With the rapid development of urbanization in our country,the level of agricultural modernization contin-ues to improve. As rural surplus labor outflows,rural residential development is facing challenges. This paper ap-plies the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to analyze and evaluate the development potential of 864 rural settle-ments in 165 administrative villages in Qinggang county. Based on the evaluation results,the rural development po-tential is divided into three levels,namely low,medium,and high. According to the level of rural development poten-tial,the optimization strategy of the spatial distribution of rural residential areas is proposed to promote the healthy and sustainable development of Qinggang county's rural areas.
population shrinksrural settlementspotential evaluationenvironment livable