Due to the multiple benefits of urban agriculture (UA) and peri-urban agriculture (PUA) to cities, they are in line with the goals of the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda (SDGs): poverty eradication; zero hunger; sustainable cities, and neighborhoods and life on the land, especially urban sustainability (Grădinaru et al., 2018). UA emerges when agricultural land is fragmented and surrounded by urban areas during urban expansion. Urban agriculture (UA) has evolved into many forms, including urban agritourism gardens, allotment gardens, controlled environment agriculture gardens, community gardens, home gardens, etc. (Artmann and Sartison, 2018). A typical type of UA is the peri-urban agro-park. Peri-urban agro parks are a mixture of multiple UA elements, such as circular agro-parks, allotment gardens, gleaning gardens, and landscape parks. The function of UA has evolved from simple food production to encompass multiple functions (Artmann and Sartison, 2018). Rapid urbanisation threatens urban and peri-urban agricultural areas, with some cities neglecting them or converting them into real estate (Ayambire et al., 2019). Building edible cities and promoting participation in nature-based solutions (NBS) can raise awareness of UA. In the edible city framework, urban and peri-urban agriculture contributes to food security, poverty alleviation, and other social challenges (Khumalo and Sibanda, 2019; Barthel and Isendahl, 2013). In addition, Wilhelm and Smith (2018) recognise PUA’s land-saving potential, which can represent a mechanism to conserve and protect sensitive natural and peri-urban ecosystems. Therefore, integrating peri-urban agriculture (UA) into urban ecosystems is crucial for sustainability, especially in food systems. Some researchers have developed assessment frameworks for urban agriculture (Artmann and Sartison, 2018); however, further assessments of different types of UA or PUA are needed to provide evidence for practice.

As urban densities increase, in response to climate change and the provision of adequate social infrastructure and a high-quality urban environment, urban planning attempts to address these challenges by developing planning strategies and policy guidelines. The natural and social sciences have developed frameworks to help identify the value of the natural environment to urban populations and to make specific planning recommendations. In particular, researchers developed the ecosystem services framework (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; TEEB, 2011) to highlight the benefits of ecosystems to human societies. Later, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) categorized ecosystem services into four groups: provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services. Peri-urban ecosystems have a significant impact on human well-being through the provision of a wide range of services, including disaster risk management such as flood protection, attenuation of the urban heat island effect, food security, air and water purification (Dolley et al., 2020; Kuusaana and Eledi, 2015; Wangai et al., 2019).

Since the beginning of the 21st-century, the Chinese Government has introduced a series of policies on constructing beautiful villages, rural land consolidation and agricultural supply-side reform, and has planned a road map for rural revitalisation. As a result of these efforts, significant results have been achieved in developing rural economies, the optimisation of rural infrastructure and the harmonious development of urban and rural areas. However, these activities may irreversibly alter the natural environment, leading to soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, and decline of various services (Sylla et al., 2020). Previous research on the environmental quality of China’s countryside has shown significant ‘landscape pollution’, i.e., repetitive landscapes without distinctive features, in rural or peri-urban areas of China. In addition, more than 60 per cent of villages have “fair” or “poor” rural landscape quality, and more than three-quarters of villages have insufficient ecological facilities and residential green spaces along field roads. From an ecological point of view, rural and peri-urban areas play an essential role in maintaining basic ecosystem functions. Spatial planning documents often consider them as hotspots for urban and regional ecological integrity. Intensive and productive agricultural land traditionally supports specific habitats with high species diversity and provides critical landscape services (Guerra and Pinto-Correia, 2016). To maintain this multifunctionality, adaptive intervention strategies are essential to maintain the balance between different components of social-ecological systems (Bretagnolle et al., 2018; Kanter et al., 2018). Ecosystem services assessment effectively facilitates environmental decision-making processes (Nowak and Grunewald, 2018).

