CORE HUMAN Topic 6 hard

• Rural settlements have changed considerably in HICs, MICs, and LICs due to rural-urban and urban-rural migration, urban growth consequences, technological advancements, rural planning policies, and government funding distribution
• There used to be a distinction between rural and urban societies, but that line has blurred, and now there is a rural-urban continuum. Paul Cloke developed an 'index of rurality' using factors such as population density, land use and remoteness.
• Rural regions are constantly changing in reaction to diverse economic, social, political, and environmental variables and The UK exemplifies developments occurring in rural areas across HICs

Changing Rural Environments in the UK

• The economy of rural areas is now more diverse, with manufacturing, high technology, and service sector firms locating in the countryside
• Employment has been growing faster in rural areas compared to urban areas in recent decades
• Recreation, tourism, and environmental conservation are other significant new users of rural space
• The in-migration of particular groups of people and the increasing use of the rural landscape as a multiple-use resource are what has shifted the nature of the rural population
• Middle-class groups colonized the countryside by taking advantage of comparatively cheap housing in the 1960s and 1970s
• Once affluent newcomers reach a substantial size, they begin to wield considerable power over the social and physical makeup of rural areas

Gentrification and Housing

• Newcomers have taken over the housing market, hurting people who have lived there for a long time, and gentrification is just as clear in rural areas as it is in selected inner-city districts
• A transition that has benefited newcomers has been met with resentment by the established population, since rising mobility of people, goods, and information has degraded native communities
• The government attempted to confine growth into the countryside by establishing green belts and allocating housing to urban areas or main key villages after the war.
• Higher house prices and greater social uniqueness are a reflection of the limited new housing development in smaller rural communities
• Government policies for the countryside have had to be re-evaluated due to social and economic changes that have put more strain on rural resources, such as the emergence of sustainability and environmental conservation

Changing Agriculture

• Agriculture accounts for less than 2% of the total UK workforce, despite taking up 73% of the country
• The percentage was 6.1 in 1950 and 2.9 in 1970
• Agriculture and related industries rarely account for more than 15% of the employed population, even in the most rural places
• Farms have grown in size over time
• Ecological networks have been harmed by a significant loss of hedgerows due to these changes
• Agricultural wages are significantly below the national average, and as a result, farmers are among the poorest of the working poor
• Farmers are diversifying both inside and outside of agriculture due to the fact that they are having trouble making a living from traditional agricultural techniques
• If too many farmers diversify into the same area, it may initially stop job losses, but an oversupply situation could lead to a further round of rural drop
• Examples of potential farm diversification include tourism and recreation, unconventional products, value-added products through marketing or processing, and ancillary resources like buildings and woodlands

Counterurbanisation and Rural Landscape

• In recent decades, counterurbanisation has become the predominant force shaping settlement patterns.
• It is a complex and multifaceted process that has resulted in a 'rural population turnaround' in many areas where depopulation had been in progress.
• Green-belt restrictions have limited the impact of counterurbanisation in many areas adjacent to cities.
• Rural settlements have grown dramatically and been significantly changed in character just outside of green belts where commuting is obviously doable
• The conversion of working buildings into houses and infill development identify stage 1 of Metropolitan Village's evolving morphology
• Ribbon development along roads leading out of the town characterizes stage 2, and stage 3 shows planned expansions on a much bigger scale on the village's fringe

Rural Depopulation

• The areas impacted by rural depopulation have shrunk due to the geographic spread of counterurbanisation since the 1960s
• Depopulation is now mainly centered in the most isolated parts of the country, with some exceptions in locations with terrible economic conditions
• Population declines and aging, unmarried young adults migrating to regional centres for better socio-economic opportunities, reduced business services due to falling demand leading to key social service provision cut leads to ageing population-disintegration of balanced community, and out-migration of young families

The Issue of Rural Services

• Services such as shops, post offices, healthcare, and activities are essential for any community because they foster a sense of belonging and create a sustainable future
• Rural services have been declining for decades, significantly impacting the quality of life for many, especially those without a car
• A 2008 report revealed that nearly half of communities had experienced the loss of key local services in the previous four years
• An Oxford University study warned that poor people in the countryside form a forgotten city of disadvantage.
• Critics blamed the government for its intentions to close 2500 branches which will result in the 'near certain death of the village post office’.
• Fewer rural primary schools are open today than in 1997, and more are in danger due to new government regulations that would allow schools to lose money by failing to fill their places.
• The Commission for Rural Communities warned that large amounts of people are residing in 'financial service deserts’.
• Effect of market forces, changing rural population patterns, and changing expectations of rural residents are all reasons that rural services have declined

