Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
sources of urbanisation: surpluses of births over
deaths and reclassification of places from rural to
urban. It is estimated that in recent years, almost
three-fifths of the world's urban population
growth has been the result of natural increase
alone, with a significant part of the remainder
being caused by rural settlements achieving urban
status or being absorbed into expanding cities
(McGee and Griffiths 1994).
Third, in relation to the migration element, it
must be stressed that population redistribution is
merely the net effect of both rural-urban and
urban-rural movements. Even in the nineteenth
century, there was evidence of strong two-way
movements between places, leading Ravenstein to
develop his rule that for every migration stream,
there would be a counterstream, while in the
present-day developing world context this
phenomenon has become so intense that it is
commonly referred to as 'circulation'. The same is
true in situations of overall counterurbanisation,
where the numbers of people moving down the
urban hierarchy into less urban areas may be only
marginally in excess of those moving up it into
larger centres. The significance of this wider
picture of population turnover looms much
greater when there are differences in the
characteristics of in-migrants and out-migrants.
This is commonly the case in terms of age
structure, with older people and families with
children tending to form the rump of the
counterurbanisers and with more school leavers
and young adults moving to the larger cities (see
Boyle
et al
. 1998 for a review of migration).
Nevertheless, the majority of studies that have
looked at the problems associated with
urbanisation and counterurbanisation have
focused on the effects of net migratory gains on
the destination areas and of net losses on the
source areas, so this is where the main emphasis
will be put in the rest of this chapter. What must
be borne in mind, however, is that, first, the net
migration picture is merely the result of much
larger and more complex patterns of population
turnover; and second, there are other processes at
work in producing these population shifts besides
migration.
IMPACTS OF URBANISATION
The centripetal movement of population from
rural areas into much higher-density urban
concentrations carries implications for both the
zones of departure and the areas of reception. It
needs to be stressed that, on the whole, the impacts
are positive in nature. For one thing, these shifts
are usually good for the national economy in that
workers are switching from rural production
activities—with generally low average
productivity in a traditional urbanising society
(especially in areas that have been 'overpopulated'
in relation to available resources)—into factory-
based and other urban activities characterised by
higher output per person. The faster growth of
larger cities than smaller urban centres reinforces
this process, since it is these larger cities that gain
greatest benefit from agglomeration economies.
This movement is also good for most of the
individuals involved, since they will normally be
gaining from the higher wages that derive from
that greater productivity and from access to a
wider range of facilities and amenities than are
normally available to those living in villages and
small country towns. After all, although a
proportion of migrants may be lured to cities by
false expectations, in most cases the migrants find
themselves better off in the cities or at least, if they
reckon their moves to have been misguided, have
the chance of returning to their rural origins.
Nevertheless, the urbanisation process is also
associated with a range of negative effects for both
the departure zones and the reception areas, which
reduce the welfare of the residents of these areas
and which tend to become more severe over time
unless checked by appropriate counter-measures.
As regards the rural areas, the main problem is that
net out-migration will reduce the population to
below the level that it would otherwise have been
and may in the end lead to absolute population
decline. While in the short term this may lead to
the achievement of a more favourable balance
between population levels and the local resource
base, thereby reducing underemployment and
pressures for the subdivision of family land
holdings, it also lowers the ability of the local area