Peri-urban ecosystems, particularly peri-urban agriculture, are essential in rural and urban sustainability and resilience. For example, expanding urban and peri-urban agriculture can expand the ecosystem services available in the built environment while reducing pressure to convert sensitive non-urban, non-agricultural ecosystems to agriculture (Wilhelm and Smith, 2018). As a result, the benefits of peri-urban ecosystems are increasingly recognised. However, there is little data to support these hypotheses, information on how these benefits is perceived and valued by urban residents is unavailable primarily to policymakers, and the ecosystems on which this diverse range of services depend have not received the commensurate attention that has been accorded to the urban subject (Chen et al., 2023). In recent years, while the growth of research on PUA suggests a growing recognition of the potential role played by PUA systems in global food production, few studies have placed peri-urban agriculture in the context of ecosystem services, and there is an even more significant lack of empirical research in the Chinese context. The ecosystem services framework has been recognised as valuable for understanding the synergies and trade-offs arising from land use change and addressing the challenges associated with urbanisation and climate change. However, it has yet to be directly integrated into spatial planning due to a lack of understanding by planners and practitioners of the ecosystem services that peri-urban agricultural areas can provide (Spagnoli and Mundula, 2021), limiting effective ecological policy-making and urban and rural planning.

Expanding the scope of future research on peri-urban agriculture, including quantifying ecosystem services and functions, will help elucidate the ecological trade-offs associated with agricultural production in the built environment. As demand for food increases and urban populations continue to grow, it is critical to understand better the role that urban environments play in global agricultural production and ecosystem conservation. In addition, the assessment of ecosystem services in peri-urban agricultural areas is intended to provide planners and practitioners with a better understanding of the benefits provided by agricultural spaces and to serve as a positive argument for green infrastructure development so that city builders are better able to develop/value peri-urban agriculture and enhance agricultural sustainability.

Chengdu is located between 102°54′-104°53′E longitude and 30°05′-31°26’ N latitude, in the hinterland of the Chengdu Plain (Figure 1). Chengdu is one of the most important cities in Chinese history. It is the capital city of Sichuan Province, a provincial political, industrial and cultural centre, and a major economic centre in Southwest China (Qin, 2015). During the past 20 years, Chengdu, like other rapidly developing big cities, has seen a large amount of land leased out for factories, warehouses, and markets, and waste materials and construction waste piled up everywhere, leading to a continuous loss of agricultural functions, a continuous degradation of ecological functions, a gradual shrinkage of irrigation water systems, land abandonment, and a decline in the quality of arable land. At that time, the planning of cities was almost always confined to urban areas and did not cover rural areas. As a typical urban–rural integration area at that time, the Eco-Zone created many problems in continuous urban expansion. Therefore, to prevent urban expansion and disorderly development, the Chengdu Municipal Government formally proposed planning the Chengdu Eco-Zone in 2013. From the beginning of the planning of the Eco-region, it has been the most critical task of all levels of government to make the city’s sustainable development and ecological protection go hand in hand to satisfy the people’s aspirations for a better life.

The Chengdu Eco-Zone (Figure 1), now under construction, is a control zone consisting of 500 m on each side of the city ring motorway along the central city, as well as ecological land and construction land in seven wedge-shaped plots around it, with a total area of 187.15 km², of which the ecological land consists of agricultural land and landscaped greenspace, with a total size of 133.11 km². Permanent bare farmland will be strictly protected within the ecological zone, and the restoration of arable land will be promoted in conjunction with the clean-up of unauthorized building works and the vacating of low-end functions. At the same time, the eco-zone is based on agriculture and landscape integration, constructing a creative and diversified urban agricultural landscape, planning three zones and nine sections of standard agricultural zones, constructing a new farmland form through large-scale cultivation of farmland, and enhancing the economic value and landscape value of farmland. Therefore, this case represents the current situation of Chengdu’s agricultural land use planning and the development level of peri-urban agriculture.

This study employs documents content analysis to conduct a systematic review of land-use planning and relevant policy documents in Chengdu city. There are two steps for the document content analysis: document collection and content analysis.

The planning documents related to peri-urban agricultural areas were selected in this study. The selection process was based on the following criterion: the documents should represent strategies that address the development and conservation of agricultural land at the regional, urban or specific green space level in this area. The specific green space level documents includes planning documents directly addressing specific agricultural spaces (e.g., Chengdu Eco-Zone). The final list of planning documents is shown in Table 1. They belong to the category of strategic plans as they provide a long-term vision, objectives and measures for the further development of the planning area.

