Rural-urban Fringe Areas Research Articles

Land Ownership in Rural-Urban Fringe Areas of Pennsylvania

Since land accounts for more than 23 percent of the wealth in the United States, information concerning who ultimately makes decisions about how the resource is used and claims returns or benefits from the resource assumes great importance. Land ownership effects land use decisions, including all activities on the land, and influences the distribution of wealth, income, and other measures of well-being. Additional knowledge of who owns the land and his attitudes, goals, and objectives of ownership is needed to analyze the effectiveness of existing policies and to develop new policies for application in guiding the development and use of the land resource.

Delineation and Analysis of The Rural-Urban Fringe

The efforts made to organize persons residing in the rural-urban fringe areas have not been notably successful. The techniques and procedures utilized by Extension Service personnel in farming areas, for example, do not seem to have the same applicability in the fringe areas. It is our hypothesis that much of the difficulty encountered in the fringe areas is due to the failure to recognize internal heterogeneity within the rural-urban fringe. Programs which are not adapted or specifically directed to each socio-economic, racial, or ethnic group in the fringe are likely to fail. It is the purpose of this paper, therefore, to suggest a method for delineating fringe areas and to examine internal variations within the fringe.