In the context of new-type urbanization, Chinese urban-rural economic foundation and social conditions have been going through radical changes. There are many hollow villages that are with the risk of extinction in rural areas and the rural decline truly needs serious attention and study in the country. To scientifi cally predict and judge the development trends and possible directions for different types of villages, apart from doing researches on their current situations, there is also a need for intensive research on their longitudinal evolution. Besides, the rise and application of interdisciplinary research and the new-type quantitative analysis method have offered new ideas for the rural study in China. Based on the comprehensive theoretical research and practice summary, three types of driving factors that have been affecting the evolution of rural spatial structure are extracted fi rst, namely, the geographical environment, the social economy and the policy factor. To specify, the geographical environment mainly refers to the explicit factors at the rural material level, both natural factors and artifi cial built environmental factors included. The social economy, on the other hand, refers to the intrinsic factors at the rural immaterial level. And the policy factor refers to the external mandatory intervention on the overall development of the village at the government level, which appears the latest but with the greatest impact among the three types of driving factors. In reality, there are many subsets for these three types of driving factors. In order to analyze these driving factors more concretely while ensuring the comprehensiveness of the research, and in consideration of the overall characteristics of villages in southern Jiangsu Province at the same time, eight of them are selected in this paper, namely, topography and the traffi c and road in the fi rst category, industrial transformation, family composition, construction technology, and production and life style in the second category, and land policy and social organization structure in the third category. Then specific case villages in southern Jiangsu Province are chosen. Because of the late implementation of standardized management in rural areas and the lack of early data in the country, this paper selects the time period from 2005 to 2015 as the research scope, aiming to explore the evolution of rural spatial structure in southern Jiangsu Province. Besides, due to the limited space, and the characteristics of the geographical environment, the social economy and the policy system in southern Jiangsu Province, three typical rural space types, namely,the suburban development type, the plain water network type and the mountain resource type, are chosen as the research objects in this study. Correspondingly, three representative villages are selected as cases, namely, Yahe Village, Nanbei Village and Dajian Village. By taking these three villages as examples, the eight selected driving factors are then decomposed and reconstructed with the combination of different analysis methods. Pearson correlation coefficient analysis method is used to analyze the correlation between the pairwise weights of eight driving factors, and IBM SPSS software is then used for comprehensive analysis. On the basis of this, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is finally adopted to evaluate and analyze the weight values of the eight driving factors, and the fluctuation curves of eight driving factors’ influences on three case villages’ spatial structure evolution are then obtained and comprehensively evaluated. In the meanwhile, on the basis of their Google historical image maps at three time points in 2005, 2010 and 2015, three main spatial structure elements of the case villages- buildings, rivers and roads, are extracted respectively, which can roughly show their respective spatial structure evolution trajectories. At last, with the combination of the quantitative analysis of eight driving factors’ influences on the case villages’ spatial evolution and their respective historical evolution maps at the three time points, this paper can reasonably analyze their current development status, existing problems, development potential, as well as the policy suggestions on their future development. The overall characteristics are as follows: As a rural type that is within the range of effective radiation of the city, the quantitative analysis of the suburban development type village’s spatial structure evolution shows that its evolution overall presents a growth mode, which has a greater potential for further development and deserves more policy supports. Also, among the eight driving factors, the land policy, the traffic and road, and the industrial transformation have relatively greater influences on the evolution of its spatial structure. The plain water network type village does not have the innate location or resource advantages as the other two types, and most of them are natural villages that are retained for historical reasons. The quantitative analysis of this type of village shows that if there is no positive policy guidance, its future development might not be optimistic, and it might even disappear someday. The mountain resource-based village is supported by its characteristic industry, and the quantitative analysis of its spatial structure evolution proves that it has certain development advantages. Its evolution trend generally presents a stable development mode, and its own industrial type and the topography have greater influences on its evolution, which means they can be given appropriate policy supports in the future.