To ensure scientific rigor, the content analysis of planning documents using the ecosystem services framework (Sukhdev et al., 2014) aimed to identify explicit or implicit references to the concept of ecosystem services. Explicit means that the document refers to the term “ecosystem services”, while implicit means that it refers to the benefits humans derive from nature or specific ecosystems rather than specific services. As the specific academic term “Ecosystem Services” does not explicitly appear in some policy documents, this study utilized latent content analysis to determine relevance by identifying “functional equivalents” (Neuendorf, 2017). For instance, while documents might use terms such as “water conservation,” “biodiversity maintenance,” or “landscape beautification,” these are essentially policy-oriented expressions of regulating and cultural services according to internationally recognized standards like CICES (Haines-Young and Potschin-Young, 2018). This approach allows for a more authentic capture of policy-makers’ actual focus on ES values, rather than being restricted by specific terminology.

To ensure the accuracy of the result, the analysis strictly followed the systematic coding procedures common in qualitative research (Krippendorff, 2018). The coding procedure includes three distinct stages: open coding stage, axial coding stage and selective coding stage.

Open coding stage: The research team conducted a line-by-line reading of eight selected strategic documents (e.g., The Ten Measures for Farmland Protection in Chengdu), extracting initial terms related to land functions, ecological protection, and agricultural production.

Axial coding stage: The initial terms were categorized based on their internal relationships. Drawing on Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) framework, relevant expressions were classified into four main axes: provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services.

Selective coding stage: The final stage involved distilling the implementation logic and priority distribution of the Ecosystem Services (ES) framework within the policies. The entire process was managed using NVivo software to enhance transparency and traceability (Neuendorf, 2017).

To obtain primary evidence regarding the planning implementation process, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 36 relevant stakeholders.

This study employed purposive sampling to select key informants with profound insights into and decision-making influence over peri-urban agricultural planning in Chengdu (Creswell and Poth, 2018). The focus was on experts who understand spatial planning for agriculture and are familiar with planning for the Chengdu Eco-Zone including five engineers, five university faculty members, six experts from agricultural research institutes, three landscape students, six staff members from the Land Planning Bureau, six landscape designers, and five experts from the agricultural industry (Table 2).

To ensure the representativeness of the interviewee and reliablility of the in-depth interview, the sample of interviewee is structured as follows:

Policy Makers (n = 12): Representatives from government departments such as Natural Resources and Agriculture and Rural Affairs, responsible for drafting and supervising macro-policies.

Professional Planners (n = 14): Experts from planning and design institutes responsible for spatial layout and the technical translation of the ES framework.

Local Practitioners (n = 10): Including community managers and heads of agricultural enterprises responsible for the localized execution of policies.

The proportional design of the sample distribution aimed to balance three dimensions: “top-level design,” “technical support,” and “grassroots implementation.” By covering different functional departments and multi-level respondents, the study ensured a diverse and comprehensive perspective. The final sample size was determined based on the principle of data saturation, meaning sampling was concluded when subsequent interviews yielded no new themes or insights (Saunders et al., 2018). This multi-dimensional sampling strategy significantly enhances the representativeness and scientific value of the findings within the specific context of Chengdu’s ecological zones.

The interviews were conducted from March 2024 to May 2024 and lasted 30–60 min. The interview questions consisted of three parts: the interviewees’ roles and functions in urban agricultural land use planning; an assessment of the importance of each specific agroecosystem service and an explanation; and finally, the interviewees’ perception of the ecosystem service concept and their assessment of its application. The detailed information of interview questions is pre-set, but it will be expanded based on the different answers of each interview.

The interview guide was based on open-ended and closed-ended questions, including questions that revealed preferences for ranking ecosystem services in the selected agricultural landscapes. Based on our literature review, we formulated the research questions. A selection of core questions from the interviews is presented in the Annex. All interviews were conducted in person by the same researcher. Relevant experts who were contacted received invitations to the interviews, explaining in detail the study’s objectives and the critical interrelationships between agriculture and ecosystem services. Interviews began with a short description of the objectives and context of the study. Interviews were transcribed and then manually transcribed verbatim. Qualitative content analysis was also used to analyze the anonymised transcript in accord with the coding procedure includes open coding stage, axial coding stage and selective coding stage.

