The Relationship between Rural Spatial Form and Carbon Emission—A Case Study of Suburban Integrated Villages in Hunan Province, China

Abstract

With the implementation of China’s rural revitalization strategy, the societies and economies of villages have been comprehensively developed, but the carbon emissions in rural areas have also been increasing year by year. Therefore, low-carbon control of the rural spatial form has become an important element of rural revitalization. This paper takes 18 suburban integrated villages in the plain terrain within Hunan Province, China, as the research object, quantifies the spatial morphology indicators of the overall rural community and the neighborhood building groups, and investigates the relationship between rural spatial form and carbon emissions in plain terrain, aiming to clarify the content of low-carbon control in rural spatial planning. The main conclusions are as follows. (1) The correlation between spatial form and carbon emissions at different levels of suburban integrated villages is “total volume form > neighborhood building groups combination form > overall layout form > neighborhood connection form”. When the scale of the villages is fixed, the spatial layout of the neighborhood building groups has a more direct influence on the carbon emissions of the residents. (2) The building density in the overall spatial form of the village has the greatest influence on the carbon emissions of the suburban integrated villages, and it is positively correlated. (3) There is a negative correlation between the form of neighborhood building groups and carbon emissions within a certain range. When the distance between the front and back of a building is 8–12 m, the carbon emissions of the building decrease with the increase in the degree of aggregation on the building, but when the distance between the front and back of a building reaches 12 m or more, the influence of the group layout form on the carbon emissions of the building is weakened. (4) Finally, based on the principle of “macro-control quantity and meso-control shape”, this paper proposes new control content and indicators for Hunan’s rural territorial space planning, which can provide a reference for low-carbon control in rural space form planning with suburban integration.