In recent years, with the acceleration of the rural revitalization strategy, rural human settlements have become an important basis for rural revitalization. To date, the governance of rural human settlement environments has attracted the attention of many scholars. The academic community has carried out extensive research on the problem of rural human settlement environments and achieved fruitful results. Subjects including the policy response to the governance of rural human settlements and the construction of the institutional system, as well as the development trajectory, have been studied and elucidated. This paper first presents a knowledge graph analysis of the CNKI research situation, so as to understand some directions and themes of the research on rural human settlements in China.
3.4. Research Hotspots for Rural Human Settlement Environment Studies
SATI software (
http://www.sationline.cn/#!/, Tianjin, China) was used to analyze the literature data, and 1407 keywords were found from 2013 to 2022, among which 895 were independent keywords, with an average of 4.82 keywords per article.
Table 3 shows 20 key words with a frequency of ≥6. Among them, the frequency of “rural human settlement environment” is as high as 108, accounting for 6.18% of the total keywords, followed by the frequency of “human settlement environment” and “rural revitalization” with 89 and 63, respectively, indicating that the rural human settlement environment has an important position in the literature.
The top 10 words were plotted into the word frequency trend chart (
Figure 7). The frequency of “rural human settlements” has increased rapidly since 2018 and is, so far, in the highest frequency position. In addition, it can be seen from the figure that “rural human settlement environment” and “rural human settlement environment” appear every year, and their frequency continues to rise with the appearance and growth of the word frequency of “rural revitalization” from 2018. This indicates that rural human settlements have received constant attention from the domestic academic community. The proposal and implementation of the rural revitalization strategy have further promoted the development of rural human settlements, and a good rural human settlements environment has become an important part of the realization of rural revitalization.
Bibliographic information in a RefWorks format was imported into CiteSpace V software, and the type of keyword node was analyzed. The time slice was set to one year, and the other settings were set to default. After running, the LLR (Log Likelihood Ratio) algorithm was used to obtain the rural human settlements keyword clustering diagram (
Figure 8). There are 282 nodes and 405 connections in the graph, the network density is 0.0102, the Q value is 0.7385, and the S value is 0.923, which indicates that the clustering structure is significant, and the clustering reliability is very high.
The smaller the number in the clustering label, the more keywords it contains. Taking the first three significant clusters as an example (
Figure 9), the clustering of literature on human settlements first appeared in Qu Hanfei in 2013. In the Current Situation and Improvement Strategy of Rural Human Settlements [
4], the clustering results began to increase from 2013, and, as time passed, the attention paid to this cluster has been maintained at a high level. In the keyword prominence view (
Figure 10), “new rural areas” in 2013 and “livable rural areas” in 2015–2017 showed important achievements, indicating a major turning point in the field. For example, CAI Jin’s 2013 article “The construction of new rural communities” played a significant role in improving rural living environments [
5]. In 2016, Xu Wenhui proposed the planning and construction strategy of “suitable for living, working, traveling and literature”, analyzed the weight of “four suitable” indicators, and proposed the construction content and strategy [
6]. The literature in the rural revitalization cluster first appeared in 2018, with Zhang Weimin’s “Improvement of Rural Living Environment Focuses on overall planning” [
7], Yu Fawen’s “Thinking on Countermeasures for Green Rural Development in the New Era” [
8], and Shi Lei and Zheng Shan’s “Construction Mechanism of Rural Human Settlements under the Strategy of “Rural Revitalization”: Practical Experience and Inspiration of the European Union” [
9]. In the same year, the clustering results increased, and the research heat kept rising. From 2020, the number of results increased rapidly. The rural governance literature cluster first appeared in 2018 with Liu Youtian’s “Research on Countermeasures to Promote the Pilot work of Rural Community Construction” [
10]. Since 2018, the clustering results have increased. As shown in
Figure 10, the keywords led by rural areas, critical battles, and countermeasures and suggestions reached an obvious turning point from 2018–2020, and important research results appeared. For example, Zhang Hongyu emphasized the importance of prioritizing agricultural and rural development in realizing rural revitalization [
11]. Elsewhere, Wu Huifang and Wang Yuxia discuss how to better leverage the role of women and women’s organizations in rural development [
12].
According to the above graphic analysis, the research themes and trends related to rural human settlements in CNKI can be divided into the following areas.