At the regional level, the “Territorial Spatial Planning of Chengdu Plain Economic Zone (2021–2035)” examines the role of peri-urban agriculture as an ecological barrier from a regional strategic perspective. Its explicit recognition of ES focuses primarily on regulating and supporting services, explicitly proposing the construction of regional ecological corridors to achieve soil and water conservation as well as biodiversity maintenance. Its implicit recognition of ES is manifested through the institutional guarantee of provisioning services; although the term “ES” is not directly employed, the objectives of “modern agricultural development” and “water resource security” implicitly embed food supply and water conservation functions into the regional security pattern. This reflects a strategic transition by planners to treat peri-urban agriculture as a regional ecological shield rather than a mere production space, emphasizing ecological stability at a cross-regional scale. Furthermore, the positioning of the Ring Ecological Zone (CEZ) in the “Master Territorial Spatial Planning of Chengdu Plain Economic Zone (2021–2035)” demonstrates a high degree of systematicity. Its explicit ES directly point to provisioning and regulating services, particularly by juxtaposing “premium grain and oil cultivation” with “urban wind corridors,” which highlights the dual functionality of peri-urban agriculture in material output and the mitigation of the urban heat island effect. Its implicit ES internalize the mechanisms of high-quality output assurance and urban resilience enhancement through the development of “modern agricultural demonstration zones” and the flood attenuation capacity of wetland systems. The analysis indicates that the plan attempts to reconstruct a “production-city-ecology” dynamic balance in highly urbanized fringe areas through the synergistic layout of climate regulation and urban agriculture, embodying the coupled management logic of social-ecological systems.

At the city level, the “Chengdu Urban Master Plan (2016–2030),” serving as an integration and “spongification” expression of all-domain ecological elements, is grounded in the all-domain ecological security pattern. Its explicit ES recognition aligns closely with the concepts of “Sponge City” and the “mountain-water-field-forest” community, explicitly emphasizing water resource utilization, flood prevention, and climate regulation services. Its implicit ES are mapped onto the “five-level greening system” and the construction of Chengdu as a “World Cultural City,” implicitly transforming the landscape value of peri-urban agriculture into public education, aesthetics, and social well-being. This mode of expression indicates that early comprehensive planning had already begun to shift from traditional engineering governance toward the integrated synthesis of ecosystem services, aiming to realize the dual growth of urban climate adaptability and cultural soft power through the protection of ecological elements. The “Chengdu Land Use Master Plan (2006–2020),” as a resource-constrained policy, centers its explicit ES on the “bottom-line” protection of provisioning and regulating services, with a significant emphasis on cultivated land red lines, water resource security, and soil erosion control. Its implicit ES indirectly achieved habitat support and rural aesthetic values through comprehensive land consolidation and forest maintenance. Although this stage lacked a clear ES terminology system, its protection of land productivity and ecological stability formed the physical foundation for peri-urban agricultural ES output, reflecting a “passive” maintenance path of ecosystem services driven by resource management.

The “Chengdu Master Territorial Spatial Planning (2021–2035)” reflects multi-dimensional values under the ecological security pattern and characterizes the comprehensive features of territorial spatial governance in the new era. Its explicit ES focus on regulating and supporting services, directly safeguarding biodiversity and carbon sequestration capacity by delineating ecological protection red lines and establishing a system of natural protected areas. Its implicit ES deeply map the synergy between enhanced food production capacity and modern urban recreational functions through the optimization of agricultural layouts and the construction of a park system. This expression signifies that Chengdu has established a complex ES network centred on “carbon sequestration-habitat-restoration,” aiming to facilitate the transition of peri-urban agriculture from a singular space to a carrier of multi-functional ecological values through spatial regulation. The “Chengdu High-Standard Farmland Construction Plan (2021–2030)” represents the synergistic gain of production functions and ecological resilience. Focusing on the micro-governance of agricultural landscapes, its explicit ES recognition is precisely positioned within provisioning services (grain capacity) and supporting services (soil fertility). Its implicit ES are embedded within the construction of ecological ditches and the application of green agricultural technologies, implicitly achieving hydrological regulation, non-point source pollution control, and the mitigation of habitat fragmentation. The analysis suggests that high-standard farmland construction is no longer merely an engineering task but an ecological engineering tool that, by enhancing the intrinsic quality of farmland ecosystems, indirectly strengthens the robustness of peri-urban areas as the city’s “life-support system.”

