Abstract:

With the growing disparties between urban and rural areas, "three rural issues" have become an urgent strategic issue in China, and new socialist countryside construction is being conducted. Rural settlement pattern research is an important part of the new rural construction pattern, it will provide an important theoretical basis for effectively improving the rural living environment,and for new rural construction planning. The innovation of rural settlement pattern is an effective way of mitigating the "rural disease" and promoting rural development, and is also one of the keys of promoting the organic convergence of urban and rural settlements and realizing the harmonious development of urban and rural societies. From an academic point of view, improving of the study content-framework, perspective and methods of the rural settlement patternt is conducive to development of the theories and methods on rural settlement geography, and also conducive to the rural geography. This article holds that, as an important subject of rural settlement geography, rural settlement pattern research should be standing in geographical developmental environment, basing on the new human-land relationship, integrating the theories and methods of ecology, economics, environmental studies, behavioral science and sociology, and should set up a symbiosis of human-land，co-ordination of urban and rural development, regional coordination and harmonious society, forming harmonies between human and nature, human demands and settlement functions, and urban and rural settlements, focusing on settlement form, settlement structure, settlement process and mechanism, comprehensively studying reserch theories and methods, classification and developmental process and mechanism.

Key words: new era, rural settlement geography, rural settlement pattern