Urban-Rural Relations in a Post-

Urban World
Professor Hans Westlund
KTH Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm, Sweden
 Henri Lefebvre (1970):
• ”Complete urbanization”
• Agriculture and villages = ”…integral part of
industrial production and consumption”
• ”…all part of the urban fabric…”
• ”…the only regions untouched by it are those
that are stagnant or dying, those that are
given over to ‘nature’.”
 This lecture:
• Cities – from isolated islands to nodes in
global networks
• Theoretical consequences of the “complete
urbanization” for the urban-rural dichotomy,
that has been a fundament for our
understanding of human society
• The “Post-Urban World”
• Policy consequences of the “complete
urbanization”/”post-urban world”
 Milestones in spatial theory
• Von Thünen’s isolated state (City-Hinterland)
• Central-place theory (City-Hinterland)
• (Industrial) Location theories (Transition
phase)
• The city-networks paradigm (Integrated City-
regions in networks, Hinterlands negligible) of
the knowledge economy
 Why have theory changed focus?
• The transition from regional and national pre-
industrial and manufacturing-industrial
economies to a global knowledge economy
• Economies of the former epochs were based on
spatially bound resources; the knowledge
economy is not:
• A fundamental difference compared with the
former epochs. For the cities, this means that the
resources of the hinterlands have lost in relative
importance and the resources of other cities have
increased in importance.
The spatial-economic paradigms of
each period:
A. City and hinterland in the
pre-industrial economy

B. Cities’ interaction with

hinterlands and other cities
in the industrial economy
C. City networks in the
knowledge economy with
negligible hinterland
interaction
 Countryside dissolves in two
categories
• The city-close countryside becomes integrated
in the urban fabric
• The peripheral countrysides are “slowly given
over to nature”. No potential for endogenous
growth – dependent on external demand
 The integration of the inner
hinterlands
• The city-close hinterlands become integrated
in the metropolitan regions:
• They become commuting areas with culturally
urbanized inhabitants (“gentrification”)
• The agriculture there adapts to specialized
demand: farm shops, “select your lamb”, etc
• The links between the city and inner
hinterland increase to such an extent that a
city-region emerges
 The decline of the outer hinterlands
• The economic base determines the role of
hinterlands
• No potential for endogenous development –
only metropolitan regions’ demand can
initiate growth
• This holds not only for remote rural areas but
also for remote cities, not big enough to
generate endogenous growth.
 The post-urban world
• Thesis – antithesis – synthesis:
• Rural = thesis
• Urban = antithesis
• Synthesis = A world where the urban-rural
dichotomy has ceased to exist; with city-
regions integrating the close rural areas and
the rest is “nothing” – a post-urban world
Some characteristics of the post-urban
world
• Cities are enlarged to city-regions that
comprise a multitude of activities and land
use, also (urban) agriculture and ”nature”
• The interaction within city-regions and
between them (city-networks) exceeds the
interaction with their former outer hinterlands
(including remote cities and places) – the city-
networks “jump over” the outer areas
Policy implications – for rural areas
• Amenities: qualities of a place or a region that
make it attractive for living and/or working in
• Amenities important for tourism but also for
in-movers and permanent residents
• But – only amenities are not enough
• Business life in amenity-rich rural areas must
have access to the urban markets through
good transportation infrastructure and
broadband connections
 Policy implications 2
• Local social capital is important for growth in
rural communities
• But neither local social capital as a single
factor is a sufficient prerequisite for rural
development
• Rural firms can compensate for lower
accessibility by building links to non-local and
non-regional actors and markets
 Conclusions
• In the post-urban world the city-close
countryside becomes integrated with urban
centers to large, functional city-regions with a
multitude of activities and densities
• The countryside outside the expanding city-
regions must find new strategies to survive
and offer products that the urban market
demand – or turn back to nature…
Thank you!