Question

Essay on linkage between rural and urban areas

Answer 1

Rather than looking separately at urban and rural areas and what matters to each of them, it is vital to look at the linkages between them: it is from here that lasting change will come.

The classification that divides people into either 'rural' or 'urban' is often used when policies are being developed but is in fact misleading and unhelpful. Links exist between rural and urban locations in the same way that links exist between people and their activities.

These links are not only key components of livelihoods and of local economies, they are also 'engines' that drive economic, social and cultural transformations. Rural-urban interactions include:

Linkages across space (such as flows of people, goods, money, information and wastes), andLinkages between sectors (for example, between agriculture and services and manufacturing).

Rural-urban interactions can also include 'rural' activities taking place in urban centres (such as urban agriculture) and activities often classified as 'urban' (such as manufacturing and services) taking place in rural settlements