Spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors of Suzhou traditional villages from the perspective of “Millennium Village”

Amid rapid urbanization, current traditional village (TV) conservation faces limitations: overly simplistic identification criteria heavily rely on official lists, and an overemphasis on tangible heritage, which fails to fully reveal their long-term adaptive characteristics. Drawing on Japan’s “Millennium Village” theory, this study takes Suzhou as the case, using multi-source historical data cross-validation, ArcGIS spatial analysis, and Geodetector models to identify 107 traditional villages with historical continuity and analyze their spatial patterns, formation mechanisms, and survival logic. Results show that (1) They present a “wide dispersion, small agglomeration, high core density, low marginal density” spatial pattern; (2) Natural factors underpin their formation, and socioeconomic factors drive their long-term survival through non-linear interactive enhancement with natural factors. (3) Less than 5% overlap with official lists and only 13.08% lie within urbanized areas, providing a basis for supplementary conservation objects and references for TV adaptive development amid rapid urbanization.