With the implementation of China’s Rural Revitalization Strategy, more and more traditional villages have been developed. However, due to the lack of value awareness, many rural planning policies are unreasonable, and therefore, characteristics disappear. In the past, the value identification of traditional villages mostly stayed in the general value description, which was not enough to highlight the unique overall value of the village. From the perspective of the cultural landscape, taking Liufang village in Liping County of Guizhou Province as an example, this paper interprets the value of cultural landscape from the concept of “long-term interaction between human and nature,” and then carry out three value themes of “settlement landscape of Dong people in the low and middle mountain valley area,” “agricultural landscape and activities of Dong people under traditional rice farming,” and “spiritual landscape of Dong People’s beliefs, systems and customs”. Moreover, by interviewing local residents, this paper summarizes two aspects of Liufang village value consensus—traditional culture and landscape construction, as well as tourism development opportunities and challenges—and analyzes the relationship between them. The new attempt to identify traditional village’s value in this paper lies in the combination of object value and subject perception, which is more conducive to the scientific formulation of traditional village protection and tourism sustainable development strategy.

Famous Historical and Cultural Towns or Villages are among the important components of China’s cultural heritage. Their spatial distribution patterns are directly related to regional geographical patterns, historical transportation geography and traditional communities. Meanwhile, their conservation is challenged by the change in regional population density, the level of urbanization, modern transportation and ecological environment conditions. Therefore, studying the provincial distribution patterns is of great practical significance to the conservation and sustainable development of Famous Historical and Cultural Towns or Villages in China. This study takes 44 of China’s national and provincial Famous Historical and Cultural Towns or Villages in Hubei Province that were announced from 2003 to 2022 as the research subjects and uses the Geographic Information Technology (GIS) tools to determine their clusters and linear distribution zones, including nearest distance analysis, nuclear density analysis, buffer zone analysis and imbalance index analysis. We further analyze the causes of their spatial distribution in conjugation with historical geography and factors related to the preservation of the current situation of them via correlation analysis. Finally, we make suggestions for the conservation and development of Famous Historical and Cultural Towns or Villages in Hubei Province.

The ecological suitability of urban underground spaces (UUS) is critical to sustainable urban development. This study develops a PROMETHEE II-based evaluation framework to assess UUS projects by integrating environmental, economic, and social criteria. A structured survey involving 25 experts was conducted to determine the relative importance of 11 sustainability criteria, with energy efficiency (18%) and carbon footprint reduction (16%) identified as the most influential factors. The PROMETHEE II method, which provides a complete ranking based on net preference flows, was applied to evaluate five real-world UUS projects in China. The underground green park (Φ = 0.82) emerged as the most sustainable alternative, while the multilevel parking facility (Φ = 0.54) ranked lowest due to high construction costs and limited environmental benefits. PROMETHEE II enabled the apparent prioritization of alternatives, thereby enhancing the model’s decision-support capacity. The findings highlight the importance of integrating green infrastructure and transit-oriented underground developments to improve urban sustainability. This framework provides urban planners with a practical tool for aligning future UUS projects with ecological and sustainable development objectives.

The surrounding area of Bubbling Well Road in early modern times, Shanghai, served as an important transportation hub connecting the western and central districts of Shanghai’s International Settlement. It also marked the beginning of a half-century trend of profit-oriented private gardens. The development process from rural outskirts to bustling commercial areas is exemplified by the area of Bubbling Well Road, making it significant for the study of urban transformation in early modern times in Shanghai. In this work, private gardens in the vicinity of Bubbling Well Road are examined as hierarchical elements of urban subdivision using the layering approach of the Historic Urban Landscape. Based on summarizing the trajectory of different types of private gardens under urbanization, typical time nodes were extracted and then horizontally correlated with the process of urbanization to elucidate the hierarchical logic underlying the symbiotic interaction between private gardens and cities. The results show that private gardens have created new hot spots and gathered a lot of popularity for the Jing’an Temple area, prompting this area to gradually evolve from a traditional town to a “backyard garden” of Concession dominated by the entertainment industry. Through the rapid development of the modern entertainment, commerce, and real estate industries, the Jing’an Temple area successfully embraced the trend of developing Concession to the West while achieving transformations in business models and urban style. Finally, with the assistance of the transitional entertainment space, such as profit-oriented gardens, the Jing’an Temple area has successfully undergone a transformation into a modern entertainment industry hub and solidified its commercial status as the “consumption circle” of Shanghai. We systematically investigated the significance of the urban subdivision layer in relation to the temporal changes in the urban environmental structure and the evolution of spatial organization patterns at the macro level; this helps deepen the historical urban landscape approach from an ideological framework level to the practical level.