Zoning and consolidation strategy for rural residential land in the areas around Bohai gulf in China

In order to instruct new countryside construction, to remain the basic arable land at a safe level and to coordinate land use allocation between urban and rural areas, taking the 327 counties in the area around Bohai gulf as research units, a zoning model for the rural residential land was proposed based on the index discrimination method. First, according to the potential of land consolidation, the ability to adopt consolidation projects and the urgency for consolidation, 15 factors were selected to construct the evaluation index system and the conceptual model for zoning the rural residential land. Then, the entropy method and the index discrimination model were employed to attach the weights to the factors and to delineate the rural residential land respectively. Finally, five type zones, including the prior consolidation area, the key consolidation area, the optimal consolidation area, the moderate consolidation area and the preferred area were divided for “pothook project” based on the comprehensive assessment values and the division standards. For prior consolidation area with the highest urgency, its suitable consolidation model was the urbanization leading model. Population concentration, industrial agglomeration and scale land use was the suitable consolidation model for the key consolidation area, and intra-village intensification model was the main consolidation model for the optimal consolidation area. In the preferred area for the pilot project of linking urban and rural construction land change, agriculture was the top priority for consolidated land, and the main object for this type of area was to establish a new city-countryside relationship by restructuring rural space. In the moderate consolidation area, it was necessary to pay attention to ecological environment and ecological function. The study results revealed the current situation of rural residential land use. The optimization strategy is feasible to carry out consolidation projects, for it can contribute to protecting arable land, developing land consolidation plans, and implementing the pilot project of linking urban and rural construction land change.