It is crucial for the protection and sustainable development of villages in China to effectively determine the changes that have occurred in traditional villages’ architectural features and the causes of such changes in order to provide timely feedback, correct protection planning, and construction in these villages. This paper analyzed quantitative indexes at three different scales in Lingquan village, namely construction land, public infrastructure, and the form, material, and color of roofs, using remote sensing images at different time points, drone shooting, and a field survey. It was found that the rate of change of the architectural features at the village and street levels were low, with an overall trend of improvement observed. However, the residential roof features at the building level showed more changes, with a trend of deterioration observed. It was also found that the active participation of the government was the main reason for the substantial improvement observed in the village’s street-level features. Further, for residential houses, the lack of standard guidance for their protection and renovation, as well as the lack of protection awareness and participation mechanisms, were the main reasons found for the deterioration of the village’s building-level features. Finally, the study forwarded some suggestions in order to provide reference value for the timely revision of protection strategies for many villages in China similar to Lingquan village.

Disentangling the effects of the built environment on urban vitality at the scale of community life circles is crucial for informing precise urban planning and design, particularly in the context of urban renewal. However, studies examining the complex relationships and spatial heterogeneity in these effects remain limited, hindering the identification of built environment characteristics that may generate sustainable benefits. Therefore, this study took Xi’an, a typical high-density city in Northwest China, as an example. The eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model and the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) method were utilized to reveal threshold effects and spatial correlations between the built environment and community life circles’ vitality across varying buffer zones. The results show that (1) there is a significant spatial correlation between the built environment and the core–periphery structure of community life circles’ vitality. (2) Indicators, such as facility accessibility, the floor area ratio, intersection density, and the residential land use ratio, contribute significantly to community life circles’ vitality. (3) While the micro-built environment and socio-economic factors show limited contributions, their collaboration with the macro-built environment can enhance their individual effects, highlighting the necessity of taking them into account together. These findings provide new insights into supporting community life circles’ vitality through urban planning and design.

The mode of urban renewal in China has changed from incremental expansion to a value-added stage, and the development of cities has increasingly focused on the human experience and quality improvement. However, Cultural Street Vending and the unique street spaces in the historic districts that bear important connotations to the city have shown a trend of rapid decline and even disappearance. Therefore, how to identify the characteristics and connotations of such street vending spaces, grasp the relationship between perception of locality and built environment elements in different states and formulate targeted protection and renewal strategies is presently an urgent problem to be solved. Many studies have now discussed in detail the identification of elements, street perception and preservation strategies for historic districts. However, the Cultural Street Vending space, which carries special urban memory connotations, has been neglected, especially the characterisation of this type of space in different time dimensions. This paper takes the Cultural Street Vending space as a research object and focuses on the perceptual differences between its market day and non-market day, aiming at grasping the perceptual characteristics and constituent elements of this type of street space in different time states, as well as the patterns of changes they undergo. This paper took the Baxian Temple, a typical Cultural Street Vending space in a historic district of Xi’an, as the research object and took 30 architecture students as the evaluators to score 33 pairs of adjectives and recall the elements of nine streets. This paper compared and analysed the differences in the structure of people’s psychological perception of the street in the state of market day and non-market day by SD method. It was found that the activities of the vendors obviously promoted people’s positive emotions, and three commonality factors including impression, vitality and morphosis were extracted through the factor analysis. Moreover, through the element recall method to understand the change in element perception on the market day, we found that the range of people’s perception was smaller on the market day and summarised the element map of the space and the element components of high, medium and low characteristics. The correlation analysis between psychological quantities and environmental elements revealed that people’s positive psychology has a positive correlation with vendors, goods and street components and a negative correlation with greening, colour and texture. This study can provide an important research basis for the development of conservation and renewal strategies for this type of Cultural Street Vending space.

Clarifying the mechanism through which community-built environment types influence the supply–demand adaptability of service facilities can promote the effectiveness of community service facility provision in the context of urban renewal. Existing studies have focused on facility quantity, service radius, or accessibility, while few have integrated community-built environment classification with supply–demand adaptability assessment. As a result, the differentiated mechanisms of facility mismatch under different spatial structures remain insufficiently revealed. Taking Xi’an as an example, this research takes 15-minute life circles as basic units and integrates macro- and micro-scale built environment indicators to identify community types. Then, it assesses the supply–demand adaptability of service facilities from four dimensions, including completeness, accessibility, diversity, and equity. The results show that supply–demand adaptability of community facilities is jointly influenced by factors such as road networks, residential complex scale, and walking environment quality. Facility provision adaptability in Xi’an generally shows a declining spatial pattern from the urban core to peripheral areas, while different indicators reveal different types of mismatches. Facility layout patterns act as an intermediate spatial mechanism linking community morphology with supply–demand adaptability outcomes. Their service performance is conditioned by road network permeability, block size, and residential enclosure. Based on these findings, this study proposes targeted optimization strategies for different community types, providing a reference for diagnosing supply–demand conflicts within 15-minute life circles.

To address the coordination between social and spatial relationships within villages in the loess gully region, this study developed a joint Geospatial–Social Network analytical approach. Taking Caojian Village in Zizhou County, Shaanxi Province as the study case, geospatial and social network models were constructed, respectively, with time cost and social interaction frequency as measurement indicators. The two network models were analyzed using cohesive subgroups and node centrality, respectively. Correlation analysis revealed the dominant role of spatial relationships in shaping social relationships, as well as the reinforcing effect of kinship on cross-geographical connections. Furthermore, the joint analysis of the two networks was used to identify village spatial hierarchies and core areas. On this basis, targeted strategies were proposed for public space allocation, public service facility layout, and site selection for relocated dwellings. Ultimately, this research aims to provide quantitative analysis tools and decision-making support for optimizing the spatial structure of villages in the loess gully region.