Land use change on the urban fringe

Abstract

Until recently, much of the research done on urban areas has treated the city as a contained entity, having a well-defined perimeter beyond which the countryside could be said to begin. Increasingly, however, studies like those conducted under the MAB-SCOPE programme on 'Urbanization and Environmental Change', are emphasizing the dynamics of urban growth. One aspect of this is the loss of rural land to urban sprawl and the other mixed land uses which seem to characterize this twilight zone. Ron Hill's article examines the changing profile of the urban fringe in different parts of the world, and gives some examples drawn primarily from South-East Asia of how this problem is being managed.