With the rapid development of urbanization and industrialization, China’s metropolitan areas have experienced dramatic transitions of land use, which has had a profound impact on the eco-environment. Accordingly, the contradictions of regional production, living, and ecological spaces have intensified. In this context, analysis of the dynamics of regional production–living–ecological (PLE) spaces has become an important entry point for studying land use transition and its eco-environmental effects, by constructing a classification system of PLE land functions. Using remote sensing data from four periods from 1985 to 2018, this paper explores the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of PLE spaces and their eco-environmental effects in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration, based on GIS and the InVEST model. The results revealed that from 1985 to 2018, the living space of the BTH region expanded rapidly, the production space gradually shrank, and the ecological land remained relatively stable. The eco-environmental quality index within the study area shows obvious regional differences, demonstrating the spatial distribution of “high in the northwest and low in the southeast”, and an overall deteriorating trend in the past 33 years. Moreover, the carbon density decreased gradually from northwest to southeast, and the transformations from production land into living land and from ecological land into production land were the major types of eco-environment deterioration. Our findings will provide guidelines for land use management, and offer references for the functional division of PLE spaces and ecological civilization construction, especially in terms of the coordinated development of the BTH region.

Purpose: Rural resilience plays an important role in maintaining rural stability and people's living standards in the face of risks and unexpected challenges. The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the concept and mechanism of rural resilience and discuss how rural resilience is measured and to propose ways to improve rural resilience.Design/methodology/approach: Literature review of the theoretical interpretations and empirical studies of rural resilience are conducted in the paper.Findings: Resilience acts in the process as rural communities respond to risks and disturbances so as to maintain system stability and minimize the loss. Rural resilience consists of the capacity of resistance, adaptation and transformation. Promoting multifunctional transformation, exercising bottom-up planning and enhancing social capital are proposed to improve rural resilience.Originality/value: The study of the paper makes comprehensive review of rural resilience in the context of rural interaction with the changing external environment. The study contributes to the understanding of rural evolution and helps to initiate feasible ways to achieve rural revival.