The first point relates to rural revitalization and rural human settlement environment research. At present, most Chinese research on rural human settlements is related to the development of rural revitalization. Based on the background of rural revitalization, Liu Chunxia’s paper analyzes the current status of rural residential environment improvement in Henan Province, and puts forward countermeasures, such as developing rural industries, unified village planning, and the intensive use of public funds [
13]. Li Bohua also focuses on rural revitalization [
14]. Li et al. studied the path of transformation and development of human settlements in traditional villages and analyzed the connection between the transformation and development of human settlements in traditional villages and rural revitalization. Huang Fubin analyzed the policy effects of photovoltaic poverty alleviation on promoting rural revitalization in relation to village governance, industrial development, and the living environment, and argued that the policy effects of photovoltaic poverty alleviation on rural revitalization are mainly reflected in the promotion of industrial development and an improved living environment, living conditions, and infrastructure conditions [
15]. From the perspective of ecological value, the improvement of the living environment and other fields, Yan Qiying’s paper analyzes the constraints placed upon rural ecological vitalization and puts forward the appropriate measures for rural ecological vitalization [
16]. The construction of rural human settlement environments and the realization of rural revitalization are interrelated and inseparable. The effective governance of rural human settlement environments will promote the development of rural revitalization, and the implementation of rural revitalization strategies is conducive to improving the governance of rural human settlement environments.
The second point pertains to research on the residential environment. Residential environment research is the focus of this area of rural residential environment research, and mainly considers water and sanitation improvement, garbage treatment, sewage treatment, and the construction of public service facilities. It advocates the construction of a new countryside and a livable countryside. However, domestic research on the living environment focuses more on the improvement of the natural environment, and less on the study of the human and cultural environment in relation to the rural living environment. Zhou Chuanbin designed an ecological engineering model for a rural courtyard, with “planting—breeding—toilet—cleaning—water cellar” as the main line, demonstrating a micro-ecological cycle, with the production and life integration of a compound ecological courtyard [
17]. Ma Junqi indicates that the overall quality of rural human settlements is high, but there are significant differences in all aspects [
18]. There have been obvious achievements in the ecological environment and infrastructure; meanwhile, there are still some weaknesses in the cultural environment, public services, and housing conditions. The governance effect of rural human settlements in eastern China is obviously better than that in central and western China. Plain terrain, reduced labor outflow, collective economic development, the management experience of village cadres, the number of village Party members, and donations of returning residents can significantly improve the quality of rural human settlements. To increase the fiscal tilt to the central and western regions, channels of talent flow should be improved, the collective economy strengthened, new rural sages actively cultivated, and the self-governance mechanism improved, so as to further improve the efficacy of rural environmental governance.
The third area pertains to residential space research. China is a vast country. Due to the varying climate, terrain, and other natural environmental features, as well as traditional national culture and social and economic conditions, there are regional differences in residential spaces. Lin Chuanhong analyzes the spatial patterns of rural human settlements in Anhui Province from three perspectives: production space, living space, and ecological space [
19]. From the perspective of urban and rural integration, Liu Min advocates that the governance of rural human settlements should be coordinated from the perspectives of governance subjects, governance methods, and governance models, while paying attention to integrity [
20]. An Wenyu et al. summarized the mapping co-occurrence relationship between ecological restoration in China’s territorial space and rural revitalization and explored the implementation paths and technological integration model of the ecological restoration of rural territorial space from the perspective of rural livelihood spaces [
21]. By analyzing the picture of rural human settlements in the ideal state of the literati and officials depicted by painter Wang Ximeng of the Northern Song Dynasty, Wang Lin et al. explored the landscape system and characteristics of rural settlements in relation to the four aspects of overall layout, architecture, trees, and activities. They found that its formation motivations were the environmental view, social background, aesthetic thought, and life attitude, which provided references for the construction of rural human settlements at present [
22]. Li Bohua contends that the transformation and upgrading of human settlements in traditional villages depend on the conversion of material and energy between the inside and outside of the system [
23]. Combining the basic methods of ecology, geography, and environmental science, the transformation and development stages of traditional village human settlements are divided into four stages—invasion, competition, response, and regulation—and conceptual models of the driving mechanisms of different stages are constructed.