Key Villages

• The concept of key settlements was central to rural settlement policy between the 1950s and 1970s, particularly where depopulation was occurring
• According to central place theory, focusing services, facilities, and employment in one selected settlement will satisfy the essential needs of the surrounding villages and hamlets
• With falling demand, dispersed services would decline rapidly in vulnerable areas, and the only way to sustain a reasonable level of service provision was to focus on those locations
• Devon introduced a key settlement policy in 1964 to counter rural depopulation, the changing function of the village in relation to urban centres, and the decline in agricultural employment
• Criteria for selecting key settlements included existing services, existing employment other than agriculture, accessibility by road, location in relation to bus services, availability of public utilities, and proximity to urban centres

Rural Transport Problem

• The considerable increase in car ownership in recent decades has had a devastating effect on public transport, isolating the poor, elderly and young people who live there
• The lack of public transport puts intense pressure on low-income households to own a car, a large additional expense that many could do without
• There has been continuing concern that the UK's remaining rural railway lines are under threat in a repeat of the 'Beeching cuts' of the 1960s
• Due to the replacement of trains with buses, at most, only half of former rail passengers used the bus replacements and with a low level of bus service in many country areas, the train is essential for many

Rural Housing Problem

• The lack of affordable housing has resulted in a large number of young people having to move to market towns or larger urban centres
• A low percentage of rural housing is subsidized, compared with urban areas
• The government announced measures to improve the rural housing situation, aimed at preventing such housing from moving onto the open market and being bought up at prices local people cannot afford

Rural Settlements in LICs

• Rural-urban migration has been the main process affecting rural settlements, impacting them differently depending on their location
• In some areas, it has been considered advantageous in reducing rural population growth and helping to limit unemployment
• In some rural communities, it has resulted in rural depopulation and an ageing population

Rural Poverty in LICs

• Rural poverty accounts for over 60% of poverty globally, however, personal consumption, access to education, potable water makes their conditions far worse than those faced by the urban poor
• Political instability and civil strife, systemic discrimination, and ill-defined property rights were highlighted as factors creating and perpetuating rural poverty through an analysis of rural poverty in LICs by the International Monetary Fund

Rural Mongolia

• The majority of rural Mongolia is deemed to be non-globalised society, besides the capital Ulaanbaatar and a few other urban areas due to cultural factors due to their strong emphasis on traditional family structures
• A non-globalized society is also characterised by their reliance on agricultural activities, difficult environmental conditions, relatively low incomes, limited service provision, and limited levels of personal contact with other countries
• About a third of Mongolians live as nomadic herders on sparsely populated grasslands, with their non-globalized status significantly impacted by their isolated locations
• Extreme weather has devastated livestock in recent years, moving them towards Ulaanbaatar city, living there in impoverished conditions mostly on the periphery of the city.

Urban Trends and Issues of Urbanisation

• In describing the shift in society that occurred with the rise of the first cities around 5500 years ago, Gordon Childe coined the term 'urban revolution', which first arose in places now considered to be LICs
• The Neolithic Revolution which occurred around 8000 BCE has resulted in sedentary agriculture, based on the domestication of animals and cereal farming
• The most important event, however, was the creation of writing about 4000 BCE because it was in the millennium after this that some of the villages on the alluvial plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers grew in size and changed in function so as to merit the classification of urban
• Trading centres began to grow much later than the first cities with cities flourishing in Crete in second millennium BCE and Greeks and the Romans making urban and trading systems
• New mass production facilities saw the start of the second 'urban revolution' in Britain in the late eighteenth century
• The processes of the Industrial Revolution spread to other countries, increasing the rate of urbanisation.
• The initial expansion of many LICs involved concentrations of people at raw material supply centers for affluent HICs

The Post 1945 Urban Explosion

• Urbanisation and significant economic progress have tended to occur together, however, LICs and MICs experienced rapid expansion that outpaced financial growth
• Because urban areas in LICs and MICs have been growing much more quickly than did the cities of HICs in the nineteenth century, the term 'urban explosion' has been used.
• The urbanisation of LICs and MICs has been a response to the incorporation of countries and regions into the global economy by the absorption of countries and regions into the global economy

