Rural Transformation and Land Use Transition in Southern Jiangsu (1980–2020): Phased Co-Evolution from an Institutional Perspective

Advanced urbanization promotes the continuous cross-flow of urban–rural elements. The coupling between rural transformation and land-use spatial reconstruction has become a key topic in urban–rural integration and rural revitalization. Focusing on southern Jiangsu, a typical highly urbanized region in China, this study uses long-term land-use datasets from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to examine land-use transfer areas of diverse land types across stages. It clarifies the connotations of rural transformation and land-use spatial reconstruction, builds an interactive-mechanism framework, and explores their phased evolutionary coupling characteristics. The results indicate that rural natural, economic, social, and policy factors, together with multi-source urbanization forces, jointly reshape land space. Reciprocally, adjustments in land structure, function, and layout constrain and steer transformations in rural industries, settlements, and social forms. From 1980 to 2020, southern Jiangsu’s land-use reconstruction underwent initial, rapid, and stable phases. Agricultural production space declined continuously while urban–rural living spaces expanded steadily, with obvious stage-divergent land conversion features. Rural transformation experienced four successive stages generally matching the three land-use phases, with distinct land–space and human–land conflicts in each stage. Against rapid high-level urbanization, few studies have systematically untangled their phased coupled evolution from a long-time-series perspective. This study reveals the internal evolutionary logic of rural human–land systems in highly urbanized regions and offers theoretical support and regional practical references for territorial pattern optimization, rural land system reform, and sustainable rural development.