Due to the changes in land use types and industrial agglomeration brought by the long-term rapid urbanization, the ecology of China’s rural areas has been greatly impacted. The health of residents and other living beings living in rural areas has been affected. In recent years, the ecology of the rural environment has been paid attention to. This study performed a bibliometric analysis of 167 papers on the Web of Science from 2013 to 2022. It shows that policy management and environmental science were two main research fields in solving the ecological and environmental crisis in China’s rural areas. Additionally, it was found that the study areas often spanned administrative districts, and the research was mainly based on the integrity of the overall ecosystem. The cases studied were mainly distributed in the following three types of areas: continuous river basins and lake basins; economically developed regions; and less developed areas with relatively fragile ecosystems. Ecological elements such as water, soil, air, and vegetation were all included in the study aims. Finally, from the perspective of institutional reform, comprehensive approaches to solving China’s rural ecological environmental problems in the current research were identified, including the revision of laws and regulations, economic means, technological innovation, and public participation.

Coastal traditional rural settlements face increasing challenges from human activities and natural disasters driven by global climate change and rapid urbanization. Ensuring their spatial stability is essential for ecological security, economic development, and social sustainability. This study addresses the lack of unified methodologies for assessing the resilience of regional traditional village clusters by proposing a “network construction–spatial simulation–resilience assessment” framework based on complex network theory. Using the Haicao housing village cluster in Rongcheng City, China, as a case study, a spatial network model was constructed, and resilience was evaluated under both current and future scenarios using eight resilience indicators. The results show that the current spatial network structure exhibits clustering with weak interconnections among subgroups. Key nodes significantly influence network metrics, resulting in low overall resilience. In future scenarios, protective measures targeting the top 15% of villages with high development potential enhanced social connections, reduced reliance on key nodes, and improved network resilience. This study provides a quantitative method for assessing the resilience of traditional village clusters and identifies critical pathways and nodes to optimize regional spatial structures. The findings offer new perspectives for guiding the preservation and sustainable development of traditional villages.

Public participation is a requirement for contemporary urban governance in China, especially in the protection planning of historic districts. In the rapid development stage, many historic districts have lost their functional positioning in cities and are gradually disappearing due to outdated facilities and services. Previous studies have pointed out that protecting historic and cultural districts requires the joint efforts of multiple stakeholders. Integrating multiple stakeholders’ interests and needs is a complex problem in related research fields and planning practices. The traditional forms of public participation, such as questionnaire surveys, interviews, and symposiums, have the problem of high time costs for collection and analysis. At the same time, the information has been translated multiple times, making it challenging to avoid misunderstandings and errors. Therefore, there is an urgent need for an alternative platform for public participation in the renewal of China’s historic districts. Taking Houzaimen Street in Jinan City as an example, this paper uses the Bayesian network to establish a spatial evaluation model of historic districts. Our aims are to translate natural semantics into the design semantics of the architectural field, accurately locate the spatial problems of the historic district, and provide targeted improvement measures. In this paper, a public feedback channel for Houzaimen Street is established to provide a reference for the renewal of the historic district and the advancement of public participation.