How to become one? The modern bond of traditional villages in centralized contiguous protection and utilization areas in China

The protection and utilization of traditional villages have evolved from the individual to the regional level and have gradually formed a network. China has introduced a policy of centralized contiguous protection and utilization areas for traditional villages. Intervention in modern relationships has led to the reconstruction of connections between villages. It is necessary to explore the modern bonds between villages with historical connections. Using the existing 85 centralized contiguous protection and utilization areas and 8155 traditional villages as the research objects, this study depicts the geographical, cultural, and industrial ties of the centralized contiguous protection and utilization areas in 2010 and 2020 based on the information entropy model. In addition, it studies the traditional village network using the gravity model of spatial interaction to explore the evolution and boundary rationality of the centralized contiguous protection and utilization areas. Research has shown that (1) the cultural relationship between centralized contiguous protection and utilization areas has fluctuated over the past decade, and the industrial relationship has generally strengthened. (2) Historical and cultural relics such as architectural relics, intangible heritage sites, and cultural corridors are the main forces that maintain the cultural and industrial ties of villages. Socioeconomic factors generally have a negative impact, and a mechanism exists for the modern bond between centralized contiguous protection and utilization areas to change from cultural connections to industrial connections. (3) Existing centralized contiguous protection and utilization areas have good efficiency. However, there are problems with delineating boundaries in terms of limited county boundaries and large municipal boundaries. Therefore, building a governance framework of a supercluster city and county coordination-centralized contiguous protection and utilization areas is proposed.