The “Optimization and Upgrading of the Master Plan for Chengdu’s Ring Ecological Zone (2020),” a document addressing welfare enhancement and urban resilience through landscape narratives, transforms the peri-urban agricultural landscape into a core urban competitiveness. Its explicit ES are highly focused on cultural services (perceptible parks, greenway experiences) and regulating services (blue–green interwoven networks). Its implicit ES internalize high-level service functions such as regional carbon neutrality and public health promotion (e.g., healing landscape values) through the large-scale restoration of wetland and forest systems. This reflects that, under the influence of landscape urbanism, planners have implicitly activated the multiple spillover effects of peri-urban agriculture in terms of social equity and climate regulation by explicitly improving spatial accessibility and perception. As a legally binding framework, the “Regulations on the Protection of Chengdu’s Ring Ecological Zone (2013)” focus explicit ES on the legalization of regulating and supporting services, strictly defining the boundaries for prohibiting topographical destruction and water pollution. Its implicit ES implicitly safeguard the region’s food security bottom line and the regulatory potential of natural resources through rigid clauses prohibiting changes in the use of agricultural land. Through institutionalized intervention, this regulation provides the most robust rule-based foundation for ES output in the Ring Ecological Zone, reflecting Chengdu’s determination to achieve “stock protection” and “functional non-degradation” of ecosystem services through administrative and legislative means.

This series of planning documents collectively outlines the logical chain of evolution for Chengdu’s peri-urban agricultural areas, transitioning from “single production spaces” to “multi-functional ecosystem service complexes.” From the early bottom line of resource protection to the mid-term integration of elements, and finally to the current stage of deep value coupling, the recognition of ES has shifted from singular, materialized provisioning services to complex, systematic mappings of regulation and cultural well-being (see Table 3).

Over the past 5 years, the planning and construction of the Chengdu Eco-Zone have progressed positively. New developments also include the creation of 30 speciality gardens, which, in conjunction with the construction of the Jincheng Greenway, will create a diverse range of experience gardens according to the principle of “one garden, one speciality.” Some realised developments have paid particular attention to the area’s ecological potential. For example, the Qinglong Lake Wetland Park in the eco-zone is the largest lake in the Chengdu metropolitan area. It has also become a paradise for wild waterfowl, native flora and fauna, seasonal migratory birds, and a wide variety of organisms that form a complete ecosystem.

In addition to the agricultural land space that has been built and is under construction, the governance process of the Chengdu Eco-Zone has included developing the two strategic planning documents mentioned above: the Optimisation and Enhancement of the Master Plan of the Chengdu Eco-Zone (2020) and the Regulations on the Protection of the Chengdu Eco-Zone. Over the last few years, they have been developed with different social actors (planners, university representatives, citizens). These positive developments in recent years - new agricultural land development, green planning strategies, and collaboration through university networks - show that Chengdu’s policy and planning institutions have built up some expertise over the years in the benefits of peri-urban agricultural space. However, these positive developments do not mean that the whole process of agricultural land governance (including the application and assessment of ecosystem services) is free of problems. The authors identified the importance of ecosystem services by analysing interviews with experts. These assessments of importance reflect the main objectives of the current planning and governance of the Chengdu Eco-zone and future directions. The four dimensions of ecosystem services—provisioning services, regulating services, habitat or support services, and cultural services—were used to explain the specific services provided by peri-urban agriculture. The next section directly references the reasons for the choices mentioned by the experts in the interviews. Table 4 summarises the services identified and their importance.

Quantitative statistical analysis was conducted on semi-structured in-depth interview data from 36 relevant stakeholders. The results reveal that respondents exhibited distinctly different evaluative tendencies toward the four categories of ES provided by the Chengdu Ecological Zone (Table 4). Regarding provisioning services, the evaluation results exhibited a significant low-value distribution. Data indicate that over 75% of respondents rated the importance of “food supply,” “raw material supply,” and “medicinal resources” as “Not Important” or “General.” Qualitative interview transcripts show that respondents commonly identified the potential risk of soil pollution from urban expansion and the high costs associated with fragmented cultivation as the primary drivers of the low scores for provisioning services. In contrast, regulating services and cultural services received consistently high ratings. Within regulating services, “local climate regulation” and “air quality regulation” were designated as “Very Important” by 88.9% of respondents. In the cultural services dimension, all 36 respondents identified “leisure and tourism” and “aesthetic and inspiration” as core functions, with mean scores approaching the maximum value of the Likert 5-point scale. Respondents explicitly noted that the area’s attribute as an “urban green lung” and an inelastic demand for recreation has transcended its traditional agricultural production function. For supporting services (e.g., species habitat and genetic diversity maintenance), the evaluation results remained robust, with approximately 80% of respondents classifying them as “Important” or “Very Important.” The data distribution demonstrates that expert cohorts generally recognize the foundational supporting role of peri-urban agricultural spaces in maintaining regional biodiversity and ecosystem stability. Further analysis follows:

