Abstract：As one of the important research contents of human settlements, rural settlements includes a certain amount of population which is closely associated with agricultural production. Rural settlements have a process of production, development, maturity, decline, rebirth and other complex dynamic features and spatial characteristics. Generation in rural settlements is a dynamic process which is influenced by various factors, such as the development of a historical, geographical, political, economic, cultural, ethnic, religious, scientific, technological, policy, lifestyle, and physical awareness. Rural settlements is the result of interaction between rural residents and the surrounding nature, economic, social and cultural environment, which includes people, society, architecture, natural and support network. With the government issuing a series of policies and measures such as the construction of new countryside, rural land circulation, urban and rural harmonious, and new rural community construction, the study of rural settlements is developed again and displays its practical significance and academic value. In this paper, the main viewpoints on rural settlements' location, morphology, scale and level, function, evolution mechanism, optimizing control, types and districts are described in detail, from the perspective of geography in recent ten years. Finally, the authors point out the weak links of the basic theory and research contents, the research methods and technical and put forward a research prospect of the rural settlements. This paper holds that, as an important subject of rural settlement geography, rural settlements research should stand in geographical developmental environment, and base on the new human-land relationship, integrate the theories and methods of ecology, economics, environmental studies, behavioral science and sociology, and should set up a symbiosis of human-land,co-ordination of urban and rural development, regional coordination and harmonious society. Also, it should form harmonies between "human and nature", "human demands and settlement functions", and "urban and rural settlements" and focus on settlement form, settlement structure, settlement process and mechanism, as well as comprehensively study research theories and methods, classification and developmental process and mechanism.
