With the aggravation of rural aging, the problem of providing for the aged becomes increasingly prominent, and the design of space suitable for the aging becomes particularly important. The purpose of this paper is to study the adaptive aging of rural waterfront space in The South of the Yangtze River. The research method is to start with the multiple needs of the rural elderly, and according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, analyze and summarize the three types of needs of the rural elderly, namely, material requirement, spiritual demands and cultural needs. And on this basis, the correlation between the daily behavioral needs of the elderly in the rural areas of Jiangnan and the rural waterfront space is concluded, through field investigation method to classify three mountain island village waterfront space, find the problems existing in the current village waterfront space, the purpose is based on the demand of the rural elderly waterfront space in the country propose corresponding optimisation strategies, in order to create high-quality living space suitable for the elderly in rural areas, so that the elderly and the environment have a benign interaction.