Variations in policies on urban-rural relations and the evolution of different patterns of urban sprawl in world Cities;

Abstract

Classical theories of urban sprawl are based on the assumption that peri-urban formation evolves in a homogeneous rural-urban space surface. As a result, urban sprawl is mistakenly viewed to take place in the form of ‘invasion and succession’ and that by necessity; such sprawl would be triggered by the forces of ‘leapfrog’. In this paper, it is demonstrated that the rural-urban space is not homogeneous everywhere and therefore there are other forces which create urban sprawl. The said forces and variations in rural urban space relationship are also determined by land use policies. The result of such variations in rural urban space relationship is the emergence of numerous forms and patterns of urban sprawl. Policy approaches in agrarian economies for example tend to create a duality/ dichotomy between the rural and the urban space economies while industrial/urban economies often enact policies which create a ruralurban continuum. The variation in such policies and by necessity variations in rural urban space relations would, therefore, further create variations in the pattern and manifestation of urban sprawl in different societies.