Urban agglomerations have become a new geographical unit in China, breaking the administrative fortresses between cities, which means that the population and economic activities between cities will become more intensive in the future. Constructing and optimizing the ecological security pattern of urban agglomerations is important for promoting harmonious social-economic development and ecological protection. Using the Harbin-Changchun urban agglomeration as a case study, we have identified ecological sources based on the evaluation of ecosystem functions. Based on the resistance surface modified by nighttime light (NTL) data, the potential ecological corridors were identified using the least-cost path method, and key ecological corridors were extracted using the gravity model. By combining 15 ecological sources, 119 corridors, 3 buffer zones, and 77 ecological nodes, the ecological security pattern (ESP) was constructed. The main land-use types composed of ecological sources and corridors are forest land, cultivated land, grassland, and water areas. Some ecological sources are occupied by construction, while unused land has the potential for ecological development. The ecological corridors in the central region are distributed circularly and extend to southeast side in the form of tree branches with the Songhua River as the central axis. Finally, this study proposes an optimizing pattern with “four belts, four zones, one axis, nine corridors, ten clusters and multi-centers” to provide decision makers with spatial strategies with respect to the conflicts between urban development and ecological protection during rapid urbanization.

The settlement space along China’s Grand Canal is an important part of cultural heritage, boasting high value of conservation and inheritance as a museum of local culture in an active state. The paper is aimed at revealing the current situation and satisfaction with the settlement space environment along China’s Grand Canal Tianjin Section from the perspective of resident perception. We set up a structural equation model to perform an empirical analysis of the inherent relation of the components of the settlement space environment along China’s Grand Canal Tianjin Section and the inherent law influencing its current state. The research results show that the ecological factor of life along China’s Grand Canal exerted a positive influence on the ecological factor of production and the path coefficient was 0.344. The ecological factor of life and the factor of accessibility were in a relation of positive influence and the former had the most prominent influence on the latter, with a path coefficient of 0.534, while the path coefficient of the influence of the latter on the former was 0.131. The factor of social culture exerted a positive influence on the ecological factor of life, with the path coefficient being 0.765. The research conclusion analyzed the realistic difficulties of the settlement space environment along China’s Grand Canal, revealed the inherent law between different surveyed factors and provided basic reference for feature extraction, evaluation and optimized development of the settlement space along China’s Grand Canal.