According to the
theory of Urban Life Circles, cities development dynamics can be described as a circle
procedure. In 1982 van den Berg et al. developed a four-stages model of city
development, distinguishing the phases of urbanisation, suburbanisation,
disurbanisation and reurbanisation. During the first stage of urbanisation mainly
because of the loss of jobs in the agricultural sector at the rural areas there
are migration flows towards the city, especially to the core. In the next stage,
the evolution of land prices and the economic restructuring of the city leads
to a shift of population and jobs from the core to the ring followed by growth
and sprawl, known as suburbanisation period. In the Western societies these two
faces are mainly connected with the industrialization and modernity, the
subsequent lower quality in the inner cities because of repletion, social trends
and the improvements of transportation.
The next phase is
known as disurbanisation, and appears when the total population of an functional
urban region (core and ring) declines -shrinking
cities- followed by a redistribution of inhabitants and jobs in favour of
small and medium cities (a procedure that is connected with the deindustrialization
and the globalization). The last circle describes an urban regeneration, marked
by an absolute concentration of population in the city’s core. This
reurbanisation trend may be due to successful regeneration measures within the
city centers, to a selective migration of usually young households in search of
urban lifestyles (gentrification/back-to-the-cities movement) or to the newly
arising importance of global cities. But how well can this model describe the
different cities development models through the world? Is it just a deterministic
model for the European cities or it can be applied for all the cities?
Moreover, does it take into consideration the political and planning decisions and
the various (global and local) social and economic forces or it is a model that
leads to extremely generalized conclusions?
(Source: http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US2/NOTES/urban.html)
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