'A2' URBAN RURAL INTERRELATIONSHIPS

This page last updated July 2008 and now ARCHIVED.

SCHEME OF WORK - thanks to Miss Davidson for this

NEW POWERPOINTS AND RESOURCES used during 2006-7 now being added...

Also relevant for new AS Edexcel Geography specification

This is an area which has been in the press a lot in recent months. There are increasing demands on our countryside and pressures to relax some of the measures which have been in place since WWII which have maintained as far as possible, the traditional 'English countryside'. There are new terms creeping in to describe the suburbanisation of the 'rurban' fringe. The main textbook we shall refer to will be the STUDENT UNIT GUIDE to UNIT 5 of A2 Edexcel Geography A, which is produced as part of the PHILIP ALLAN UPDATES series. Will also use Carr's Human Geography text too, which is rather good and then there's the fall back of Waugh's GAIA and our Palmer and Yates.

a) The process of urbanisation is dynamic and varied

b) In most rural areas, agriculture remains the dominant land use

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7273516.stm - new for March 2008

c) There is an inter-dependence between urban and rural environments

HOUSE BUILDING IN THE SE

One of the major news stories of 2004 was the announcement of a planned increase in the amount of homes being built in the high demand areas where population is rising, and there is a shortage of housing, particularly of the affordable kind. We will see whether 2005 brings some 'adjustment' to house prices which have risen steadily.

In October 2004, a group of students and a colleague attended a special 6th form citizenship event, which was held at the EcoTech centre in Swaffham, Norfolk. The title of the day was 'UK HOUSING CRISIS'.

Britain needs 4 million homes in the next 20 years. This is equivalent to a town the size of Reading being built very year. Much of this demand is in the South East, not other parts of the country. The absence of homes in these areas fuels demand, which is one of the factors leading to house price inflation in these areas. So where should these houses be built ? What type of housing is needed ? What part can local play in the decision making process ?

Public enquiries are a part of the process of planning change.

There are 3 groups of people in the process:

• Developers and construction companies

• Planning Authority officers

• Local people representing various interest groups both for and against the development

Developers have certain obligations when developing areas on a large scale.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/countryside_matters/rural_services/html/1.stm for some images and statistics on the reality of rural life

a) The process of urbanisation is dynamic and varied

Students should be aware of the LOCATION and DISTRIBUTION of the world's major urban areas.

Students should be familiar with the growth of WORLD CITIES, as well as the shift in the number of MILLION cities and larger from EMDCs to ELDCs. You should also be familiar with the problems with defining urban areas: by the built up area, or by the functional areas which it serves ?

Also need to be aware of the difference between, the characteristics of, and the processes influencing:

(and have exemplification of each type...)

Africa has emerged in the last 50 years as a continent of rapid urbanisation - not that it's ready for it necessarily....

Graph of urbanisation is available at various websites.

• There is a very useful page on the growth of urban areas at the POPULATION RESEARCH BUREAU. This includes statistics on the Top 10 cities in 1950, 2000 and 2015. There is also a Teacher's Guide and a glossary of key terms. Check out the Urbanising World section.

• Some resources from the WORLD BANK. Multimedia resources and also some information for teachers. Link from here to the DEPWEB site. The DEPWEB site has useful information on some of the issues of SUSTAINABILITY which face modern cities, notably WATER SUPPLY and SANITATION.

• Check out the WORLD GUIDE on GESOURCE for some great images of Urbanisation including SCROLLABLE city maps of a number of key world cities including Berlin, Tokyo, Madrid, Hong Kong, Paris and Sydney.

• Old friend KAY's GEOGRAPHY site has some great links for this section, and a similar section for the RURAL TOPIC too. Nice work! Also some DEVELOPMENT links for that topic.

• A useful article on URBANISATION with some other links.

We will investigate several cities which are CASE STUDIES - this section is particularly useful for the current A2 students - yes that means you (well, it could do...)

