The natural conditions in the loess gully area are harsh, and the construction of rural public spaces often lacks scientific guidance. It is essential to develop an optimization method for public spaces that is oriented toward the needs of villagers. For this study, the numerous river valley plain villages in Northern Shaanxi were selected as typical examples, with a focus on Liangqu Village as a case study. First, a public space perception evaluation system was established using the semantic differential method, which comprised four criterion-layer factors and nineteen indicator-layer factors. Perception evaluations were conducted for two types of public spaces: nodes and lanes. The results indicate that “facility completeness”, “accessibility”, and “activity diversity” were the most significant factors affecting villagers’ perceptions of node spaces. In contrast, “safety”, “landscape richness”, and “facility completeness” were the most critical factors influencing villagers’ perceptions of road spaces. Based on the evaluation results, the optimization needs of public spaces were categorized into four levels, and factors that urgently require improvement such as “facility completeness” and “safety” were identified. This study analyzed villagers’ perceptions and needs related to public spaces, providing scientific guidance for establishing a bottom-up design method for optimizing public spaces.

Mountainous traditional villages are rural heritage settlements shaped by complex environmental and socioeconomic interactions. Rapid urbanization has driven resource outflow and spatial restructuring, intensifying the conservation–development conflict. Existing conservation models relying on standardized criteria neglect village heterogeneity, and current studies insufficiently capture cluster-specific driving mechanisms across spatial scales. Using 153 traditional villages in the Qin–Ba Mountains of southern Shaanxi, this study shifts the analysis from overall spatial pattern identification to the comparison of cluster-specific driving mechanisms. The results indicate (1) traditional villages display an agglomeration pattern of “one primary core, one secondary core, and multiple peripheries,” forming valley corridor and hilly barrier clusters; (2) socioeconomic factors show greater explanatory power than natural factors at the global scale; (3) influencing factors exhibit dual heterogeneity, with intensity and direction varying across space and clusters displaying distinct dominant-factor combinations; and (4) socioeconomic factors may provide enabling conditions for traditional village conservation and adaptive reuse under appropriate governance contexts. Accordingly, valley corridor clusters can follow “conservation through development,” whereas hilly barrier clusters should adopt “development through conservation.” These findings offer empirical support for spatially differentiated governance of mountainous traditional villages.

Industrial silos, originally storage structures, have become symbols of modernity, architecture, and urban identity. Their verticality and modularity convey both functional efficiency and monumental presence. Today, silos play a key role in industrial heritage debates, where adaptive reuse raises questions of memory, community engagement, and market pressures. This study analyzes international case studies, with a focus on Milan’s Armani/Silos Museum,exploring how conservation, innovation, and cultural narratives intersect. Findings show that silos serve as multidimensional heritage platforms, balancing historical memory, social participation, and economic dynamics, offering insights for sustainable and culturally meaningful urban reuse.

Landscape character change in mountain traditional villages is difficult to assess from a single perspective because roof-material replacement, material–color deviation, and visual exposure vary under complex terrain and settlement configurations. This study develops a multi-source UAV framework for reproducible, spatially explicit assessment of courtyard-scale visual–material integrity (CI), a spatially observable component of landscape character integrity. Using 749 courtyards in nine nationally designated traditional villages in Shangluo, China, the framework integrates UAV orthophotos, 3D mesh models, and point-cloud data to derive material penetration rate (PR), material–color conflict (CC), and standardized visual exposure (VC). PR and CC represent baseline material–color loss, whereas VC is incorporated as an exposure-amplification condition. Formula-structure sensitivity analysis against blinded ratings of 50 sampled courtyards showed that the proposed formulation had the highest rank consistency with expert judgments (Spearman’s ρ = 0.949). The frozen framework also showed a strong association with blinded professional ratings in geographically independent Longnan villages (ρ = 0.912, p < 0.001). XGBoost–SHAP identified courtyard impervious-surface ratio, primary material, and roof form as the leading model-associated predictors of CI variation. The framework supports courtyard-scale CI assessment, priority screening, and repeat-survey reassessment under comparable acquisition conditions.

This essay examines the regeneration of Yuanjia Village (Shaanxi) as a paradigmatic case for understanding the construction of collective memory in contemporary China. Initiated in 2007, the transformation intertwines tourism, community governance, and construction technologies, yielding a landscape that appears traditional while, in fact, it combines redevelopment strategies, market dynamics, and innovative processes. The project raises crucial questions and encourages reflection on authenticity as a relational and unstable category, shaped through selection and spectacularisation processes. The case study further illustrates the capacity of Chinese rural communities to reinterpret tradition in ways compatible with modernity, thereby assigning an active role to heritage in local development.