Although many ecosystem services, such as provisioning or cultural services, were mentioned in Chengdu’s geospatial planning documents, the term ecosystem services and the framework were rarely explicitly considered. Furthermore, 28 interviewees had heard of the term before, but they needed to link agricultural space to ecosystem services when preparing their planning documents.

So far, there is no official strategic document in Chengdu that explicitly mentions the concept of “ecosystem services,” but many documents address the spatial sustainability of agriculture and the benefits of ecosystems, e.g., the Chengdu-Chongqing Twin Cities Economic Circle Land Spatial Plan (2021–2035), the Chengdu Land Use Master Plan (2006–2020), the Chengdu Territorial Spatial Master Plan (2020–2035), the Chengdu High-standard Farmland Construction Plan (2021–2030), and the Chengdu Eco-Zone Master Plan (2020). The Chengdu Land Use Master Plan (2006–2020), a programme document for implementing the land management system in Chengdu and coordinating land use in the city, introduces the term “landscape function”. This term reinforces the ecological landscape function of the land and demonstrates a similar understanding of ecosystem benefits, even though landscape function is a less anthropocentric concept (Albert et al., 2014a). The value of agro-ecosystem services is also highlighted by the reference to “food supply” as a service type in all planning documents. In addition, the cultural services provided by urban agricultural landscapes are explicitly considered in the three most recent planning documents, namely the Chengdu Territorial Spatial Master Plan (2020–2035), the High-standard Farmland Construction Plan (2021–2030), and the Master Plan for the Eco-Zone (2020), reflecting the focus on the planning of contemporary urban agricultural landscapes, even though some of the current research in China has not paid much attention to the value of cultural services provided by the agricultural space (Li et al., 2018).

While biodiversity has emerged as a global policy consensus, this study reveals that the integration of “Habitat/Supporting Services” within Chengdu’s current agricultural spatial planning remains entrenched in macro-narratives, lacking precision in spatial implementation. Textual analysis of eight core planning documents indicates that, with the exception of the Territorial Spatial Planning for the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle (2021–2035)—which explicitly links planning objectives to species habitats—the majority of agricultural spatial planning documents, such as the Chengdu General Land Use Plan and the High-Standard Farmland Construction Plan, prioritize provisioning services (food security) and landscape cultural services. References to habitat supporting functions remain largely “indirect and implicit,” characterized by a lack of specific spatial control indicators (Zhong et al., 2024). This lag in policy execution stands in stark contrast to the high degree of consensus among respondents. Interview data shows that 94.44% of experts consider supporting services vital for the Ring Ecological Zone, underscoring the irreplaceable role of agricultural spaces in providing habitats for migratory birds and functioning as ecological corridors. This is in accord with the findings of Kabisch (2015) and Albert et al. (2014b), who found that ‘habitat for species’ was one of the most frequently mentioned ecosystem services after a content analysis of urban green space planning documents in Germany. Compared to practices in developed nations like Germany, where “species habitat” is a core element of urban green space planning, Chengdu’s current model resembles a “policy promotion” rather than a binding spatial constraint. Given the proven scientific value of peri-urban farmland ecosystems in maintaining biodiversity and ecological stability, future agricultural spatial planning must undergo a paradigm shift from “elemental protection” to “functional integration.” It is recommended that future planning revisions explicitly recognize the spatial value of habitat supporting services (Piwowarczyk et al., 2013). By implementing spatial strategies—such as the creation of ecological ditches and the protection of traditional vegetation communities—habitat restoration should be deeply integrated with high-standard farmland construction, thereby transforming agricultural spaces from singular production sites into multi-functional biodiversity hubs (Tang and Huang, 2021; Baul et al., 2021; Lemonsu et al., 2012).

