Confronting the dualistic dilemma of "urban knowledge hegemony, rural passive reception" during urban-rural transformation, this paper proposes a theoretical framework for "knowledge-oriented rural communities". Based on field investigations in the Hetao Irrigation Area from 2015 to 2025, it reveals the mechanism through which knowledge governance drives urban-rural integration. The research indicates that urban knowledge elites reconstruct the "technical-cultural" composite capital order through localized scientific practices, enabling villagers to shift from passive recipients to active producers and disseminators of knowledge, thereby forming a networked urban-rural functional community. Urban-rural integration evolves through three stages: the local response stage achieves the spatial penetration of knowledge elements; the technical-cultural dual empowerment stage exhibits a concentric spatial structure of "core fusion—transitional gaming—edge sedimentation"; ultimately leading to governance innovation guided by knowledge power. Knowledge governance functions through three primary mechanisms: knowledge capital, via spatial translation, forms an adaptive regulatory system for culture and ecology; urban-rural power undergoes bidirectional reconstruction through downward empowerment and upward embeddedness; effective spatial reproduction is achieved through "gradient circles—channel governance—value transition". The practice in the Hetao Irrigation Area demonstrates that knowledge governance offers a theoretically robust and practically viable approach to resolving the urban-rural dual structure.
Ren et al. (Thu,) studied this question.