Research on Layout Optimization of Villages in Poverty-Stricken Counties —A Case Study of Wangmo County, Guizhou, China

Against the background of rural revitalization in China, this study takes Wangmo County as the study area, and uses mathematical models such as entropy method and rank-size rule to quantitatively evaluate the rural development potential of Wangmo County and rural development scale and hierarchical structure in Wangmo County. Based on this, the study puts forward suggestions for village layout optimization. According to the results, (i) evaluation elements of rural subject, industrial development, resource endowment, and habitat environ­ment in Wangmo County are presented in the spatial pattern of being scattered as a whole and be agglomerated locally. (ii) The rank-size distribution of village is that there are more villages in the medium-ranking position, while there are fewer high-and-low-ranking villages with spindle structure of “being small on both ends, and large in the middle”, showing that the agglomeration of village elements has a weak degree of spatial polarization. (iii) By comprehensively evaluating results and field investigation situation, a township hierarchy of central village-general village-merged village is constructed to divide the development types of three rural areas, including agglomeration type for improvement, equilibrium, and stable type, as well as relocation and merger type. The results of the study in the case area can provide a reference for the local scientific response to the decreasing trend of rural population and change the predicament of low efficiency of public resource allocation caused by small-scale and scattered distribution of the rural areas.