Approaches to Locating Urban Functions in Developing Rural Areas

Abstract

This article compares two approaches to planning the locations of urban functions in developing rural regions. The prevailing functional integration approach gives more weight to integrating and articulating an urban hierarchy than to increasing the access of rural populations to urban-based services. It relies on supply-side descriptions of functional urban hierarchies and linkages and fails to consider effective demand when assessing the provision of services. A demand-based location-allocation approach can be used instead to develop rigorous plans that provide the rural population access to urban facilities, and contain the costs of providing services.

Modernizing African agribusiness: reflections for the future

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Rural-urban interactions: a guide to the literature

“…A more recent and highly influential contribution to this positive view was the development of the concept of "urban functions in rural development" (Rondinelli and Ruddle, 1978;Belsky and Karaska, 1990) for which the most effective and rational spatial strategy for promoting rural development is to develop a wellarticulated, integrated and balanced urban hierarchy. This network of small, medium sized and larger urban centres is described as "...locationally efficient -it allows clusters of services, facilities and infrastructure that cannot be economically located in small villages and hamlets to serve a widely dispersed population from an accessible central place" (Rondinelli, 1985).…”

Spatial restructuring and land consolidation of urban-rural settlement in mountainous areas based on ecological niche perspective

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