• Manchester - a US student produced website HERE

• Sheffield: there is a fantastic archive of images of Sheffield taken by Dave Milner at his CITY SNAPPER site HERE. This allows you to explore all aspects of the city, and see how it has changed. I remember the Hole in the Road well. Some amusing anecdotes on various forums too, and you can even check out the traffic flow by logging in to the various traffic control cameras.

Using this site you should be able to identify areas within the city, and then try to identify where they might lie on a CONTINUUM from the CBD to the edge of the city (and beyond....)

• Los Angeles: a complex city which is subject to change. It is also, despite the climate and the lifestyle, subject to multiple hazards, which are explored in a useful PUPILVISION page, with another one HERE.

• Leeds has a good website where you can download images, powerpoints, factsheets and even a video.

There are also some additional resources at a site related to a CONFERENCE in Leeds I went to earlier this year.

http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/teachers/ (see the NING to download some materials too)

• Calcutta - now Kolkata - useful website: CalcuttaWeb - has links to IMAGES etc.

• Mumbai : see my newly developing MUMBAI page.

• Sao Paulo

What about the cities of the future ? Here is an impression of what they could be like at VICTORY CITY.

How about SUSTAINABLE CITIES such as DONTANG in China ?

Some TERMS DEFINED.

TOWNSCAPE ANALYSIS New - work in progress

The LINKS PAGE of Victory cities links to various other experimental communities such as the Arcosanti Project.

• Some suggestions (and lots of examples) for how some of the aims might be achieved can be read at the BEST PRACTICES site. This is a recommended visit to see what is actually being done around the world. Lessons could be learned here...

• Can we get rid of traffic in urban areas. Try the CAR FREE city site for more intriguing information and ideas. Also the CITIES WITHOUT CARS page has a good article to read and more useful links.

• The Guardian in August 2004 featured some excellent articles, which are available on the site.

• The article was in the LIFE supplement and looked at the fact that we are now in the crossover phase. For the first time, the majority of the world's population are likely to be URBAN rather than RURAL. The article, by John Vidal,  looked at the reasons why there has been this shift from the countryside to the town. There are also some useful diagrams.

• Making a SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT option for GREENWICH in London.

• In China, efforts have been made to prevent people from moving around the country. This involves a system of MIGRATION CONTROL. There's a very useful article here. China is also planning a sustainable city called DONGTANG, which will be built in the next few decades.

• Another place where this can be seen is in Canada, and there's a useful site at CANADA PLUS (where the PLUS stands for "Planning for Long Term Urban Sustainability")

• Keep an eye out for other examples of places where there are efforts being made to be sustainable.

• GLOBAL EYE has a great range of resources including nice little FLASH images with a bit of interactivity. Go to the BACK ISSUES section to find an issue which you are interested in.

In MALAYSIA, they are also planning to build a sustainable CYBER CITY.

For some information on self HELP schemes which are seen as being BEST PRACTICE, go to the website and read more about locations in Cairo and elsewhere.

Cartoon on Urban Sprawl, reproduced from Windows on the World (RGS-IBG sponsored project)

A nice little snippet of an article in 'The Times' recently introduced the idea of urban villages.

The idea apparently developed in the late 1960's with the work of Herbert Gans. The idea is that even in a large city like London (or Boston which is where Gans worked), communities (in this case Italians), tried to reproduce the village feel of the area they came from. So cities were basically a 'patchwork quilt' of different 'villages'. Communities were ethnic groupings in miniature. Nowadays, this idea is known as 'NEW URBANISM', and is behind the development at POUNDBURY (see resources elsewhere on the site)

The idea is that everything should be within walking distance of people's houses: neighbourhood units as used in New Town planning. People should be able to live close to where they work and play, to reduce journeys made in the car.

Some good new articles: Society Guardian on 19/07/06 - "Idyll threats" by Peter Hetherington

• "Almost everyone, it seems, aspires to living in the countryside."

