Morphological characteristics of rural settlements from morphogenesis perspective: a case study of rural settlements in Heilongjiang Province, China

Morphogenesis, differing due to various natural environment and human activities, reflects the spatial orders and characters of settlement's spatial forms. From the perspective of morphogenesis, this research contributes to a comprehensive and profound understanding of regional rural settlements' morphological characteristics. A series of quantified morphological elements of 270 typical rural settlements in Heilongjiang Province are analyzed by the introduction of statistical analysis, spatial analysis and data visualization, which aims at exploring the main genes, accessory genes and mutant genes of rural morphogenesis within the province. Besides, the spatial distribution characteristics of morphogenesis are also paid attention to. The major results are as follows: (1) The main morphological elements of rural settlements in Heilongjiang are "length-width ratio", "network penetration", "building occupancy", "building orientation" and "building distance" and "courtyard type"; (2) the mutation of spatial form is mainly caused by industrial transformation, infrastructure construction, real estate development, demographic change and cultural interaction; (3) the accessory genes are various, which reflects regional morphological diversity and complexity. The spatial distribution of the accessory genes shows an obvious agglomeration effect; (4) the spatial distribution of rural settlements' morphogenesis is influenced by industrial type, geographic environment and social and economic factors. On a theoretical level, this research aims to enrich the structuring recognition and the research methodology of rural settlement morphogenesis. On a practical level, this research could provide a reference for conservation, renewal, planning, construction and reconstruction of rural settlement. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.