A Review on the Overall Optimization of Production–Living–Ecological Space: Theoretical Basis and Conceptual Framework

The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the optimization of territorial space development patterns as the primary measure of ecological civilization construction, and put forward the goal of “promoting intensive and efficient production space, livable and moderate living space, and beautiful (picturesque scenery) ecological space”. Through literature research and summing induction, this paper combs the research progress of the overall optimization of “Production–Living–Ecological” space (PLES) systematically. It is found that the existing work mainly focuses on the overall optimization of PLES from the perspectives of land-use quality, land-use suitability evaluation, resource and environmental carrying capacity, and comparative advantages. However, due to the lack of understanding of the scientific connotation of PLES, and the imperfect construction of quantitative identification methods and classification system, there are many problems in the technical approaches of the overall optimization of PLES, which remain to be clarified. In the future, the technological approach to the overall optimization of PLES should be guided by the vision of building a beautiful China, with the theory of a human–Earth coupling system as the core, and systematically build a theoretical system and technical framework to identify and optimize territorial space.