Stinkin' Linkages

Understanding the Urban-Rural Interface, by Kenneth Lynch, outlines the linkages and flows between the urban and the rural. Outlined are the effects of a bias for one or the other; the ultimate goal always aimed towards economic growth and development. Especially in developing countries, the gap seems to grow the largest. The introduction to this book defines its purpose to promote, “reuniting the urban and the rural areas in the study of development across the world (intro, first sentence).” After reading the article, I would like to encourage reuniting the two in a physical sense rather than just for study purposes. The truth that is emerging about the urban-rural relationship is that; it does not exist except on paper. Much like the democratic and republican parties in politics, they define the left and right sides of a scale yet most people place themselves right in the middle. China is used as an example of how developing countries use the loose classification to extort the agricultural communities. They taxed them in produce (30%!) to gain capital, which they invested in the cities and finance heavy industry, while at the same time confining the so-called rural community to the fields. Basically, an imaginary line was drawn across the land that grouped people into one of two classifications; people on the side called rural received heavy taxes and house arrest. They were stripped of their rights (relative to urban inhabitants) and enslaved by their own government to act as pawns for the industrial development of the country¬. The Urban-Rural relationship is a manufactured method of discrimination and a tool of the government for exploitation.