Qiaoling Fang, Zixuan Chen, Hang Liu, Congying Fang
Rural areas are facing growing demands for age-friendly development, while existing studies have focused on urban age-friendly built environments, leaving rural contexts insufficiently examined. To address this gap, bibliometric analyses were performed on 574 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus from 2008 to 2025. The study investigates publication trends, collaboration networks, keyword co-occurrence, burst terms, and co-citation patterns. A systematically screened subset of 77 articles was further synthesized to develop the conceptual framework. The results show that this field has grown steadily, with research topics expanding from walkability, physical activity, and public health to mental health, cognitive function, social equity, and service accessibility. Rural built environments influence older adults’ health and well-being through interconnected physical, psychological, cognitive, and social pathways. Effective age-friendly development in rural areas depends not merely on spatial design and infrastructure provision, but more importantly on governance at the community level. This entails a shift from simply filling gaps in facilities toward a systemic integration of the built environment and governance systems. This study provides a comprehensive framework for understanding rural age-friendly development and offers insights into more sustainable and context-sensitive policy and practice.