Rurbanisation and analysis of peri-urban rural space. — The concept of rurbanisation seems very ambiguous, depending on whether it is considered as the residential overspill of population from town centres into peripheral rural space or as the overall processes which affect peri-urban rural space and result in the slackness of urban functions. Available studies on peri-urban space concentrate on four topics : changes in the assignment of land and the consumption of space, social change, the land question, the specificity and future of peri-urban agriculture. Peri-urbanisation is happening within the framework of several interacting systems : the socio-economic system of developed countries with a liberal economy, the particular system of each state (its urban situation, its legislature, its economic structure...), the system formed by the agglomeration or urban region under study.