Following Rural Functions to Classify Rural Sites: An Application in Jixi, Anhui Province, China

Rural areas are a type of self-organized regional living environment, with multi-functional symbiosis between humans and land; their functional attributes are function superposition, function difference, and dominant function. The evolution of rural functions is a gradual process and follows the general law of the development of self-organizing systems, which evolutes from the state of general development, competition without rules, and, finally, to an order controlled by the dominant function. By constructing an indicator system and measurement model of rural function evaluation, this study took 11 towns in a hilly area of Jixi County as regional units to analyze the differentiation characteristics and rules of rural functions; the functions include agricultural production functions, nonagricultural production functions, life and leisure functions, and ecological functions. The results show the following: (1) The index of agricultural production functions, life and leisure functions, and ecological functions in Jixi County is higher, while the index of nonagricultural production functions is lower; (2) all towns have at least one function belongings to the “high state strong potential zone”, and some towns show a weak comprehensiveness; (3) the interaction between different functions should be considered when determining the dominant functions of the towns; (4) the formation mechanism of a dominant function has a high correlation with its main influencing factors; and (5) nine types of characteristic village are determined, according to the coupling of village characteristic resources and town dominant functions.