Xueping Cong

The construction of pseudo human settlements in the context of “digital-real integration” in the information age is crucial for the high-quality development of human settlements in the new era. This study aimed to investigate the spatio-temporal evolution of the pseudo human settlements and its mechanism to provide new ideas for scientific breakthroughs in cross-disciplinary fields, such as human settlements, and to provide a strong basis for promoting the overall improvement of the quality of the human settlements in the central China’s urban agglomerations in the new era. Employing the theoretical framework of “three states” in human settlements, this study utilizes big data, including tourism, shopping, work, and socialization, to investigate the dynamic patterns and driving mechanisms of pseudo human settlements within Central China’s urban agglomerations from 2011 to 2021, employing methodologies such as the coupling coordination model, standard deviation ellipse, kernel density, and gray correlation degree. The results show the following: (1) the overall pseudo human settlements in central China’s urban agglomerations exhibit a pattern of “high coupling and low coordination”. (2) The overall coupling degree exhibits a fluctuating upward trend and has been at a high coupling-state level. (3) The degree of coupling coordination has obvious spatial differentiation characteristics, such as the core circle, “tower”, and “two main and one secondary” core structure. (4) The overall level of pseudo human settlements is influenced by the combination of time, space, and the multidimensionality of systems and indicators. This study conducted research on pseudo human settlements to enrich the theory of the human–land interaction relationship in geography and reflect the decision-making needs in the strategy of network power.

As the world’s largest developing country, China has actively implemented the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable development of urban human settlements is the result of localization and the deepening of sustainable development theory in China. This study combines SDGs to construct an evaluation index system for the sustainable development of urban human settlements in China, using optimization methods, such as natural breaks (Jenks), exploratory spatial data analysis, and GeoDetector, to conduct systematic research on the spatiotemporal evolution of the current sustainable development level and analyze the core driving forces of urban human settlements in 285 prefecture-level cities in China from 2000 to 2019. Our study revealed that: (1) The overall sustainable development level of urban human settlements and their subsystems in China has improved steadily, but the levels of subsystems are quite different; (2) the sustainable development level of the urban human settlements in China can be expressed as a spatial pattern of “high in the east and low in the west, high in the south and low in the north” and has relatively significant spatial correlation characteristics; notably, the development level of each subsystem has different spatial characteristics; (3) the sustainable development level of urban human settlements is mainly based on medium sustainability, and the main development model is to progress from a medium-low development level to a medium-high development level; (4) the sustainable development level of urban human settlements is mainly driven by the per capita gross domestic product (GDP), housing price-to-income ratio, investment in education and scientific research, Internet penetration, and PM_2.5.