Agroecosystems in peri-urban areas have important ecosystem service values. In the case of the Eco-Zone, for example, the spatial characteristics of agriculture in the region are different from those in other parts of the world, leading to different ecosystem service values, which explains the differences in the supply of and demand for, agroecosystem services in different regions (Liu et al., 2023). Chengdu is undergoing a period of rapid urbanisation, and the increasing demand for cultural services has led to changes in the size, shape and biodiversity of different types of urban green spaces (Das and Das, 2015). For example, planners’ plant selection in some urban agricultural landscapes will add more ornamental plants to the cash crops planted to satisfy people’s spiritual and cultural pursuits, but the core plant species may remain unchanged and representative of the local flora (Albuquerque et al., 2005; Zhuang et al., 2022). Agricultural landscapes are, therefore, vulnerable to human activities. This was also verified through interviews with 36 experts, who tended to place a very high value on the cultural ecosystem services of the Eco-Zone (100%), depending on the functions of recreation and tourism provided by the area; Secondly, regulating ecosystem services and supporting ecosystem services were also considered important by the experts (both are 94.44%), probably because their existing knowledge would have allowed them to recognise functions that could be inferred from the environmental and agricultural characteristics of the Eco-Zone. This result supports the study of Marino et al. (2022), in which experts also gave high ratings to the regulating and supporting services provided by agroecosystems.

Through the comparision between interview consensus and policy articulation, demonstrating the conceptual gap that poses significant challenges for the implementation of future agricultural policies (Fu et al., 2024). Interview findings reveal that although 94.44% of respondents highly acknowledge the value of regulating and supporting services in agricultural spaces, the absence of an explicit Ecosystem Services framework at the policy level makes it difficult for planners to translate intricate ecological logic into operational spatial control measures (Liu et al., 2023). This conceptual deficit directly results in the passivity of ecological functions within peri-urban agricultural zones: governance often prioritizes the preservation of natural forests while neglecting the proactive role of agricultural landscapes in climate mitigation and biodiversity maintenance. Consequently, future policy agendas must transcend simplistic qualitative descriptions of “multifunctionality” and establish decision-making mechanisms grounded in explicit ES assessments (Li et al., 2024). By converting regulating and supporting services into legally binding spatial constraints or criteria for ecological compensation, a paradigm shift can be achieved—moving from narrow cropland protection toward resilient urban–rural landscape governance (Marino et al., 2022; Fanfani et al., 2024; Wittmer and Gundimeda, 2012).

Currently, urban governments are more committed to natural forests and urban landscape conservation while neglecting the ecological functions and ecosystem services of peri-urban agricultural areas (Chen et al., 2023). In fact, peri-urban agricultural areas can mitigate and adapt to climate change, maintain biodiversity, and increase ecological stability (Marino et al., 2022), which is closely related to human health and well-being. The government should give full play to the cultural service value of peri-urban agroecosystems and promote the synergistic enhancement of the value of material product supply, Regulating services and cultural services. This requires that the protection and use of peri-urban agricultural areas should follow the goal of sustainable development (Spagnoli and Mundula, 2021), combine the resource endowment of peri-urban agriculture in different regions with socio-economic development, maintain the characteristic landscapes, develop the peri-urban agricultural resources by local conditions, improve the value of the ecosystem services, and realise the multi-functional benefits of peri-urban agriculture. The protection of peri-urban agricultural areas should be organically integrated with the construction of towns and cities, new rural communities and agricultural industries. It is recommended that the government formulate village collective action plans, including organic agriculture, rural tourism, lodging medical care, and ecological compensation, to increase residents’ economic income and promote village collective conservation. In addition, peri-urban agricultural areas need to maintain traditional characteristics, focus on plant diversity conservation, and promote synergistic improvement of ecosystem services (Chen et al., 2023; Zhuang et al., 2022).

In addition, peri-urban agricultural zones are located at the junction of urban and suburban areas, with better infrastructure, and are easily disturbed by human activities (Liu et al., 2023). The advantage of peri-urban agricultural zones, represented by the Chengdu Eco-Zone, lies in the richness of agricultural landscape resources, with rice, fruits, flowers, Chinese herbs and other agroforestry products. Therefore, it is suggested that the government should take ecological protection and construction as the core to improve the efficiency of agricultural land use; meanwhile, tourism enterprises need to maintain the traditional style, create a unique industrial model for leisure tourism and agro-tourism, accelerate the integration of agriculture and tourism, and form a diversified modern urban agricultural landscape.