In the new stage of China’s economic development, significant transformations have occurred in the mode, emphasis and speed of urban development. Enhancing the level of livelihood public service and promoting the green development of cities have emerged as the prevailing themes of contemporary urban development. Based on a theoretical model analysis, using the panel data of 281 cities in China from 2007 to 2020, this paper adopts the fixed-effect model for empirical analysis. The study revealed the following four main points. (1) The provision of livelihood public services can effectively enhance the efficiency of urban green development. After conducting a series of robustness tests, this conclusion is still valid. (2) The provision of livelihood public services only fosters the green transformation of non-resource-based cities, while its impact on resource-based cities remains non-significant. (3) The mechanism test demonstrated that livelihood public services promote green development efficiency mainly through population, innovation and producer services agglomeration. (4) The threshold effect test showed that there are differences in the nonlinear relationship between the livelihood public service level and urban green development efficiency under different threshold variables.

Urban-rural integration development is an important means of realising rural revitalisation, and agricultural and rural modernisation. We used the entropy method, kernel density analysis, the spatial exploratory data analysis method, and a geographic probe to analyse the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of urban-rural integration and its influencing factors in Hebei Province from 2005 to 2020. We found: First, urban-rural integration in the province’s counties shows a fluctuating, albeit overall upward trend. In particular, 2005‒2010 exhibited a fluctuating trend, while 2011-2020 exhibited rapid improvement in urban-rural integration. Second, the urban-rural integration development shows some persistence, with faster-developing (slower-developing) areas continue developing faster (slower). Third, the influencing factors of the urban-rural integration level diversify and evolve over time, with the number of dominant factors gradually growing from one to relatively diversified.

The reasonable allocation of green infrastructure (GI) can improve the environmental quality of human settlements and urban residents’ happiness. We used hedonic price and quantile regression models to quantitatively examine the impact of GI accessibility on housing prices, and the heterogeneity of this impact across different housing prices. The results showed that: (1) GI accessibility significantly affected housing prices. In addition, every 1% increase in GI area increased housing prices by approximately 0.3%. (2) GI accessibility had different effects on different housing prices; that is, different housing prices had different sensitivities to GI accessibility. This was especially true in the 25%-75% range of housing prices, where housing prices were negatively correlated with the time to the nearest GI. During urban development, reasonable planning and construction of urban GI should be undertaken to meet urban residents’ needs for GI and promote sustainable urban development.

Building livable urban space is an important component of urban construction. The evaluation of urban space livability is of great significance for urban sustainable development. The study measured the level of urban spatial livability in the urban area of Hefei from the spatial perspective of production-living-ecological space (PLES), using spatial analysis methods, to provide new ideas for the construction of livable urban spatial and to promote the coordination of urban spatial elements and spatial optimization. Firstly, this study constructed the evaluation model for urban spatial livability from three perspectives: Comfortable living, convenient production and ecological health. Secondly, using the evaluation model for urban spatial livability, the global spatial autocorrelation analysis method and the coupling coordination degree model, the single factor differentiation of urban space livable potential, comprehensive livable degree and the coupling degree of PLES in the urban area of Hefei were analyzed, respectively. Finally, this study discusses the coordination of PLES elements of the urban space in Hefei urban area, and puts forward spatial optimization strategies. The results show three important aspects of this system. (1) In terms of the single-factor livability of living, production and ecology, there are significant differences in the spatial distribution characteristics of the livability of the Hefei urban area. There is a spatial clustering of living comfort areas in the center, a spreading of production convenience areas from the center to the periphery, and a scattering of ecological health areas around the perimeter. (2) The overall livability of the urban space in Hefei is high. In terms of space, it shows the characteristics of high in the middle and low around the periphery, and the high-value area of livability is mainly concentrated in the urban center. (3) The coupling coordination degree of PLES in the urban area of Hefei is high in the city center and low around the city. The coupling coordination degree of life-production is the highest, which indicates that the spatial layout of these two elements has certain rationality and achieves benign coordination.

As an important measure for maintaining the ecological environment, green infrastructure also plays a significant role in industrial development and economic growth. The current traditional green infrastructure construction method is based on a combination of vertical and horizontal ecological processes, but it does not take into account the complexity of the ecosystem or the motivating effect of green infrastructure on industry. This study investigated how green infrastructure can play the leading role in industry while considering the complexity of the ecosystem. Hanwang Town is the most representative village and town in China with the leading agricultural tourism industry, and it is located in the northern part of Jiangsu Province. However, the ecological security patterns of villages and towns have been severely damaged in recent years, and the green infrastructure has not played a leading role in industry. Therefore, taking Hanwang Town as the research area, the data of the third national survey were combined with relevant statistical data. Then, from the perspective of the agriculture and tourism industries, ecosystem services were used as a bridge to improve the recent green infrastructure construction methods, and finally better strategies are proposed according to the optimization results. The research results revealed three important aspects of this system. (1) The optimization method can comprehensively consider the impact of environmental factors, objectively reflect the value of ecological services in the form of currency, reflect the importance of ecological environmental protection with intuitive values，and enhance people's awareness of ecological protection. (2) The selection of ecological factors takes into account the local characteristic industries of Hanwang villages and towns, and adding the appropriate industry-related ecological factors makes the identification of ecological sources based on ecosystem services more scientific, and can also bring benefits to the local residents. (3) The newly constructed green infrastructure fully takes into account the landscape, ecology, tourism and other roles played by tourist attractions on the ecological corridor. There are six tourist attractions in the selected ecological nodes, forming an ecological network space with an agglomeration economic function, and this allows the ecological service function to be better integrated. The findings of this research can effectively solve the shortcomings of the traditional green infrastructure construction methods, and reveal optimization strategies for the problems existing in the current green infrastructure construction in Hanwang Town. At the same time, they can also provide a reference for the green infrastructure construction of agricultural and eco-tourism villages and towns in other regions.

In minority areas of Yunnan, China, the ecological environment is fragile, and social and economic development is not sufficient. The research on the evolution of human-earth systems can provide scientific guidance for solving the contradiction between environmental protection and social and economic development and promoting high-quality regional development. In this study, based on the structural division of the human-earth system, we established a comprehensive evaluation model by the data envelopment analysis (DEA) to analyze the evolution characteristics and influencing factors of the man-earth system in minority areas of Yunnan in terms of the coordinated development degree and the comprehensive efficiency of the system. The results show that: (1) From 1995 to 2020, the coordinated development degree of the human-earth system in minority areas of Yunnan showed an overall upward trend, with the average value rising from 0.31 in 1995 to 0.74 in 2020. (2) The average comprehensive efficiency of inputs and outputs of the human-earth system showed a downward trend; in particular, after 2007, the number of regions with ineffective DEA gradually increased, indicating that the development model of high inputs and consumption has not been effectively changed. (3) By calculating the system indicator weights using the entropy method, we found that the comprehensive utilization rate of industrial solid waste, total foreign trade and urbanization rate greatly impacted the coordinated development efficiency of the human-earth system in minority areas of Yunnan.