International Research Trends on New Urban-Rural Relationships Based on Ecosystem Services
Abstract：
Based on ecosystem services, the new urban-rural relationship is a theory and approach aimed at connecting urban and rural areas with the bond of ecosystem services, promoting urban-rural prosperity. This paper examines the concept and reviews the international research progress of the new urbanrural relationship. By analyzing literature from the past 20 years, it reveals that research has mainly focused on six aspects: apart from a few studies proposing or elaborating on the concept of the new urban-rural relationship, early academia primarily concentrated on the residents’ cognition and preference differences towards ecosystem services, striving to promote urban-rural community cooperation. Subsequently, efforts were made to quantify and evaluate ecosystem services along urban-rural gradients to clarify the supply-demand relationship of specific ecosystem services. Simultaneously, there have been rapid developments in designing ecosystem service products that connect urban and rural areas, and institutional and management studies involving multiple stakeholders, providing support for the market-based approach and sustainable governance of the new urban-rural relationship. In recent years, ecological planning and management of urban-rural transitional zones have become a new research focus aiming to promote the sharing and collaborative management of ecological resources between urban and rural areas. Future research should focus on the influence of urban-rural location conditions on the new urbanrural relationship, residents’ cognition and preferences in different socio-cultural backgrounds, sustainable business models for ecological products, common interests and trust relationships among stakeholders, and the balance between ecological construction in urban-rural transitional zones and economic development.