Discerning Spatiotemporal Patterns and Policy Drivers of Rural Settlement Changes from 1962 to 2020

Despite two centuries of urbanisation worldwide, 45% of the world’s people still live in rural areas. Driven by urban development, the form and structure of rural settlements have undergone drastic changes. Reasonable planning according to the scale of the land and spatial layout of rural settlements is particularly important for the development of rural areas. The continuous development of the economy means that the housing needs of farmers and the macro policy background will inevitably change. We create a relationship curve for the “policy-scale of rural settlements” in different periods according to the laws of Maslow’s psychological demand theory and game theory and conduct an empirical study on Dingzhou City, China. The limited availability of remote sensing data means it is difficult to map the evolution patterns of rural settlements on medium and long time scales, and therefore, this paper explores and decrypts military satellite images, reveals the spatial evolution characteristics of rural settlements in Dingzhou, China from 1962 to 2020, and discusses the impact of policy factors on changes to rural settlements in different periods. The study found that from 1962 to 2020, the total area of rural settlements in Dingzhou showed a trend of continual increase, with a total increase of 8354.97 ha (73%). The average annual growth rates in 1962–1972, 1972–1990, 1990–2000, 2000–2010, and 2010–2020 were 0.29%, 1.17%, 1.81%, 1.26%, and 0.05%, respectively. The growth rate of rural settlements was relatively slow from 1962 to 1972. The policy was mainly because rural homesteads (land for building rural residences) were transformed from private ownership to “one homestead, two systems”, and the expansion of rural settlements was inhibited. From 1972 to 1990, with the deepening of reform and opening up, there was a boom in building houses in rural areas, and the growth rate of rural settlements increased. From 1990 to 2000, although the state strengthened the management of rural settlement use, there was still an increasing trend in the area of rural settlements; from 2000 to 2020 the implementation of policies such as “one house for one household" and “connecting increase and decrease" meant that the growth rate of rural settlements slowed