Rural–urban linkages for sustainable development

Abstract

Traditionally, rural and urban spaces have been treated as separate entities with special characteristics. Within the ongoing change in human–environmental relationships the linkages between them become more and more important. This chapter introduces the main debates and challenges in academics and policy on rural–urban linkages and argues for the importance of different perspectives, providing a rationale to and context for the volume. Its aim is to, first summarize important fields of research and secondly present the authors’ contributions to this book. In a two-step literature review we show the previous geographical research on rural–urban linkages, discuss the definitions, and, in quantitative and qualitative terms, the different approaches in economic geography. The results show that the characteristics and boundaries of urban and rural have become blurred over time. Furthermore, they show that within the governance of rural–urban linkages, spaces are not absolute but social constructions to manage certain challenges.