In the context of increasing global energy shortages and climate change, the human living environment, as a crucial component of residents’ daily lives, has garnered growing attention from the academic community. Research on residential environments is vital for promoting the sustainable development of urban construction and constitutes an important aspect of sustainable development studies. This study focuses on the optimization strategy for the outdoor activity space wind environment in the Xihuayuan residential area in Lanzhou city, utilizing spatial syntax analysis and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation technology. Firstly, the outdoor activity space is analyzed for visibility and spatial accessibility using DepthmapX0.6 software. Then, the outdoor wind environment in the residential area is simulated using PHOENICS 2018 software, and the analysis is conducted on outdoor spaces with a poor wind environment in terms of high accessibility. The results indicate that residents’ outdoor comfort in these spaces is poor, highlighting the urgent need for improvement in the wind environment. This research attempts to optimize the wind environment in high-accessibility spaces within the residential area by improving building layout, orientation, and height. The simulation results after optimization demonstrate an increase in the overall average wind speed to 1.44 m/s, with the proportion of spaces with a good wind environment in high-accessibility areas during summer rising from 33.4% to 59.2%. The optimization strategy effectively improves the wind environment in high-accessibility areas of the residential area.

With the advancement of the rural revitalization strategy, counties have emerged as vital platforms for supporting rural revitalization, underscoring the increasing importance of sustainable development in their economies. It is imperative to evaluate the sustainable development potential of county economies and implement precise measures accordingly. This paper selects relevant economic development indicators from 2016 to 2020 for 76 counties in Gansu Province, constructs an evaluation system for assessing their sustainable development potential, and employs methods such as the Theil index, spatial autocorrelation, principal component analysis, and cluster grouping classification. The evaluation considers three aspects: the county economic development gap, the development potential score, and cluster analysis. The findings reveal that the economic development of Gansu Province’s counties exhibits spatial characteristics of multi-point flowering and scattered distribution, with relatively weak communication and development between surrounding counties. Over the five-year period, significant disparities in economic development among Gansu Province’s counties are evident. Liangzhou District ranks highest in county economic development, while other counties with robust economic development are primarily concentrated in the Lanzhou–Baiyin metropolitan area, the Tianshui metropolitan area, the west entrance of the Hexi Corridor economic belt, and the Qingyang–Pingliang group area. These counties exhibit a spatial pattern of agglomeration towards the central and eastern regions. Moreover, some counties in the southeastern region of Longdong demonstrate promising economic development potential, forming an initial scale of contiguous development. This indicates favorable prospects for sustainable development in the region’s county economy.

The wind environment quality at the height of pedestrians can significantly affect the thermal comfort and physical and mental health of pedestrians, promote the diffusion of air pollutants and inhibit the formation of urban heat island effect, and has been paid more and more attention in the field of urban and rural planning. This paper takes Jianlan Road commercial pedestrian Street as an example to maximize the thermal comfort of pedestrians. Based on CFD numerical simulation technology and space syntax theory, the pedestrian wind environment of the accessible space of the block is selected for quantitative research. Through numerical simulation, the influence of block spatial form on the wind environment at pedestrian height under the initial condition of uniform air flow is analyzed, and some suggestions are put forward for the optimization of block spatial form. Finally, the block optimization scheme is verified and simulated. The visualization results show that the wind environment quality of the optimized high-accessibility space is significantly improved, the proportion of comfort zone is increased from 58.2% to 86%, and the static wind rate is reduced from 41.8% to 14%. The wind environment optimization effect is obvious.

Against the backdrop of global warming and rapid urbanization, high-density central urban areas in valley cities face exacerbated ventilation deterioration and reduced pedestrian-level wind comfort due to topographic constraints and intensive development. This study investigates the coupling mechanism between spatial morphology and wind environment in Lanzhou’s Xiguan Cross area using a complex network model, CFD numerical simulation, and statistical analysis. A ventilation resistance surface was constructed using circuit theory and ArcGIS 10.8 to identify ventilation corridors. PHOENICS was used to simulate summer pedestrian-level (1.5 m) wind fields, while SPSS 2025 was employed for regression analysis of building density, enclosure degree, and dispersion degree against the mean wind velocity ratio. Results indicate: (1) wind velocities are higher at the periphery and lower in the interior; (2) building density and enclosure degree have a highly significant negative impact on the wind velocity ratio, whereas dispersion degree has a significant positive impact, with influence intensity ranked as enclosure degree > building density > dispersion degree. Based on these findings, three differentiated morphological optimization strategies are proposed and validated through simulation, effectively increasing the proportion of comfortable wind zones. This study provides a scientific basis for improving urban microclimate and pedestrian comfort through urban design.

High-density valley residential areas face poor ventilation and heat island effects. Taking Lanzhou’s Xin’an Residential Area as a case, this study integrates land use and cover change (LUCC), circuit theory, and CFD to construct a resistance surface, identify corridors and key nodes, reveal coupling mechanisms and propose collaborative optimization strategies. Results show the following: (1) Ventilation resistance presents a pattern of “low in the north, high in the south, permeable at the periphery, obstructed in the interior”, with high-resistance zones accounting for 18% of the grid area; green plot ratio is the most sensitive regulatory factor (standardized regression coefficient = −0.679). (2) The fishbone-like ventilation network has primary hub nodes undertaking 80% of airflow transport, while tertiary terminal nodes (73% of total nodes) are the main ventilation bottlenecks. (3) Built-up land morphological indicators show strong spatial collinearity, and the positive effect of road plot ratio is masked in the regression model. The proposed hierarchical micro-renewal strategy provides an operable technical pathway for wind environment optimization, low-carbon renewal and climate-adaptive retrofitting of high-density valley residential areas. This study extends circuit theory to micro-scale ventilation analysis and establishes a replicable quantitative framework for ventilation diagnosis in analogous valley residential contexts.

Land-intensive high-density residential development often comes at the cost of compromised natural ventilation efficiency and reduced capacity for urban heat island mitigation, and such trade-offs are particularly pronounced in valley cities due to topographical constraints. Taking Lanzhou Yineng Huanghe Jiayuan as a case study, this research constructs a “Source-Flow-Sink” landscape ventilation efficiency measurement framework based on circuit theory and CFD numerical simulation. Combined with correlation analysis and multiple linear regression, the coupling mechanism between spatial morphology and ventilation efficiency is examined. The results indicate that: (1) The study area exhibits a ventilation pattern characterized by “Source” in the north, “Flow” in the middle, and “Sink” in the south; (2) The wind speed ratio in the residential area shows a highly significant negative correlation with vegetation coverage, and a significant negative correlation with building dispersion and average building height; (3) Based on three configuration modes of “Source-Flow-Sink”, differentiated micro-renewal strategies that do not alter the core indicators of land intensification are proposed, providing a scientific basis for climate-adaptive design of intensive residential areas in valley cities.