RURAL URBAN LINKAGE

Urban

The definition of urban areas (Encarta 2004) as distinguished from rural areas differs from
country to country. Although, most demographers would accept that cities are larger density
populated and density built up areas. There is little arrangement about new to define urban using
objective measurement.

Most countries are a combination of criteria – typical populations use a combination of density, an
extent of the built up areas. In the United States, for example, census papers regard urban areas
are those with at least 2500 people, but in United Kingdom is 1000. For many African nations, it is
5000 inhabitations, while for most Latin American and European nations; it can be as low as 2000
or 2500 on just a few hundred inhabitants.

According to the 2001 census, the total population of Nepal was 21 million 156 thousand (23,
157, 423). Among them, 14.2% of the total populations live in urban areas. In the context of
Nepal, municipality means the areas having minimum 10000 populations in the mountain and
Himalayan regions and minimum 20000 populations in the Terai region.

Urban refers to town, city, metropolis, and a megalopolis. In general, an urban can be described
as a concentration of people with a distinctive way of life in terms of employment pattern in an
organization. An urban area is very complex. Where there is high degree of segregated and
specialized land use and wide variety of social and economic structure an urban areas is known
as a center of new extensive occupation that is commerce, manufacturing, government,
education and recreation or a cluster of people engage almost wholly in extensive. An urban
areas is not a static component naturally, it grows with time and produce distinctive shape and
size and urbanization processes.

Pre-Urban

Development and urbanization has been traditionally structured around dichotomies such as
urban-rural, traditional modern, etc. there is not much attention given to pre-urban areas.
Problems in these pre-urban values such as the lack of adequate infrastructure, services and
regulations, etc. or the vanishing of rural values, like the high price for the land loss of fertile soil,
social unity etc. This distinction between urban and rural territories is insufficient to characterize
the communities and landscape of peri-urban areas as border territories. There is still of call for a
clearer definition of the pre-urban areas, pre-urban interface or rural-urban fringe, but the fact that
rural and urban feature are coexisting within and along cities seems to be gaining support.

Ample evidence of the rural and urban dichotomy is presented in the Nepal Human Development
Report (HDR) publishing in 1998; unfortunately the report doesn’t contain a definition of what is
understood as the urban areas. Probably statistics are based on the distinction between
administratively defined urban and rural local government units.

Administrative Definition of Rural and Urban

The different between urban and rural areas may be seen so obvious that definition should not be
an issue. However, there can be major variation in the ways in which different nations defined
what is and urban center areas. Most of the urban population doesn’t live in cities but in market
towns administrative centers small and intermediate urban centers are often centrally rural urban
linkage, given their strong links and complementary relationship with their surrounding regions.
However, the function fulfills by these centers can vary considerable from one center to another
and are largely determine by the geographical, ecological, historical, economical, social, and
cultural characteristics of region.
Wide fluctuation in definition has three important implementations:

i. Official classifications should be treated with caution for example: A large proportion
of settlement classed as rural in China, India and Nepal would fall within the urban
category of the criteria.

ii. International comparisons are difficult as they may look as settlements, which,
despite being classed in the same category, may be very different in both population
size and infrastructure. In addition, the reliability of data on urbanization trends within
one nation can be compromise by changes in the definition of urban center over time.

iii. Public investment in service and infrastructure tends to concentrate on centers, which
are defined as urban. Consequentially, investment can bypass settlement not defined
as urban. Within national and regional urban system, large cities is also tend to be
favored with public investment over small and intermediate size urban centers,
including those with importance role in supporting agriculture population, processing
and marketing.

Understanding Rural Urban differences: Livelihood and the Rural Urban continuum

Rural
Livelihood drawn from crop cultivation, live
stock, forestry and fishing
Access to natural capital as the key asset and
basis for livelihood
Access to land for housing and building
materials not generally a problem
More distant from government as regulation
and provident of services
Access to infrastructure service limited
Fewer opportunities for earning cash more for
self-provisioning, greater reliance on favorable
weather condition
Urban characteristics in rural locations (tourist
areas)
Urban
Livelihood drawn from labor market within non-
agricultural production or marketing selling
goods
Great reliance on house as and economic
resource
Access to land and housing very difficult,
housing and land materials highly commercial
More care from government
Access to infrastructure and services difficult
Greater reliance on cash for access to food,
water, sanitation, employment garbage
disposal and other services
Rural characteristics in urban location (urban
agriculture)

The rationale of rural urban linkage

The Asian Development Institute (1976), “There is now a wide spread recognition of the need for
more integrated policies of rural development that also includes the promotion of non-agricultural
activities generating income and employment. The development of rural towns, the initiation of
public works programs, the provision of social services and amenities (facilities) and public
participation in decision making concerning development.”

Concept of Rural Urban Linkage

Urban centers and their structure and function and spatial distribution:

Urban center: It may refer to the village or market, center, town or city that develops as areas in
response to the demand of goods and services of the people living in the hinterland areas. The
center provider center level of services to the hinterland people and people come from the
surrounding areas to the center for goods, services, jobs, etc simply market town is a place where
exchange of goods and services takes place. Market center performs these functions
simultaneous as local exchange internal trade central place function.
Structure and function: Structure of the market center refers to the number and level of service
and facilities they hold. Functions refer to the particular services offered by the market center. So
functions include all type of services unit available at the center.

Space: Spatially, market center may be fixed at location or periodic or mobile, which are
determined in terms or threshold demand of population.

Distance: It refers not only to the physical terms but also to accessibility, which is expressed in
terms of time and cost. The network of the market center consists of two systems such as
articulated and grated. The articulated system refers to the market center of different sizes having
different level of functions. The integrated system on the other hand refer to different size center
that are physically link each other to allow interaction of people and services between them.

Resource use system:

No town can exist simply by serving its own population and in other to flourish and expand a
proportion of its goods and services must be sold beyond its own limits. It follows from this that a
proportion of any urban labor force is directly concerned with production of goods and services for
export. There are termed based the remaining workers are refereed to as non-basic, since their
role is to service the needs of the needs of the urban population itself.

The surrounding areas under the influence of the urban centers are the hinterland areas of that
center. It acts to supply raw material, agro-products, labor and handicrafts.

Link from services and institutions:

Transport and communication and institutions systems are important elements for effective
facilitations of linkage or interaction between town and hinterland.

Thus, market town having concentrations of different services and facilities and the hinterland
areas combined together from the urban region. Historically, road network, functions of market
towns, flow of goods and services etc. are some of the factors to describe the nature of
relationship between urban and hinterland areas.