Rural Settlement In An Urban World

Originally published in 1982, this book emphasizes the continued significance and distinctiveness of rural settlement, while at the same time recognizing the great changes of recent decades. The early chapters review the field of rural study and trace the evolution of man-land relationships in the establishment of the traditional elements of rural settlement. Later chapters discuss the changes wrought by urbanisation, the industrialisation and commercialisation of agriculture, the growth of recreation and the expanding role of public policy. The book stresses the processes which underlie rural settlement structure and, consistent with its geographical bias, the functional and cultural foundations of settled landscapes. While the main emphasis is on Europe and North America, the diversity of expression of general trends in rural settlement is recognised by drawing upon examples from Africa, India, Latin America and South-East Asia.

There is increasing appreciation in the social sciences that context is an important element in understanding social, economic, cultural, political and demographic processes. An important element in context is the type of settlement in which people live and work and so, it is vital to be able to categorise people into particular settlements types. This book brings together a leading team of social scientists to present the latest information on urbanization around the world, highlighting examples of development patterns that are not adequately captured by the UN's type of reporting systems and drawing attention to other ways of representing current trends.

This book identifies and accounts for the characteristics of the contemporary city and of urban society. The latest theoretical and empirical developments are synthesized and presented in an accessible and engaging way.

This book identifies and accounts for the characteristics of the contemporary city and of urban society. The latest theoretical and empirical developments are synthesized and presented in an accessible and engaging way.

In a rapidly urbanizing and globalized world, cities have been the epicentres of COVID-19 (coronavirus). The virus has spread to virtually all parts of the world; first, among globally connected cities, then through community transmission and from the city to the countryside. This report shows that the intrinsic value of sustainable urbanization can and should be harnessed for the wellbeing of all. It provides evidence and policy analysis of the value of urbanization from an economic, social and environmental perspective. It also explores the role of innovation and technology, local governments, targeted investments and the effective implementation of the New Urban Agenda in fostering the value of sustainable urbanization.

Understanding the rural-urban interface -- Food -- Natural flows -- People -- Ideas -- Finance.

City and Country: The Historical Evolution of Urban-Rural Systems begins with a simple assumption: every human requires, on average, two-thousand calories per day to stay alive. Tracing the ramifications of this insight leads to the caloric well: the caloric demand at one point in the environment. As population increases, the depth of the caloric well reflects this increased demand and requires a population to go further afield for resources, a condition called urban dependency. City and Country traces the structural ramifications of these dynamics as the population increased from the Paleolithic to today. We can understand urban dependency as the product of the caloric demands a population puts on a given environment, and when those demands outstrip the carry capacity of the environment, a caloric well develops that forces a community to look beyond its immediate area for resources. As the well deepens, the horizon from which resources are gathered is pushed further afield, often resulting in conflict with neighboring groups. Prior to settled villages, increases in population resulted in cultural (technological) innovations that allowed for greater use of existing resources: the broad-spectrum revolution circa 20 thousand years ago, the birth of agricultural villages 11 thousand years ago, and hierarchically organized systems of multiple settlements working together to produce enough food during the Ubaid period in Mesopotamia seven-thousand years ago—the first urban-rural systems. As cities developed, increasing population resulted in an ever-deepening morass of urban dependency that required expansion of urban-rural systems. These urban-rural dynamics today serve as an underlying logic upon which modern capitalism is built. The culmination of two decades of research into the nature of urban-rural dynamics, City and Country argues that at the heart of the logic of capitalism is an even deeper logic: urbanization is based on urban dependency.

Originally published in 1989, The Geography of Urban-Rural Interaction in Developing Countries addresses the nature and importance of the interaction between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ areas within Third World national territories, providing much-needed comparative, cross-cultural, and cross-national material. The book discusses the various theories of urban-rural interaction, and summarises the topic in the form of the movement of people, goods, money, capital, new technology, energy, information and ideas. Case studies are drawn from different areas of the Third World – including Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Caribbean and illustrate in detail the nature of urban-rural interaction.

The report presents findings from the 2018 revision of World Urbanization Prospects, which contains the latest estimates of the urban and rural populations or areas from 1950 to 2018 and projections to 2050, as well as estimates of population size from 1950 to 2018 and projections to 2030 for all urban agglomerations with 300,000 inhabitants or more in 2018. The world urban population is at an all-time high, and the share of urban dwellers, is projected to represent two thirds of the global population in 2050. Continued urbanization will bring new opportunities and challenges for sustainable development.