URBAN-RURAL INTERACTION - PHYSICAL FORM AND POLITICAL-PROCESS IN THE THIRD-WORLD

This paper provides an examination of the implications for urban-rural interaction in developing countries of the increasing trend towards the creation of vast megalopolitan urban systems and of recent political changes in the world order. This is developed as a critique of Potter and Unwin's (1989) edited volume on the geography of urban-rural interaction in developing countries. In the first part of the paper, the global recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s is seen as being significant for the further gravitation of private capital to urban cores. The second half of the paper examines some of the implications of the collapse of state socialism in eastern Europe and the former USSR for urban-rural interaction in developing countries. In conclusion, it is argued that increasing disadvantages accruing to the rural poor of the Third World as a result of the resurgence of global capitalism are likely to lead to major inequalities between urban and rural areas, which will require urgent attention by the world community if significant political unrest is to be avoided.