Spatiotemporal Performance Evaluation and Synergistic Optimization of Rural Living Environments (RLE): A Regional Clustering Perspective in the Metropolitan Fringe

Driven by the national Rural Vitalization Strategy, regional clustered development has become an essential approach to alleviate fragmented rural construction and shift isolated village governance toward integrated regional coordination. Against the research gap that most existing rural living environment (RLE) evaluations focus merely on individual villages while neglecting synergistic interaction within village clusters, this study aims to construct a targeted RLE performance evaluation framework from the perspective of cluster synergy, and further reveal spatial differentiation characteristics and developmental bottlenecks of rural settlements in metropolitan fringe tableland areas. Taking the Tangcun area of Bailuyuan in Xi’an as a typical case, this study adopts semi-structured interviews and qualitative grounded theory to extract core evaluation dimensions and establish a multi-layered RLE performance index system. On this basis, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed to determine indicator weights and conduct quantitative performance evaluation. The results indicate that RLE performance presents an obvious topographical gradient following the pattern of tableland clusters > slope clusters > gully clusters, and exhibits a typical characteristic of non-material dimension convergence versus material dimension differentiation. The core constraints of local clustered development lie in unbalanced cross-cluster resource allocation, weak functional coordination, and the absence of sound public service sharing mechanisms. Corresponding optimization paths targeting spatial planning, facility allocation, ecological and cultural coordination, and multi-stakeholder governance are finally proposed. This study provides theoretical references and practical implications for RLE improvement and coordinated revitalization of similar loess tableland and metropolitan fringe village clusters.