• "The Government may promote an urban renaissance but the English are voting with their feet, drifting away from towns and cities."

• In 2003-4 there was a net migration of 105 000 people to England's most rural areas.

• "Families search for a lifestyle with fresh air, less crime, and - if they can find them - better schools."

• "The most essential commodity - housing - is either grossly overpriced, in short supply or, in the case of social housing for rent, often non-existent. To make matters worse, essential services such as post offices, petrol stations and village schools are closing. This makes an increasing number of people dependent on the car; the result, predictably, is that traffic volumes are increasing on rural roads."

• England has a series of rural problems, from collapsing farming enterprises to homelessness, low wages and a shortage of affordable housing. And it is pointing to an increasingly divided countryside."

9.5 million people live in rural England

900 000 households are classed as living in 'income poverty'

75% of urban dwellers say they would like to live in the country

I am fortunate enough to live in one of the rural housing hotspots: North Norfolk

A useful page produced by SHA TIN college in Hong Kong. Suggests that HONG KONG would be a CASE STUDY for this topic: how it has steadily grown and encroached on the surrounding paddy fields.

LESSON RESOURCES Added in 2007

Lesson	Resource	More details
1	New Powerpoint to set the scene for the work. RURAL URBAN POWERPOINT 1 Here are the top 20 cities in 2005 (taken from http://www.mongabay.com/cities_pop_01.htm See cell below...	Use the BBCs excellent Urbanised world site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/2006/urbanisation/default.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/5094602.stm
1 12,778,721 Bombay Mumbai INDIA 2 12,207,254 Karachi PAKISTAN 3 11,055,365 Delhi INDIA 4 10,840,516 Shanghai CHINA 5 10,375,688 Moscow RUSSIA 6 10,147,972 Seoul SOUTH KOREA 7 10,136,978 Sao Paulo BRAZIL 8 10,121,565 Istanbul TURKEY 9 8,866,160 Lima PERU 10 8,548,639 Ciudad de México / Mexico City MEXICO 11 8,407,479 Jakarta INDONESIA 12 8,158,957 New York UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 138,124,310 Tokyo JAPAN 147,741,274 Beijing CHINA 157,620,971Bogota COLOMBIA 167,438,376 Al-Qahirah / Cairo EGYPT  177,404,515 Tehran IRAN 187,318,636Ar-Riyadh SAUDI ARABIA 197,287,555London ENGLAND
2	http://www.citymayors.com/features/largest_cities.html - another source of information DOES THIS MATCH THE EARLIER ONE ? IF NOT - WHY NOT ?
3	Another source yet - so how does THIS compare ?	http://encarta.msn.com/media_701500507/The_World's_Largest_Cities.html
4	A 4th source - how does THIS compare ?	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population WIKIPEDIA CHICAGO has a very useful online encyclopaedia... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/documentary_archive/5095024.stm listen to the podcast on the NING Is any city emerging as the front-runner ? Which cities are growing the fastest ? How does the pattern compare with 1900 ? or 1950 ?
Image: Wikipedia (Creative Commons) - Million Cities in 2006
5	Development in the West Midlands	http://society.guardian.co.uk/advantagewestmidlands/story/0,,2166884,00.html Recent Guardian supplement
6	Oh I do like to be beside the seaside !	http://society.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,,2167592,00.html - a very nice FLASH resource Article in Guardian from September 2007: http://society.guardian.co.uk/communities/story/0,,2166754,00.html - excellent starting point - also has a clear link with REBRANDING http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2007/sep/11/1?picture=330717235 useful GALLERY of seaside images (better ones on FLICKR of course)
7	Pre-Industrial, Industrial, and Post-Industrial Cities	POTOSI: claimed to be the highest city in the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potos%C3%AD Based on the extraction of silver, which meant that in the 17th Century it had a population of over 200 000 Image above, taken from WIKIPEDIA commons, shows Cerro Rico, or rich mountain, from which the silver was taken... LAS VEGAS: (see separate section)

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