Urban Population and Rural Population Compare and Contrast

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Urban-Rural Connections: A Review of the Literature Elizabeth Mylott The relationship between urban and rural areas is changing is countries all over the world. While some of the issues, like changing agricultural systems, are universal, other aspects of the process are specific to certain countries or regions. This paper is divided into two main sections. The first introduces literature about urban-rural connections in the United States and Canada with several examples from Western Europe. Urban and rural land uses in these countries are no longer mutually exclusive, but rather exist on a continuum of community types that are increasingly interconnected. Migration and settlement patterns are changing as new forms of urban, suburban and exurban development alter patterns of community development. The population is increasingly decentralized as suburbanization is being replaced by exurban development, characterized by low-density growth where households with fewer people are living on larger pieces of land further from urban centers. Development patterns influence national and world views, the kind of governments elected the way natural and financial resources are used and the development of transportation systems. (Herbers, 1986) Much of this development and the resulting land use and lifestyle clashes occur in peri-urban areas once dominated by agriculture. As non-farm growth in rural and periurban areas competes with agriculture for land, tensions arise between farmers and nonfarmers. Environmentalists and farmland preservationists fight against suburban and exurban expansion, and at times against each other. “The concept and the territory these terms connote comprise dynamic and complex land use issues that involve more than rural to urban land conversion and conflicts between developers, environmentalists and farmland preservationists.” (Audirac, 1999)
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