Improving the development level of tourism service facilities in historic areas of old cities and realizing the sustainable tourism are important strategies for urban historical protection, economic development, and cultural rejuvenation. Districts at different tourism development stages show different characteristics of tourism service facilities. This study collects location-based service data and uses space syntax to identify the correlation between the distribution of tourism service facilities and street networks, which helps decision-makers to optimize the spatial layout of tourism facilities in the planning of historic areas. Taking the southern historic area of Nanjing, China, as an example, this is an area with a rich collection of cultural heritage and many historic districts, and the study reveals that the areas with strongest street agglomeration and best accessibility, as well as the districts with most mature tourism development, are the core of the tourism facilities. The agglomeration of transportation and accommodation facilities should be set at the traffic nodes as much as possible due to the highest correlation with the street network. Instead, the entertainment, catering, and shopping facilities can be set in the nontraffic node areas under the premise of ensuring good traffic accessibility owing to the insignificantly relationship with the street network. The research results can be used as an important reference for urban decision-makers regarding the planning of historic areas.

The assessment of buildings facilitates the exploration of the viability of progressive and organic renewal, prevents the aimless and unorganized demolition of residential buildings in previous urban renewal projects, and facilitates the balancing of the preservation and sustainable development of historical urban areas. Studies have rarely examined the effect of regional factors on building renewal or differentiated the effects of historic preservation and development conditions. The fundamental function of historical urban areas in China is to provide residence. Therefore, this study developed a framework to identify the renewal type of residential buildings. The developed framework was used to construct a demand–potential–constraint model with assessment indicators related to three dimensions, namely renewal demand, development potential, and preservation constraint. Moreover, discriminant matrices were employed to divide the renewal of residential buildings into four modes and subdivide it into six types. The historical urban area of Suzhou was selected as the study site. According to the results of renewal type identification, renewal schedules and models with high referential value can be developed by urban renewal planners, which facilitates the optimization of resource allocation. The developed framework provides novel theoretical and practical insights regarding building renewal assessment in historical urban areas.

Amid the global urbanization process, addressing the spatial carrying capacity constraints of historic urban districts and enhancing sustainable tourism vitality has become a critical issue in urban renewal research. This study takes Suzhou Old City as a case study and innovatively constructs a dynamic spatiotemporal analytical framework to examine the relationship between tourism facility attractiveness and tourism vitality in historic districts. This study integrates multi-source spatiotemporal data and applies factor analysis, weighted kernel density estimation (KDE), spatial autocorrelation analysis, and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to systematically investigate the spatial distribution patterns of tourism facilities and elucidate their multidimensional driving mechanisms on tourism vitality. The findings reveal a generally positive correlation between tourism attractiveness and tourism vitality. However, significant temporal and spatial variations exist, with different types of tourism facilities demonstrating distinct attractiveness patterns at different times of the day. These variations underscore the intrinsic link between visitor behavior and regional functionality as well as the structural contradictions within historic districts. This study not only advances theoretical insights into the spatial optimization of tourism facilities and tourism vitality enhancement but also provides scientific evidence and policy recommendations for improving facility distribution, revitalizing historic districts, and promoting sustainable urban development.

Retaining indigenous populations is vital to the sustainable development and conservation of historic urban areas. However, little attention has been paid to Chinese conservation planning in an effort to safeguard indigenous people. This paper investigates population change and residential mobility in Chinese historic urban areas by applying demographic analysis and regression models to survey data collected in the Ping-Jiang Historic Quarter. Results indicate that few relocation behaviors are a result of the welfare housing policy and property ownership. However, residents’ intentions to move have increased, due to declining living conditions and tourism development in recent years. Classified by property ownership, public housing tenants and rented housing migrants were more willing to move, while private housing owners preferred to stay. Accordingly, there have been increasing trends of aging, poverty growth and population displacement, epitomized by the public housing population. Assessing planning impacts, welfare policy reduced residential mobility while undermining residents’ self-reliance to maintain their own houses. Without substantial social participation and community support, top-down conservation planning could only slow, rather than reverse, the trend of socio-cultural decline.

With the rapid aging of the global population, China’s old urban areas, especially historical urban areas, are facing a more severe aging situation. In the context of heritage protection, the development and regeneration of historical urban areas are restricted. They usually face the aging and decay of housing, infrastructure, and public service facilities, which are harmful neighborhood environmental factors to the health development of older adults. Since the World Health Organization adopted “healthy aging” as a development strategy to deal with population aging, the mental health of older adults has become an increasingly important public health issue. A growing body of research demonstrates the positive impact of blue spaces (including oceans, rivers, lakes, wetlands, ponds, etc.) on older adults’ mental health, yet evidence on the potential of blue spaces in a historical environment to promote mental health among older adults remains limited. Therefore, exploring the neighborhood impact of blue space on the mental health of older adults has become a new entry point to provide an age-friendly environment for older adults in the ancient city. This study uses multi-source data such as community questionnaire data, remote sensing images, urban street view images, and environmental climate data of the ancient city of Suzhou, to extract a variety of blue space quantitative indicators, and uses the hierarchical linear model and mediation effect model to explore the neighborhood impact of blue space exposure in the historical environment on older adults, to try to explore the impact path and formation mechanism behind it. The result is that exposure to neighborhood blue space in Suzhou’s historic urban area is significantly related to the mental health of older adults. Additionally, neighborhood blue space exposure improves the mental health of older adults by relieving stress and promoting physical activities and social interaction. The health effects of neighborhood blue space exposure vary among elderly groups with different age and income stratifications, and have a greater impact on the healthy lifestyle and mental health of older adults in younger and lower-income aging groups. Based on a multidisciplinary theoretical perspective, this study enriches the empirical literature on the impact of blue space on the mental health of older adults in historical environments and provides a scientific basis for the regeneration planning of “healthy neighborhoods” and “healthy aging” in historical urban areas.

The development of the social landscape of towns and villages at the county level in China currently lacks sustainability and urgently needs to be optimized. By developing a compound ecological capital system, the optimization of the social landscape will be an important process. Based on the dialectical relationship between landscape production and landscape sustainability, a theoretical framework is proposed as a paradigm of landscape structure. By highlighting the culture base and life proposed in ecosystem services (ES) described in the common international classification of ecosystem services (CICES) methodology, we propose a new social landscape order. We used Hequ County, Shanxi Province, China as the study case, evaluating the ecology level of social capital by gravity. In this paper, four types of optimization approaches for social landscape structure are proposed: completing urbanization (urbanized approach), shaping social landscape (prioritized development approach), protecting nature (scale-controlled approach), and increasing agricultural landscape (migrated and merged approach).