The Cycle of Urbanisation

• Urban expansion in the modern era can be viewed as a string of processes known as the urbanisation cycle, and it was limited by Green Belts and the implementation of general planning restrictions

Suburbanisation

• Housing densities at Stoneleigh were low, and benefited from a strong and dynamic residents' association
• There were many social activities too, including dances, whist-drives, cricket, children's parties, choral societies, cycling and tennis.
• Because it had such bad highways, the city lacked certain common features of modern suburban growth, but The development of Stoneleigh shares a number of traits with other suburbs

Deindustrialisation

• Urban deconcentration is the most consistent and dominant feature of population movement in most cities in HICs today, in which each level of the settlement hierarchy is gaining people from the more urban tiers above it but losing population to those below it.
• Around London, where central rents are particularly high, much office employment has diffused very widely across south-east England.

Reurbanisation

• British cities have slightly reversed the population loss that has characterised the post-war era in years
• New urban design and central government finance have been significant factors in urban revival
• Birmingham's Big City Plan and the reduced crime are both factors in the increase of reurbanisation

Competition for Land

• Best measures of the level of competition are the price of land and the rents charged for floorspace in buildings
• Young adults now form the predominant population group in inner London, whereas in the 1960s all the inner London boroughs exhibited a mature population structure
• Gentrification has been an important part of change in inner London, involving the physical improvement of the housing stock, a change in housing tenure from renting to owning and the new middle class.

Global (World) Cities

• A global (world) city is one that is judged to be an important nodal point in the global economic system
• Initially referring to New York, London and Tokyo, Sassen described global cities as ones that play a major role in global affairs in terms of politics, economics and culture
• Which large cities in terms of population do not appear are defined by influence rather than size
• The Globalisation and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network at Loughborough University has identified various levels of global city, with four categories, and New York and London are placed in the highest group

Changing Structure of Urban Settlements

• Functional zonation, is when The structure of modern urban areas are complicated, geographic factors and others saw similarities between cities, contradicting stressing the distinctiveness of each metropolitan area
• In the 1920s this was proven and later based to be the concentric zone model, and drawn from ecology, with the physical expansion of the city occurring by invasion and succession.
• The prospective land that uses the most will get the place closest to the center and business activities clustered in the CBD, and its been called Bid rent theory from 1964

The Sector Model

• The sector concept of economic activity, built by Homer Hoyt in 1939, has proven to be a common model of the layout of large towns and cities
• Large income lodging typically created wherein there had been awesome physical or social attractions as long-income lodging contained up to now the maximum detrimental locations and middle-income gatherings tenanted intermediate locations and transport routes frequently influenced sectoral growth as new land turned into wished by every sector, it turned into created on the perimeter of that sector

Multi-Nuclei Model

• An urban plan cannot be based on a single centre, but on various discrete centres instead. All activities are grouped together, benefiting from expansion, whereas other land applications also repel others
• Middle and high-income house-consumers can come up with the cash for living far from industrial places, which has been become the save of the poor
• Very brief price of city enlargement may also bring about a few sports being dispersed to new nuclei, including a brand new out-of-town shopping center

Models of Cities in LICs and MICs

• Urban land-use models have favored Western cities, and had radial changes that have occurred in modern Western CBDs
• They have a development of a commercial area and The model has an elite residential industry and a tendency for industries, with their need of urban offerings and has changed from the colonial period

Residential Segregation

• Residential segregation is very apparent in cities in HICs, MICs and LICs
• The way the housing market operates in an urban area or a country as a whole significantly determines the number of housing units built, and is due to operation of the housing market, planning, culture and family
• London, made of the city and 32 boroughs, contrasts in the boroughs in the inner and outer city

The Management of Urban Settlements

• Urban settlements have favelas and cortios, concentrated overwhelmingly in MICS and LICS, two populations in that state that are caused by poverty

Heliopolis

• In 2003, top architects improved favela or shanty buildings to provide great value
• The size of Hellópolis is a great place for small businesses and entrepreneurs is such that many people consider it a town in its own right and provides basic support through commercial ventures

Provision of Transport

• Government is working on increasing transporation quality
• Cairo is dealing with lack of infrastructure with their rapid population rate
• They also face challenges with their lack of funding and is known to be a major infrastructure city