RURAL-URBAN CONTINUUM

SS MAJOR 7 – UNIT 2
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 Rural-urban continuum is a course of socio-economic interface between the villages and the towns or
cities.
 Numerous cultural traits are diffused from cities to the rural areas.
 It is the transition from rural to urban where trends, services, products, etc diffuse from urban areas to the
rural areas.
 For example,
 dress patterns like pants, shirts, ties, skirts, jeans, etc. diffuse from cities to the rural areas.

 In addition, modern thoughts, ideologies are also transmitted from the cities to the rural areas due to widespread
communication via radio, television, newspaper, etc.
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 The urbanism, which is urban way of life, emerges in the cities and gradually reaches
to the rural areas, depending on their immediacy to cities.
 The process of urbanization has not been a remote occurrence.
 Currently, together with the entire range of occupational diversification, spread of
literacy, education, mass communication, etc, continuity between rural and urban
areas has amplified.
 Urban jobs and other facilities of living have become status symbols in the rural
areas.
 Several up to date techniques of agricultural development and many of the
institutional frameworks for rural development are also produced from the urban
centers.
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Would you agree that there are certain villages that are
considered urban?
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 There do exist 'Urban villages.' This aspect of complex societies is very mystifying. Moreover there exist people
who live in villages and work in towns. Neither the village nor the town can thus be thought of as a stereotype.
 Urban Villages are activity centers that provide pleasant living, shopping, and working environments; strong pedestrian
accessibility; adequate, well located open spaces; an alternative, well connected street system; and a balance of retail, office,
residential and public spaces.
 It is an urban development typically characterized by medium-density housing, mixed use zoning, good public transit and an
emphasis on pedestrianization and public space.
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 the rural and urban life in complex society is not the opposite of one another.
 However this is not to say that rural and urban populations do not have any
differences.
 Life in the countryside occurred in small, geographically isolated settlements which
were socially homogeneous, with high levels of mutual communication and social
solidarity, and which changed very slowly.
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 Cities (urban area) are distinctive because they were large, dense and heterogeneous

and that this produced the transient, disorderly, anonymous and formal associational
relationships of urban living. Such understandings had affinities with Ferdinand
Tonnies’ a-spatial distinction between gemeinschaft (community) and gesellschaft
(association). In principle, if all settlements could be placed on such a continuum we
would have a strong account of spatial arrangement influenced social life.
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 While discussing rural-urban contrast it was debated that in terms of ethos of life, cultural

groupings and modes of living, village and city are distinct from each other.

 They appear as dichotomous entities. But structural similarities still subsist between the two in

regard to patterns of caste, rules of marriage and observance of religious practices.

 Villages and cities are not absolute units.

 Administration, education, employment and migration are institutional sources of linkage

between the village and the city.

 ABSS 2-A CLASS ENDED HERE . ZOOM 4/15/24

 A number of sociologists believe that it is complicated to differentiate between rural and urban areas

predominantly in countries where education is universal and people follow heterogeneous occupations, have
membership in large organizations and therefore have secondary relations.

 On the other hand, a lot of sociologists have highlighted on heterogeneity, impersonal relations, anonymity,

division of labour, mobility, class difference, employment patterns, secularism etc. as the items to be the basis for
distinguishing ruralism from urbanism. They maintain that rural and urban are two dichotomous terms which are
differentiated on the basis of above criteria.
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 However, there are some sociologists who still believe that this dichotomy is not
possible.
 Why?
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 There is no absolute boundary line which would show a clear cut cleavage between the rural and the urban
community.
 Secondly many a time most of these items are regular both to rural as well as urban areas with the consequence
that it is complex to distinguish the two.
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 For example,

 ‘empirically, at least, urban can be independent of size and density.” If this is true, then large size and high density

of settlement are not always conditions for an urban way of life in any given community.

 Similarly, O.D. Duncan has revealed by an analysis of quantitative data that such characteristics as relative size of

income and age group, mobility of population, extent of formal schooling, size of family and proportion of women
workers do not even correlate closely with via reactions in the size of population.
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 However, there are sociologists who consider that rural- urban differences are real and to

use these concepts on dichotomic basis is necessary for analytical purpose.

 Dewey observes, “Evidence abounds to show that many of the things which are

uncritically taken as part and parcel of urbanism do not depend upon cities for their
existence.

 History reveals that creativity in the form of invention and discovery is not limited to

cities, that literacy is not tied to urbanization and sacred ties are stronger in some cities
than in many small towns and farming areas.”
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 The addition of both population and cultural bases in the term ‘Urbanism’ confuses the whole issue.

People and culture, in fact, are inseparable.

 But the influences upon human attitudes and actions of the two logically must be distinguished.

 Man appears to be no exception to the general rule that important variation in numbers and density of

objects brings about uniformly significant changes in the nature of the objects, relationships.

 Variation in size and density of population at least have certain effects in respect of (i) anonymity, (ii)

division of labour, (iii) heterogeneity, induced and maintained by anonymity and division of labour,
(iv) impersonal and formally prescribed relationships, and (v) symbols of status which are independent
of personal acquaintance.
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 In conclusion

 There are some sociologists who still believe that urban ways of life are piercing into

the rural areas and it might be hard to sketch a line between the two. In a village
where the inhabitants walk, talk, dress and otherwise deport themselves like
urbanites, it is difficult to say whether it is a rural or urban community.
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 In ancient times when cities lived within walls and the gates were closed at night it was the walls that

divided rural from urban. Such an ancient city was like a house for its inhabitants, or a selfisolated
island.

 With the coming of industrialism, cities could no longer be preserved within walls. As such the walls

were a hassle, access being more important.

 Cities turned from building walls to roads. In recent times it is not basically practicable to draw a line

between city and country because of their mutual interdependence. Scholars, both of urban and rural
sociology, are largely in agreement that rural community that is not under urban influence would be
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 Ruralites who migrate to cities continue to maintain links with their kin in villages. Social

change may have weakened family bonds but primary relations have not vanished.

 The prototype of migration is often step by step from village to small town, to big city and

to metropolitan city. It is worth mentioning in this context that our metropolitan cities have
‘rural pockets’.

 In other words, the rural penetrates into the city as the urban penetrates into the country and

the city and the villages are not dichotomous entities but co-terminus units.
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 The rural-urban continuum can be represented in a diagram as follows:

• The two extremes of the line represent two forms of life on one remote village and on the other metropolitan life. In
this way we can visualize communities as ranging from the most urban to the least urban.
• The purely urban and the purely rural would be abstractions at the opposite poles of the ‘rural-urban dichotomy’.
• This range between the extremes is termed by some sociologists as the ‘rural-urban continuum, generally the villages
having most contacts with the city tend to be more urbanized than those with the least contacts.
• It would differ with the urbanity of the city and the rurality of the country.
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