Question

What is meant by Rural urban dichotomy ?

Answer 1

This classification or categorization does not take into account some of the features of the dramatic urban transition that is taking place nowadays in the developing world, also known as the "urbanization of poverty". Indeed, most of this transition is taking place in areas that are not rural or urban, but peri-urban. As part of the effort of classifying geographical issues in physical terms and maintaining the urban-rural dichotomy, peri-urban areas have been typically defined as the border areas of urban human settlements, the urban-rural border areas where urban workers live, or the urban-rural borders where there are economic activities and infrastructure that need large areas but cannot fit or afford to use land within the urban limits. There have also been some attempts to classify peri-urban areas as slums or informal settlements accommodating recent rural migrants, a definition that fails to explain the existence of long term poor settlements in the city limits and their co-existence with economically rich residential, commercial and production zones. In short, the urban-rural dichotomy has been unable to explain all features and processes taking place in such transitional landscape