Urbanity in the countryside: interaction of livelihood, lifestyle, connectivity and rural greening

Rural ecosystem recovery is often attributed to population decline, but the social-economic pathways linking urbanization to ecological change remain underexplored. Grounded in the continuum of urbanity theory, we developed two alternative pathway models (exogenous-driven vs. endogenous-driven) to examine how urbanization influenced rural ecological quality in China from 2010 to 2020. Results indicate that ecological greening was most prominent in areas where urbanity increased while population declined, supported by rising forest cover, stable cropland use, and improved grain yield. Rural household livelihood and lifestyle changes had negligible direct impact on vegetation trends. However, the pathway models revealed significant indirect roles: urbanization effects were mediated by rural households through shifts from farming to non-farming livelihoods, improved quality of life, and rural-urban migration. The exogenous-driven model demonstrated stronger explanatory power and clearer pathway significance than the endogenous driven model. These findings move beyond the conventional narrative that rural depopulation alone leads to greening, offering a new social-ecological perspective on how urbanization can actively contribute to rural sustainability.