URBANIZATION AROUND LOCAL CITIES

Abstract

Differing from the writer's previous studies on the rural-urban regions of several cities in Nagano Prefecture, this study aims at analyzing the urbanization of rural com-munities within these rural-urban regions. In the process of the urbanization of suburban rural communities the following three stages supposedly exist : First stage: the living relation of local cities with their neighboring rural commu-nities increases quantitatively. Study of shopping areas or commuting areas is a typical one at this stage. The writer once made a quantitative observation on the extent and range of the living relation. Second stage: the rural structure and function change themselves toward the urban structure and function. For example, the increase in the number of commuters gener-ates an increase of non-farming persons in farming households, transforming the quality of manpower and their industrial structure from rural to urban, and thus collapses rural communities. Third stage: qualitative changes in the structure and function of communities are prominent, resulting in the conclusion of urbanization of the neighboring rural com-munities. The community is a living area on the surface of the earth. The writer, considering the community to be dynamic, concludes that urbanization is completed through the above-mentioned three stages regardless of the length of time. But here he attempts to clarify the actual condition of the structural change in the second stage. To indicate the structural change, the writer used indexes of population increase, of non-farming households, and of commuters. Since the more communities are studied, the better the result is, he investigated 272 towns and villages in the six basins of Nagano, Ueda, Saku, Matsumoto, Suwa, and ma in Nagano Prefecture. To discover the representative indicator he used the following method: index of the structural urbanization was calculated for each indicator of the towns and villages in the six basins, and by synthesizing these indexes, the degree of urbanization for each town or village was found. As the second step, the correlation of the synthesized degree of urbanization to each indicator was calculated, and by comparing the coefficients with one another, the most reliable indicator was chosen. Since it is necessary for the three indicators, when synthesized, to be substituted by the same standard, the writer used the index calculated by means of the T score. The result was that the index of non-farming households in the five basins excluding the Nagano Basin showed the highest correlation. As shown in Table 9 this proves, therefore, that in any suburban region similar to these five basins, the index of non-farming households may represent the degree of urban-ization. As for Nagano Basin, whether its difference results from the relative largeness of the central city of Nagano, or it is due to the regional structure of the Nagano Basin is yet unconfirmed. This variation is to be studied further in order to clarify the valid range of the index of non-farming households.