Many regions of the world have traditional dwellings, which not only represent the main form of residential architecture, but also carry the local vernacular culture, display the region’s unique architectural style, materials and technology, and have important historical and cultural value. Due to environmental factors, traditional dwellings often suffer from architectural damage that threatens the stability of their structure and affects their esthetics value, resulting in a significant number of abandoned and demolished houses. In order to scientifically and effectively solve the damage problems of traditional dwellings, based on the theory of architectural pathology, the following diagnostic method for damage manifestation and the characteristics of traditional houses is proposed: “Architectural Pathology Appraisal–Pathological Environment Analysis–Mechanical Properties Testings”. The traditional dwellings in the ancient city of Guangfu were used as a case study for the practical application of the methodology for analyzing the main types and causes of the damage of the dwellings by examining the damage information of the dwellings, collecting the environmental data of the damaged walls, and testing the mechanical properties of the damaged walls. The results show that the main damage type in the ancient city dwellings of Guangfu is dampness damage, with corrosion deterioration, wall alkali flooding, and the moisture infiltration phenomenon as the manifested symptoms, and the damage is mainly concentrated in the lower part of the wall. In addition, the humidity and moisture content in the lower part of the wall is higher than that in the upper part of the wall, and the compressive strength of the damaged part of the wall is lower than that of the undamaged part. The humid environment of the old town contributed significantly to the destruction of the dwellings, and water intrusion led to a reduction in the strength of the dwellings’ bricks. Through the diagnostic method of building pathology, the causes of Guangfu dwellings’ damage are identified, and scientific and targeted damage intervention suggestions are made. This is expected to provide guidance for the treatment and prevention of building pathology in the ancient city of Guangfu and serve as a reference for the diagnosis and treatment of pathology in traditional dwellings in other areas.

Carbon emissions and land use intensity serve as crucial indicators of land management. This paper proposes a methodological framework to elucidate the sustainability of carbon emissions in rural areas via a coordination model, scrutinizes the correlation with land use intensity, and investigates the significance of influential factors. The study focuses on village-level units within Ningde City, and finds the pronounced spatial heterogeneity characterizing the distribution of carbon emissions across different villages: (1) Villages exhibiting high levels of carbon emissions are predominantly concentrated in the southeast region, whereas those with low carbon emission levels are primarily clustered in the northwest region. The majority of the villages serve as net carbon emission sources. (2) Spatial disparities exist in the impact of land use intensity on economic benefits from carbon sources, ecological benefits from carbon sinks, and carbon emission sustainability. (3) Significant variations exist in the influence of factors affecting land use intensity, economic benefits of carbon sources, ecological benefits of carbon sinks, and the sustainability of carbon emissions in rural areas. These findings could guide governments in implementing distinct land use control policies and provide a framework for assessing carbon emission sustainability within land management strategies.

Against the backdrop of global rural decline and China’s Rural Revitalization Strategy (2017–2050), this study examines the spatial form evolution and development mechanism of Central Village in Huotong Town, Ningde. To achieve this, it employs field surveys, spatial mapping, and hierarchical element analysis to analyze the village’s scale, architectural texture, street interfaces, and landscape nodes. Results show three evolutionary stages: pre-2017 traffic-guided disorderly expansion, 2017–2020 policy-driven orderly planning, and post-2020 stock optimization, forming an “oval radial” structure constrained by the southern hills and Huotong River. The spatial structure shifted from a “kinship-based agglomeration” to a multi-center model, yet contradictions like historical texture damage and excessive street commercialization emerged. Its development is driven by four linked factors: policy, the market, socio-culture issues, and nature. This study offers references for similar rural settlements’ spatial planning and sustainability.

Rural low-carbon planning requires evaluation tools that connect carbon-related performance with the ecological, socioeconomic, and infrastructure conditions of rural settlements, yet carbon inventories and conventional human-settlement assessments do not fully integrate these dimensions. This study developed an exploratory carbon-benefit-oriented sustainability diagnostic and applied it to Qingge Village, Fujian Province. Fuzzy Delphi screening retained 27 indicators across ecological, social, production, and engineering subsystems; Delphi consultation generated expert-based weights; a dimensionless ratio transformation standardized the indicator values; threshold, standardization, and weighting sensitivity analyses evaluated the stability of results across analytical specifications. The primary composite score was 0.413 compared with 0.590 under the target-achievement transformation, and both expert-weighted transformations ranked subsystem contributions as production, ecological, social, and engineering. The ecological and production subsystems performed more strongly against the selected references than the social and engineering subsystems, whereas fully equal global weights placed ecology ahead of production. The principal diagnostic priorities were household energy emissions, green agricultural upgrading, public-transport access, and recorded energy-efficient building coverage. These findings indicate that the diagnostic can organize village-scale low-carbon planning priorities and translate multidimensional performance evidence into a sequenced set of spatial improvement options. This study therefore provides a transparent and practically applicable approach for linking carbon-related indicators with rural human-settlement planning and supporting evidence-informed low-carbon revitalization.