The Rural-Urban Fringe: Canadian Perspectives

Andris E. Roze was an urban planner and designer in Toronto.

This volume contains a collection of 18 papers on the rural-urban fringe presented at the 1980 annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers, and eight additional papers subsequently included by the editors. The editors, Ken B. Beesley and Lorne H. Russwurm, are professors in the geography departments at the University of British Columbia and the University of Waterloo, respectively. They are both well known and have published extensively in the specialized field of urban geography.

The 26 papers are organized into seven groupings, each corresponding to one of the sessions at the 1980 C.A.G. annual meeting. Each grouping of papers is preceded by comments from the chairperson of the session and concluded by a critical appraisal from a discussant. One of the papers is in French, as are comments from one discussant and one chairman.

The seven groupings are further aggregated into four sections. In section I the six papers provide an overview of the urban-rural fringe from three viewpoints: today’s situation, changes that may be expected, and theoretical explanation of the forces involved.

The nine papers of section II examine the social and economic aspects of the fringe. Three papers are devoted to the commuting pattern and labour force characteristics of the fringe. An equal number of papers examines types of people that live and work in the area. There is a detailed definition of the fringe, a look at its municipal politics, and a very readable non-technical examination of the “country-good: city-evil” mythology that seems to underpin the appeal of the urban fringe.

Land use changes and conflicts between land uses in the urban fringe are examined by the six papers in section III.

The final section of the collection contains five papers on various aspects of policy and planning in the urban-rural fringe. Preservation of agriculture and urban expansion into the rural areas is a central topic of seven papers. Policy conflicts and the role of municipal politics are also examined in several of the studies.

This is a valuable collection of research papers on the urban-rural fringe for specialists who are academically involved in this topic. Most of the papers are even too theoretical for practicing planners involved in practical urban-rural fringe work. As a collection of 26 pieces of information, it does not present a comprehensive picture of the urban-rural fringe, but it will be valuable to those persons who are interested in some of the 26 items.