The Evolution of Urban Over Rural Areas

Abstract

This chapter reflects on the temporally evolving relationship between the urban and rural spheres, highlighting how both dimensions have been intrinsically linked and subjugated to the interests of dominant power groups throughout history, which has benefited one over the other. This unequal relationship is examined from the origin of the urban to the end of the twentieth century, leaving useful pointers for the present and the near future. A process in which the city has gone from emerging from and depending on the rural, to total domination of the rural. Cities are centers of territorial control, whose growth and demands drive the transformation of rural space. Through a methodology that integrates historical, geographical, economic and sociological approaches, the complexity of this process of domination and its material, socio-economic and cultural implications is understood. The present moment evidences a continued process of urbanization and de-ruralization under global urban hegemony and the growing submission of the rural to the dynamics of capitalist accumulation. In short, this study illustrates how the rural–urban dichotomy is spatially and sociologically broken, although it underlies this duality as a conceptual reference. The old categories have been joined by others, which warns us of the urgent need to reconsider, and eventually reverse, this situation in the face of current challenges such as the lack of sustainability and socio-spatial justice.