Spacio-Temporal Development of the Rural Natural Landscape in the Beijing-Tianjin Region

China has vast rural areas, which take up approximately 94% of the nation’s total lands.Rural life is the basic relationship between people and land in various types of human settlements. Its development depends heavily on the areas’ cultures, and the feelings, most remarkably nostalgia, of the people from these regions. It is an organic combination of extrinsic material forms and intrinsic cultural spirits of the area. It is therefore an important element of the environment of human settlements. Rural areas possess abundant natural and ecological resources. One of these resources is the natural landscape, which supports rural residences by providing them with physical and psychological necessities for life. Creating a good natural rural landscape is thus an inherent part of building rural residences in which people and nature live in consonance.Rural areas are important places in which Chinese culture is nurtured and physically rooted. China endeavors to build an eco-friendly society, under the background of which rural areas are given a high priority in the systematic protection and utilization of national land resources. China’s rural landscape therefore deserves dedicated research efforts. In this essay, the author conducts a research about the spacio-temporal development of the rural natural landscape in the Beijing-Tianjin region. Through this research, the author attempts to model human-land interactions in China’s rural areas, the purpose of which is to find a means of systematically improving the human-land relationship and the quality of residential environments. This essay confines its investigation to the cities of Beijing and Tianjin. It acquires data on the rural natural landscape by interpreting images generated by remote sensing and analyzing spatial layouts of rural areas. It uses the landscape index method to determine the appropriate system for evaluating rural natural landscapes. In combination with the ecological service value evaluation system, this essay engages in qualitative and qualitative analysis of rural natural landscapes in the Beijing-Tianjin region. It analyzes the development of certain elements, layouts, and the evaluation and subtleties of the local culture between 1980 and 2018. It attempts to extract the spacio-temporal development pattern of said landscape, and to explore the relationship between humans and land in rural areas during rapid urbanization. Research shows that, in terms of the development of material forms, rural natural landscapes in the Beijing-Tianjin region are mostly either agricultural lands or woodlands. These landscapes are evidently differentiated from each other in their constitution. In addition, they also possess four spatial characteristics, namely: have evident spatial differences and four spatial characteristics includes scale, distribution, network and shape. During rapid urbanization, the development in elements of rural natural landscapes in the Beijing-Tianjin region can be roughly summarized as the transformation of agricultural lands into construction lands. Construction lands expand to other surrounding areas, gradually consuming the rural natural landscape and appropriating its space. As a result, the area of the rural natural landscape decreases, its fragmentation worsens, and the heterogeneous shape has continued to fluctuate. Moreover, the fragments of rural natural landscape cannot re-consolidate on their own and restore themselves to their original state.In terms of cultural subtleties, the rural natural landscape in the Beijing-Tianjin region houses four major types of cultures: agriculture, residence, natural tourism, and canal-based transportation. It also houses other cultures such as those that were developed only recently. Together, these cultures form a cultural core unique to the area in which they are found, a core that powers existing traditions and gives birth to new ones.