Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
21
Land-use conflict at the urban fringe
Gordon Clark
might be called 'stage' or 'gradient' models.
Some of these identified broad categories of
area from the urban and peri-urban out to the
rural and very rural. Others built on the work
of von Thünen and the classic models of urban
structure by Burgess and Hoyt (for a review of
these models see Johnson 1972; Northam 1975).
In these models, a continuous gradient runs
from the city centre to the deepest countryside,
with an inexorable decline from the former to
the latter in land values, profits per unit area,
and the density of building and population
(Figure 21.1). In these models, the urban fringe
is an area where land values rise over time as
more productive and intensive land uses replace,
for example, agriculture. This is shown in Figure
21.1 by the rise in land values at point UF. A
revision of the model by Sinclair (1967)
suggested that, although development value rose
as one approached the city centre, agricultural
value fell because vandalism and the high
probability of urban building increasingly
reduced farming's profitabilities towards the
city's edge.
The twin themes of 'urban influence on the
countryside' and 'the transition from rural to
urban' have inspired much research at the urban
fringe by geographers. This has sought to examine
urban influence and urban transition as
processes
.
What happened and how did it occur? There were
studies at the urban fringe focusing on the
intensification of farming, the increase in building,
recreational development, and how the land
market operates (for reviews see Pacione 1984;
Gilg 1985; Mather 1986; Robinson 1990).
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
What and where is the urban fringe? A precise
definition and map are not possible, but generally
the urban fringe means those areas just beyond the
built-up part of a city, although still close enough
to the city to be subject to intense development
pressures (for a discussion of definitions, see
Bourne and Simmons 1978: pp. 18-41).The fringe
is not a line on a map; it is a zone of radially
diminishing urban-style activities. It is the
existence of a fringe that prevents one being able
to distinguish the urban from the rural, since the
fringe has features of both. Yet it is more than an
amalgam of the two; the fringe is a distinctive place
with features of its own. It is, above all, a place of
heightened land-use conflict, uncertainty and
profit potential, hence its interest to geographers.
Arguably every section of every city was once
on the fringe of the built-up area at some point in
the city's history—St Martin-in-the-Fields, now
in central London, was once precisely that. How
land evolved when on the fringe will have left a
stamp on the built form of the area that will have
endured long after the fringe has been swallowed
up by the expanding city. Equally, how a society
has dealt with its urban fringes tells us a great deal
about how that society works, the values it holds
to be important and how these have evolved.
The earliest geographical models of cities did
not recognise the concept of an urban fringe.
The city met the countryside and there was no
transition between them, each being distinctive
in terms of economic and social structures and
culture. This approach was replaced by what
