Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
volume of urban out-migration and in the end
was accused of starving the cities of industrial
investment (Aldridge 1979). The green belts
helped to limit the physical spread of the
conurbations but prompted the leapfrogging of
population and housebuilding into more distant
towns and deeper countryside (Hall
et al
. 1973).
Land development restrictions and landscape
protection measures have increased congestion in
the cities and further enhanced the appeal of the
'rural idyll', somewhat paradoxically magnifying
the benefits to be gained from urban-rural
migration (Champion 1998b). Meanwhile, neither
the much publicised waterfront renewal schemes,
such as in New York, Baltimore and London
Docklands (Hoyle
et al
. 1988), nor the wider
'reurbanisation' process (Bourne 1996) have
generally been sufficient to produce a significant
long-term reversal in the urban exodus— 'islands
of renewal in a sea of decay', according to Berry
(1985). On the other hand, the last two decades
have seen some stabilisation of large-city
populations, partly as a result of growth in financial
services and of 1960s' 'baby boomers' reaching
adulthood and moving to the 'city lights', but also
because of higher immigration from overseas and
periodic recessions in the building industry (Frey
1993; Champion 1994; Downs 1994).
between these two terms as essentially academic
constructs and the everyday reality of individuals
making decisions about choosing where to live. It
is therefore perhaps not surprising to find that, as
demonstrated in this chapter, most of the literature
explicitly concerned with urbanisation and
counter-urbanisation is descriptive and analytical,
striving to make sense of developing tendencies and
thus helping to provide a better-informed context
for discussions in the policy arena.
It is also important to recognise the general
reluctance of democratic governments to become
involved in what might be seen as 'social
engineering'. There are few contemporary examples
of direct government intervention into people's
decisions on where to live within countries (e.g.
China), unlike the actions taken to prevent migration
between states. Policies on internal population
distribution are invariably indirect in nature, coming
partly in the form of exhortation and sometimes
financial inducements but most commonly being
implemented through attempts to modify the wider
planning environment Most of the examples of
policy intervention given in this chapter comprise
measures directed at patterns of economic growth,
social welfare and physical development, using a
combination of 'stick' (e.g. restrictions on new
building) and 'carrot' (e.g. subsidies to developers and
employers). In research terms, these aspects have
tended to be of secondary interest to the population
geographers who have dominated the study of
urbanisation and counterurbanisation trends over the
past quarter of a century. But the widespread
incidence and increasing intensity of social,
economic and environmental problems arising from
urbanisation and counterurbanisation commend the
field to applied geographers, whose problem-
oriented perspective can offer an invaluable
complement to the process-oriented perspective of
the demographer.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
Both urbanisation and counter-urbanisation, as
defined for the purposes of this chapter, constitute
fundamental processes of population redistribution
that are taking place in response to deep-seated
societal changes and, in their turn, also have major
impacts on people and places. They are complex
even when being analysed directly in demographic
accounting terms, because these geographical shifts
in population are produced not only by migration
but also by trends in births and deaths and by
changes in which settlement systems are
conceptualised and delineated. Their complexity
becomes infinitely greater when attempts are made
to study the factors that influence people's
behaviour, partly because of the huge gap that exists
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
Champion, A.G. (1998) Studying
counterurbanisation and the rural population
turnaround. In P.Boyle and K.Halfacree (eds)
