Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
25
Urbanisation and counterurbanisation
Tony Champion
Changes in the distribution of population constitute
a primary focus for geographical investigation, both
theoretical and applied. The single most important
dimension at global level continues to be the process
of urbanisation, with the proportion of the world's
population living in urban places rapidly approaching
the 50 per cent mark (UNCHR 1996). At the same
time, particularly in more urbanised countries but
also in some parts of the developing world, there is
clear evidence of the largest cities losing population
to smaller urban centres, as well as of a wider dispersal
process that has produced a rural population
turnaround, sometimes referred to as
counterurbanisation (Champion 1989). While
academics are still locked in argument about the
significance of the latter for the future evolution of
settlement patterns, there is no doubt that these
centrifugal population shifts can have just as
impressive an impact on people and places as is
already well documented for the urbanisation
process, nor any doubt that, while these impacts are
generally positive in their effects on human welfare,
they may also generate problems, which policy
makers attempt to tackle. This chapter examines the
main problems caused by both urbanisation and
counterurbanisation and gives examples of ways in
which research on the nature and causes of these
processes can help towards curbing their less desirable
consequences.
essential to provide some background to what
they involve on the ground, for as with many
words ending in '-isation', things are usually more
complex than they seem at first glance. At its most
basic, urbanisation can be defined as a process of
population concentration, the main result of
which is an increase in the proportion of the
population living in urban places. Additionally,
however, it is associated with the faster growth of
the larger urban places or, in more technical terms,
a positive correlation between growth rate and
settlement size. Meanwhile, counterurbanisation
represents—for most people, including the
originator of the term (Berry 1976) —the direct
antithesis of urbanisation and thus a process of
population deconcentration, yet it is rarely
associated with a diminution in the proportion of
people considered urban and is instead more
commonly seen in terms of a redistribution from
larger urban places to smaller ones, together with
the outward expansion of individual urban centres
into the surrounding countryside (for a review of
the problems of studying counterurbanisation, see
Champion 1998a).
Leading on from this, a second aspect needing
clarification concerns the direct causes of these
population shifts. If asked about this, most people
would point to migration as being the key element
in raising the level of urbanisation, and indeed this
was undoubtedly true in the nineteenth century,
when death rates in the industrial cities were very
high and urban growth was possible only because
of strong inward migration from rural areas or
overseas. In theory, however, there are two other
BACKGROUND
Before going into detail about the problems
caused by these two types of population shift, it is
