Simulating the Impacts of the New-type Urbanization Policy on Rural Settlement Changes: A Case Study in Dingzhou,China

To cope with the difficulties of integrating migrant workers into urban life and inefficient land use caused by conventional urbanization, China has proposed a new type of urbanization policy. This policy may have a significant impact on the spatial patterns of rural settlements in China. Exploring this potential impact is conducive to the proposal of scientific plans for the spatial patterns of rural settlements. Therefore, this paper chooses Dingzhou, one of the pilot cities of this new-type urbanization, as the research area to carry out a simulation study on the impact of the new-type urbanization policy. Dingzhou has invested heavily in the new-type urbanization construction in recent years, but the influence of the policy on rural settlements remains unclear. Based on the theoretical framework of previous studies, this paper set up three scenarios, namely “conventional urbanization”, “new-type urbanization”, and “counter-urbanization”. This paper used FLUS (Future Land Use Simulation) Model and various spatial data to simulate the spatial patterns of rural settlements in Dingzhou in 2030 under the different scenarios. By comparing the different scenarios, the impacts of the new-type urbanization policy on the spatial patterns of rural settlements in Dingzhou were evaluated. The results indicated that: (1) From 2000 to 2015, the area of rural settlements in Dingzhou increased by 11.12%. Spatially, the density of rural settlements around the cities and towns increased, and rural settlement areas were mainly converted from cultivated land. Rural settlements were mainly transformed into urban land and cultivated land. (2) The overall simulation accuracy of FLUS was 0.89, so it can be well applied to the simulation of rural settlements. (3) In all three scenarios, rural settlements expanded along their edges, and the closer they were to towns, the more obvious the expansion was. In the counter-urbanization scenario, the change of rural settlements was most dramatic. (4) The new-type urbanization policy makes the spatial patterns of rural settlements in Dingzhou more stable and more intensive.