Objective Against the backdrop of intensifying global climate change, interlaced disaster risks, and ongoing urbanization, county-level units have gradually emerged as a key platform for new urbanization. They constitute fundamental spatial units for coordinating territorial spatial safety and development, as well as implementing disaster governance and emergency management. Oriented toward “safety and resilience” — a critical objective for urban – rural development in the new era — planning guidance has evolved across multiple dimensions and comprehensive chains, spanning systemic risk response, spatial pattern optimization, and resource allocation.

Methods Following the approach of “experience consolidation – framework construction – pathway exploration”, and using the planning case of Suning County, Hebei Province as a reference, this research summarizes the key priorities and challenges in county-level territorial spatial master planning under safety and resilience goals. The research outlines the conceptual framework and structure for plan formulation, and proposes integrated strategies for planning and implementation across three dimensions: disaster-resistant spatial optimization, disaster prevention resource allocation, and emergency response mechanisms.

Results 1) The evolution of safety & resilience-oriented planning practice unfolds through three progressive phases: Initially, in the foundational stage, planning primarily takes the form of single-hazard-specific initiatives addressing physical damages caused by natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, focusing on enhancing urban resistance to individual hazards through engineering fortification and localized interventions; subsequently, the developmental stage shifts toward integrated disaster prevention planning, broadening perspectives from natural hazards to diverse risks and formulating comprehensive strategies through a systemic resilience lens; ultimately, the integration phase systematically embeds safety-resilience spatial development into territorial spatial planning, transitioning toward all-hazard, whole-process, and long-term monitoring and governance. 2) Guided by safety – resilience principles, county-level planning serves as the pivotal tier bridging strategic vision and implementation within the territorial spatial planning system, tasked with both implementing higher-level development conservation strategies and land use regulations while guiding the formulation of lower-tier plans and execution of spatial governance. In disaster-bearing spatial configuration, county-level planning demonstrates transitional adaptability by translating macro spatial strategies into actionable resilience networks; regarding disaster prevention elements, it addresses infrastructure limitations and rural vulnerabilities through multifunctional infrastructure integration; and for disaster response, it prioritizes operational practicality by emphasizing long-term adaptive execution throughout dynamic implementation cycles. 3) The value-driven objective of safety and resilience prioritizes enhancing adaptive capacity and synergistic co-benefits within planning systems when confronting uncertain disruptions, advocating for a holistic “all-domain, all-element, whole-process” systemic response to disaster risks to collectively elevate the resilience threshold of urban – rural systems. Within territorial spatial master planning, this objective materializes through three integrated dimensions — pattern resilience, system resilience, and process resilience — which respectively govern three critical components: spatial optimization of disaster-bearing environments, allocation of disaster prevention elements, and implementation mechanisms for disaster response. By proactively refining county-level spatial patterns, strategically mobilizing urban – rural development resources, and iteratively upgrading disaster response protocols, this framework systematically strengthens the resilience capacity of territorial spaces. 4) County-level territorial spatial master planning integrates three core technical approaches: First, optimize disaster-bearing spatial configurations through zoned and tiered risk partitioning combined with resilient network connectivity, where precise identification of spatial risk heterogeneity enables refined zoning and tiered risk units to generate risk maps, scenarios, and inventories as spatial decision-making tools, while strengthening ecological corridors and emergency passages to actively adapt spatial patterns to comprehensive risk cognition; second, configure disaster prevention elements via dual-use systems with multi-tiered ordering, which maximizes self-organization, autonomous operation, and self-recovery capacities of complex urban – rural systems by functionally integrating and converting blue – green – gray infrastructure for everyday – emergency dual purposes, and deploying differentiated elements across region – cluster – community tiers to deeply couple development resources with safety demands; third, implement disaster response measures through adaptive implementation with risk pooling mechanisms, where planning execution bridges pre-disaster warnings, emergency responses, post-disaster recovery, and iterative learning via phased quantitative assessments to transform strategies into tangible resilience tasks, while cross-sectoral and interregional risk pooling allocates resources and liabilities to ensure continuous evolution of resilience capacities throughout the planning lifecycle.

Conclusion Guided by safety & resilience principles, county-level planning serves as the critical tier bridging strategic vision and operational implementation within the territorial spatial planning system. In disaster-bearing spatial configuration, it demonstrates transitional adaptability with the core objective of translating macro-level spatial strategies into actionable resilience networks; regarding disaster prevention elements, it emphasizes functional compatibility through multifunctional integration of infrastructure; and for disaster response implementation, it prioritizes operational practicality with a focus on long-term adaptive execution throughout dynamic cycles.