Potential zoning and development paths of homestead renovation for rural revitalization in southern Hunan Province of China

Abstract: Homestead renovation has been one of the most important parts of comprehensive rural land consolidation. The potential of homestead renovation can greatly contribute to scientifically managing land sources, thereby effectively implementing the related policies in functional areas. The purpose of this study is to build an evaluation system from the four dimensions of spatial distribution, the demand, the external environment, and the renovation cost of the homestead. Taking typical towns in southern Hunan of China as the research areas, a landscape and spatial analysis was made to calculate the relevant indicators. TOPSIS method was then combined to rank the potential value using information entropy. The optimized hot spot analysis was utilized to explore the spatial distribution of homestead renovation potential for each village type in the study areas, as well as the future direction of spatial reconstruction and transformation. The results show that: 1) The main influencing factors were achieved, including terrain conditions, potential tapping coefficient of per capita homestead area, and the average nearest neighbor distance of homestead. Specifically, the landscape fragmentation was much higher, as the patch density of homestead increased. 2) The hot spot areas of renovation potential of the homestead were concentrated in the Northeast hills and Southeast mountains in the study areas, while the cold spot areas were concentrated in the central plain of town in the middle and west. 3) Four gradient levels of homestead renovation were divided, according to the combined evaluation of homestead remediation potential and village classification. Specifically, the potential value of village homestead renovation from large to small was ranked in the following order: the fragile ecological environment, gathering and upgrading, traditional village and balanced development, as well as agricultural production leading type. 4) Seven typical areas of comprehensive land consolidation were divided without considering the administrative division of the village level. A transforming development path of "homestead renovation + N" was also summarized to highlight the natural resources and characteristic elements in each typical area. Anyway, the potential of village homestead renovation was dominated by the own endowment, and geographical location. In addition, a micro-scale assessment of renovation potential can widely be expected to explore the homestead exit mechanism, further to guide the township for the comprehensive land renovation in rural revitalization.