LECTURE 3

RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES
Rural - Urban Interactions
Income Diversification
Migration
Implications for Planning
The Dilemma of Planning for Urban-Rural Interface

Delivered by: Dr. Hamid Arshad

Department of City & Regional Planning
University of Management & Technology, Lahore
March 11, 2020
 Rural – Urban Linkages
 Planning for rural livelihoods and the local
economy within the wider regional context
requires understanding of the nature and
scale of rural-urban linkages.
 Dispersal of manufacturing away from the
big cities to small towns offers prospects of
growth in rural incomes thus requires a
clear understanding of such growth
patterns.
 To promote such growth, the right services
and facilities need to be in place.
 Rural – Urban Linkages
 Main rural – urban links are:
 Health services:-
 Out-of-town patients find most of health
services in towns.
 Employment opportunities:-
 Many farm workers leave the farms to live in
towns in search of getting better paid jobs.
 Marketing of rural products:-
 Rural products are marketed to nearby towns
or even to bigger urban centers.
 Rural – Urban Linkages
 Educational facilities:-
 Children of rural areas find better and higher
educational facilities in urban centers.
 Transport:-
 Increased car ownership rates and improved
transportation facilities have strengthen the
rural-urban linkage.
 Shelter:-
 Owing a house in urban centers by rural key
figures increases their movement for various
purposes on almost weekly basis.
 Rural – Urban Interaction
 For analytical purposes, rural – urban
interactions can be divided into two broad
categories:
 Spatial Interactions, between urban and rural
areas, including flows of people, goods, money,
information, wastes etc.
 Sectoral Interactions, including rural activities
taking place in urban areas (such as urban
agriculture) and activities often classified as
urban (such as manufacturing and services)
taking place in rural areas.
 Rural – Urban Interaction
 Two types of interactions i.e. income
diversification and migration are becoming
increasingly important in contributing to
the livelihood strategies especially in
developing countries.
 Income Diversification
 Farming alone rarely provides sufficient
means of survival in rural areas of low-
income countries.
 Non-agricultural rural activities may include
furniture making, brick making, processing
of agricultural raw materials or brewing etc.
have bigger markets around urban centers.
 In China, government promotion of ‘rural
industries’ is aimed explicitly at creating non
farm employment opportunities in the
countryside (Yan Zheng, 1995).
 Income Diversification
 Rural poverty in Senegal has been linked to
a lack of access to non-farm income (Fall
and Ba, 1997).
 Rich natural resource base is as much
necessary for rural non-agricultural
activities as it is for agricultural activities
(Livingstone, 1997).
 However, non-farm rural activities are not
completely dependent on rural sources.
 Income Diversification
 Income diversification results in
‘deagrarianization’ which is a long term
process involving four main elements:
 Occupational adjustment,
 Income-earning reorientation,
 Social identity transformation, and
 Spatial relocation of rural dwellers away from
strictly peasant modes of livelihood (Bryceson,
1997).
 Migration
 Migration is often seen as rural-to-urban
thus contributing to uncontrolled growth
and related urban management problems in
many cities.
 Rural-to-urban migration is fastest where
economic growth at urban centers is
highest (UNCHS, 1996).
 The reverse migration from the urban to
rural areas is driven by economic decline
and increasing poverty in urban centers
(Potts, 1995).
 Migration
 Seasonal waged agricultural work in rural
areas can also provide employment for low-
income urban group (Kamete, 1998).
 Migration direction and duration is matched
by variations in socio-economic
characteristics.
 Increasing movements of people have
important implications for understanding
the livelihood strategies of the poor.
 Migration
 Household membership is usually defined as
‘sharing the same pot under the same roof’,
however, the strong commitments and
obligations between rural based and urban
based individuals and units showing multi-
spatial households giving reciprocal
support.
 Rural development planning should consider
those migrants who might be the key
decision-makers while residents might only
be the caretakers with no real power.
 Implications for Planning
 Rural-urban linkages are the focus of
interest among policy makers
(UNDP/UNCHS, 1995).
 Market-based development strategies rely
on efficient economic linkages between
producers with external markets.
 Access to markets may transform the potential
demand into effective demand which, in turn,
will spur local production.
 Implications for Planning
 Increasing priority given to the
decentralization of resources and
responsibilities, and to the strengthening of
local public institutions.
 Local authorities, in addition to their traditional
role as infrastructure and service provider, may
also tasked with supporting economic
development and poverty alleviation.
 Implications for Planning
 Spatial proximity to markets does not
necessarily improve farmer’s access to the
inputs and services required to increase
agricultural productivity.
 Access to land, capital and labour may be far
more important in determining the extent to
which farmers are able to benefit from urban
markets.
 Implications for Planning
 Migrants returning from urban to rural
areas may have acquired new skills.
 Their ability to contribute to the development of
the rural non-agricultural sector is linked to
access to essential assets and to social
networks.
 The Dilemma of Planning for
Urban-Rural Interface
 The areas surrounding urban communities
are, characteristically, part urban and part
rural.
 Such peri-urban areas which constitute the
urban-rural interface usually come under
the control of the urban authorities
concerned.
 Urban and rural planning are different
school of thoughts and there has been little
overlap or communication between the two.
 The Dilemma of Planning for
Urban-Rural Interface
 The time is to bridge the gap between
urban authorities and local rural authorities
and to strengthen the coordination between
them.
 Peri-urban areas having hybrid character
require a hybrid approach too for their
development which should draw upon both
urban and rural planning experience.
 References
 Barry Dalal-Clayton et.al, “Rural Planning in
Developing Countries, Supporting Natural
Resource Management and Sustainable
Livelihoods” by Earthscan; 2003