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.