Abstract:The suitability of rural residential area distribution is related to the spatial structure stability of rural settlements and the development suitability of villages. It is conducive to promoting rural residential area distribution optimization and sustainable development to coordinate the spatial structure of rural settlements and the village development. According to catastrophe progression model, taking Mengzhou City as sample area, the suitability of rural residential distribution was evaluated from two aspects, spatial structure stability of rural residential areas and the suitability of village development, and the coupling coordination degree was measured between the two evaluation targets according to the coupling coordination degree model. Furthermore, the following results were obtained: the spatial structure stability of the whole rural settlements in Mengzhou City was relatively high, while the stability of village spatial structure in hilly region was low. The villages of Mengzhou City had a wide gap in development strength which highlighted that the development suitability of villages in the northwest of Mengzhou City was weak, while the villages in Xiguo Town, Nanzhuang Town and Huagong Town were more suitable for development. The overall coordination degree of rural residential distribution in Mengzhou City was low, which showed that the highly and moderately coordinated rural residential areas accounted for 26.90% of the total rural residential area, and that of the low coordination type was 72.60%. There were four villages on the verge of being disfunctional. Through a comprehensive analysis of the evaluation results, the layout of rural settlements in Mengzhou City was divided into five optimization patterns, including priority construction type, general development type, reservation type, industrial introduction type and strengthening transformation type. It can provide a scientific basis for the renovation of rural residential and village planning under the background of rural revitalization.