REURBANIZATION - THE POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The paper examines the phenomenon of counter-urbanisation in western Europe and argues that by the late 1980s there was evidence of reurbanisation in some cities. Changes in public finance, in housing preferences and in employment location were leading to a redensification of cities which is likely to continue through the 1990s. The paper uses detailed data from Glasgow and the west central Scotland conurbation, first to indicate how the massive outward movement of residential population to the suburbs and beyond had slowed to the extent that the distribution of residential population between core city, suburban ring and exurbs was almost unchanged in 1981-88, and secondly to show how the inner city's share of the conurbation's employment actually rose after 1984.