Residential form is an integrated manifestation of spatial, livelihood, and cultural configurations. It constitutes the objective of rural settlement restructuring while also serving as its mediating mechanism. Drawing on the theory of space production, this study examines and elucidates the theoretical logic of rural settlement restructuring within China's urban-rural integration context through the lens of residential form reproduction. Based on the theoretical analysis, this paper attempts to further extract practical strategies from established typical cases from four regions of China. As a comprehensive concept, residential form extends the analysis of rural settlement restructuring through its tripartite dialectical relationships. The crux of rural settlement restructuring lies in reorganizing resource elements and reforming property rights systems to establish a coupled "human-land-industry-rights" nexus, facilitating the reshaping of human-land relationships, adjustment of interpersonal dynamics, and reconstruction of value norms through collective praxis. Four representative cases demonstrate that rural settlement restructuring inherently embodies the value orientation of constructing "residence-industry communities", necessitating an "industry-property rights" linkage mechanism to organically integrate residential form. Locational conditions and initial residential form jointly determine a village's developmental potential and collective action capacity, defining power interactions between village actors and external entities, thereby molding spatial governance mechanisms that drive the reproduction of residential form. Specifically, a power-bridging relationship exists between villages and government, wherein the government provides elastic empowerment calibrated to local action capacity to supplement or stimulate autonomous agency. Concurrently, village actors and market actors share the property rights and economic elements during rural land marketization. Crucially, residential form reproduction extends the "society-space" dialectic of space production theory while foregrounding residential culture as an analytical dimension, offering significant explanatory power for rural restructuring rooted in China's cultural context and collective property rights system. This study provides an integrated framework for analyzing different viewpoints on the evolution of Chinese villages, and also offers localized and diversified governance strategies for rural settlement restructuring.

Confronting the dualistic dilemma of "urban knowledge hegemony, rural passive reception" during urban-rural transformation, this paper proposes a theoretical framework for "knowledge-oriented rural communities". Based on field investigations in the Hetao Irrigation Area from 2015 to 2025, it reveals the mechanism through which knowledge governance drives urban-rural integration. The research indicates that urban knowledge elites reconstruct the "technical-cultural" composite capital order through localized scientific practices, enabling villagers to shift from passive recipients to active producers and disseminators of knowledge, thereby forming a networked urban-rural functional community. Urban-rural integration evolves through three stages: the local response stage achieves the spatial penetration of knowledge elements; the technical-cultural dual empowerment stage exhibits a concentric spatial structure of "core fusion—transitional gaming—edge sedimentation"; ultimately leading to governance innovation guided by knowledge power. Knowledge governance functions through three primary mechanisms: knowledge capital, via spatial translation, forms an adaptive regulatory system for culture and ecology; urban-rural power undergoes bidirectional reconstruction through downward empowerment and upward embeddedness; effective spatial reproduction is achieved through "gradient circles—channel governance—value transition". The practice in the Hetao Irrigation Area demonstrates that knowledge governance offers a theoretically robust and practically viable approach to resolving the urban-rural dual structure.

Traditional villages in the metropolitan fringes multifaceted challenges stemming from urban expansion, the permeation of consumer culture, and the imperative for living heritage conservation. Clarifying the dynamic social relationship centered on the power game of multiple subjects and its shaping mechanism on space is of great significance for achieving cultural heritage inheritance in the context of sustainable urban-rural development. Through literature analysis, theoretical framework construction, and case study research, this study elucidates the restructuring logic, mechanisms, and models of these villages from a theoretical perspective of "subjects-power-space". The findings indicate that: (1) Constructing an analytical framework based on the theory of space production, micro-power theory, and China's rural land system is instrumental in deconstructing the restructuring logic. This framework elucidates the synergistic interplay between the regulatory power of macro-level actors, the practical power of micro-level actors and the process of spatial restructuring. (2) The primary restructuring types are categorized into regulation-driven, endogenous practice-driven, and collaborative development-driven models, revealing the differentiated logic underlying village transformation under varying power dynamics. (3) Case studies of Liuliqu village, Beigou village, and Huangshandian village, representing the three respective types, demonstrate distinct characteristics of macro-actor regulation, micro-actor endogenous practice, and collaborative development in their transformation mechanisms. Corresponding differentiated development models are proposed, including spatial empowerment to activate community regeneration, power synergy to enhance resource integration, and refined spatial governance. Theoretically, this research extends the study of social relations in space. Practically, it provides a capital region exemplar for the living conservation of traditional villages on the metropolitan fringe in the New Era.