Abstract
Abstract: In recent years, the implementation of the rural revitalization policies and the acceleration of the new urbanization process have brought vitality to the rural areas, but it has also resulted in the rural labor loss, rural hollowing, population aging, abandoned farmland and other negative effects. With the gradual transition of China's urban and rural planning from the original extensive development to the refined and sustainable development, there are more and more introductions and theoretical researches on rural smart growth, but most of the theories focus on rural planning, but lack of attention to accurate projections of rural populations. Therefore, this paper, based on the previous theories and practices of rural smart growth, optimizes the optimum population model of county connecting with the current situation of rural population in China. This paper tries to propose the framework of rural optimum population development with smart growth and reasonable expansion. Take Sichuan Yaan city Lushan county as a study case, analyzed the current problems of Lushan County, such as empty population, wasted buildings and industries, and damaged ecology. Based on the comprehensive carrying capacity, the upper limit of appropriate population development was determined by using the carrying capacity of cultivated land, economic carrying capacity and ecological carrying capacity, and various carrying population and appropriate population in Lushan County from 2009 to 2019 were comprehensively analyzed. The results show that: (1) The optimum population of Lushan County is smaller than the existing population, which is in the state of overpopulation. (2) The population of cultivated land decreased by 50%, from 122,207 to 61,129, indicating that the yield of cultivated land in Lushan County decreased sharply, and the policy of returning cultivated land to forest was in urgent need of recovery. (3) The economic carrying population has little change, rising from 61,137 to 67,005, an increase of 9.5%. (4) The ecological carrying population has a dynamic increasing trend, rising from 46,893 to 65,344, an increased by 39.3%, which indicates that the ecological environment in Lushan County is gradually recovering, and the accommodating population is gradually increasing. Finally, the natural growth method, grey prediction method and linear regression method are utilized to predict the future population scale. It is estimated that Lushan County will still be population overload in 2029, but the gap between the actual population and the optimum population will gradually decreased. Therefore, it is necessary to control the population growth and improve the population support capacity by polices. Explore the village population development mode of accurate population, rationalization of human settlement, unitization of cluster, refinement of industry and rationalization of ecology, to establish a development mode of smart growth of rural population and provide relevant knowledge and technology for rural revitalization.
