological, environmental, economic, and societal sustainability, on a global scale, their future outlooks are uncertain given the wide-ranging threats they are exposed to.

In the rapid process of urbanization in China, arable land resources are faced with dual challenges in terms of quantity and quality.

This paper traces the evolution of land tenure changes in contemporary China since 1949. The transfer of land from peasant households to family farms and commercial sized units is on a vast scale and forms one of the greatest land reforms we have ever seen.

The authors would like to change the authors’ affiliation in the recent published paper [...]