The spatial evolution process, characteristics and driving factors of traditional villages from the perspective of the cultural ecosystem: A case study of Chengkan Village

The traditional village research is a popular topic in rural geography. The traditional village space contains rich human settlement cultural ideas, and thus, revealing its formation and evolutionary law is a practical need for the protection and development of a traditional village. Based on the theoretical analysis, this paper constructs a cultural-ecological environmental framework to analyse the spatial evolutionary process and characteristics of traditional villages. The Chengkan traditional village space displays the evolutionary process of formation, development, prosperity, decay, and regeneration. The natural, economic, and social environments together are regarded as an ecological environment support system that interacts with the traditional village space, drives the spatial evolutionary process. The spatial evolution of the traditional village is an orderly and dynamic process of spatial adaptability transformation that reflects the wisdom of the creation of the ancient Chinese living environment and provides useful inspiration for contemporary village planning and traditional village activation and utilization. The results show that it is necessary to grasp the spatial evolution process, characteristics and driving factors analysed from the perspective of the cultural ecosystem.