Spatial Evolution and Driving Mechanisms of Production–Living Symbiosis in Rural Areas: Insights from Chongqing

With the rapid penetration of e-commerce and the ongoing implementation of China's Rural Revitalization Strategy, rural industrial structures and residential spaces have undergone profound restructuring, leading to dynamic transformations in production-living relationships. Taking rural villages in Chongqing as the study area, this paper adopts symbiosis theory as an analytical framework and integrates policy analysis, field investigations, and typical village case studies to examine the evolutionary stages, spatial characteristics, and driving mechanisms of production-living relationships since the Reform and Opening-up period. The results indicate that Chongqing's villages have experienced a phased transition from dependent symbiosis to asymmetric benefit-oriented symbiosis, followed by imbalanced symbiosis, and gradually toward mutualistic symbiosis. This evolutionary process is jointly shaped by industrial transformation, spatial carrying capacity, capital intervention, and grassroots governance. By revealing the internal logic of production-living evolution from a symbiosis perspective, this study provides theoretical support for spatial planning and governance of e-commerce-driven and industry-oriented rural settlements.