[Background] As China’s urbanization shifts from gradual expansion to stock renewal, urban-rural integration has emerged as a crucial strategy to dismantle the dual structure. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration, recognized as a pioneering zone for Chinese-style modernization, faces a dual challenge in this transitional phase: reducing construction land in its core while curbing ineffi cient rural land use. Its widespread industrial, landfi ll, and mining potential brownfi eld sites represent underused land resources and may be associated with environmental risks, forming spatial barriers to urban-rural factor fl ows. Rather than isolated contaminated parcels, these brownfi elds are embedded in an urban-rural gradient along which population density, land-use intensity, and ecosystem service functions change continuously. Existing studies, however, concentrate on micro-scale remediation techniques and lack an eff ective pathway for translating macro-scale gradient patterns into meso-scale governance units. [Objective] This study focuses on the BTH urban agglomeration with the aim of identifying the regional urban-rural gradient. It seeks to characterize the spatial distribution and landscape morphology of three typical brownfi eld types—industrial, landfi ll, and mining—along this gradient. Additionally, it endeavors to develop a township-level priority governance evaluation model based on a “spatial pressure–development potential” matrix, in order to support ecological restoration and diff erentiated reuse of stock land resources. [Methods] A multi-source geospatial database integrated brownfi eld vector data with variables characterizing the urban-rural gradient. Potential brownfi elds were delineated by combining points of interest (POI) from Amap and Baidu Maps with areas of interest (AOI) from OpenStreetMap, then refi ned by visual interpretation of high-resolution imagery. Following a “socio-economic- physical environment” framework, fi ve variables were selected: nighttime light (NTL), gross domestic product (GDP), and population (POP) for the socio-economic dimension, and impervious surface area (ISA) and the normalized diff erence veg-etation index (NDVI) for the physical environment. Principal component analysis (PCA) reduced dimensionality, and its first component was taken as the Urban-Rural Gradient Index (URGI), discretized into fi ve levels (L1–L5) and aggregated to the township scale by area-weighting. Brownfi eld morphology was quantifi ed with three landscape indices: mean patch size (MPS), patch density (PD), and mean shape index (MSI). Finally, a two-dimensional “spatial pressure–development potential” model classifi ed township units to identify regeneration priorities and strategy types. [Results] (1) The fi ve-level gradient demonstrated a dense southeastern area and a sparse northwestern region. The urban core (L1) and peri-urban transition zone (L2) collectively accounted for only 11.37% of the total area, whereas the ecological conservation zone (L5) accounted for 37.30%. PCA corroborated the division, with PC1 and PC2 explaining 60.70% and 17.50% of the variance, respectively. (2) The distribution of brownfi elds exhibited a pronounced gradient eff ect: industrial brownfi elds were concentrated in L1 and L2, with L1 alone encompassing 670.37 km2, representing 88.11% of the brownfi elds within that level; landfi ll brownfi elds were dispersed across L2 and L3 in a bell-shaped distribution; and mining brownfi elds primarily characterized L4 and L5. Morphologically, high-gradient zones combined large, fragmented patches, whereas medium- and low-gradient zones displayed smaller, scattered patches with intricate boundaries. (3) Brownfi elds impacted approximately 52.67% of township units. The fi ve regeneration strategies—priority intervention, risk control, ecological restoration, strategic reservation, and natural recovery—constituted a continuous succession from intensive intervention to ecological preservation, refl ecting a progressive approach to land management. [Conclusion] This study delineates the spatial diff erentiation of brownfi elds across the urban-rural gradient, establishing an integrated analytical framework of “spatial-pattern identifi cation, morphological-characteristic analysis, and strategy-zone translation.” Three fi ndings stand out. First, the urban-rural gradient eff ectively recasts isolated brownfi elds as a single regional, structural issue. Second, observed morphological diff erences can inform the selection of site-level intervention approaches. Third, the theoretical strategy zones must be closely coupled with the diff erentiated land management policies of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei if they are to be operable in practice. Together, these fi ndings provide methodological support for refi ned territorial-spatial governance and urban-rural integration in the BTH Region.