the spaces urban and rural are inserted as different expressions materialized in the geographic space, understood by their distinct economic, cultural, technical and structural dynamics. Although they make up different media, their interrelationships are quite complex. Therefore, it is often difficult to separate or understand the specificity of each of these concepts.
O urban space concept designates the area of high population density with the formation of houses juxtaposed between them, what we call the city. already the countryside concept refers to the set of primary activities carried out in areas not occupied by cities or large population densities.
Mental Map: Urban and Rural Space
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However, beyond this simple and introductory definition, it is interesting to realize that rural and urban are, after all, different types of everyday practices. Thus, there may be rural practices in the space of cities or urban practices in the countryside. For example: the cultivation of vegetables within the space of a city (although this is increasingly rare in large urban centers) is a case of rural practice in urban areas. Likewise, the existence of a farm hotel or a
resort in an area far from the city is an example of urban practice in rural areas.One of the main differences between urban and rural is, therefore, in socioeconomic practices. The rural space, as we have said, predominantly encompasses activities related to the primary sector (extraction, agriculture and livestock), while the urban space usually gathers activities related to the secondary sector (industry and energy production) and tertiary (commerce and services).
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Other difference between urban and rural it is in the breadth of the respective concepts. In terms of scale, the spatial coverage of the rural environment is much greater, as it brings together so many transformed and cultivated (agrarian space) by man as the natural space, little transformed or maintained totally without interventions anthropogenic. On the other hand, the city, although it has greater economic dynamics, presents itself in more circumscribed, even with the disorderly growth of urban spaces in most peripheral and emerging.
In terms of economic hierarchy, we can say that, originally, the countryside played a preponderant role over cities. After all, it was the development of agriculture and livestock that allowed the formation of the first civilizations and their subsequent development. However, with the advance of the Industrial Revolution and the technical transformations it produced, the rural environment found itself increasingly subordinated to the urban, since agricultural and extractive practices have come to depend increasingly on techniques, technologies and knowledge produced in the cities.
Currently, the urban and the rural form a very broad socioeconomic and even cultural relationship, often presenting itself in a non-cohesive way and deeply marked by the advancement of techniques and by the transformations produced from this conjuncture. In this relationship, the geographic space is structured in all its complexity and becomes a reflection and conditioning of social and natural relations, denouncing the marks left by human practices in the environment in which settle down.
* Mind Map by Rafaela Sousa
Geography teacher
By Me. Rodolfo Alves Pena
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
PENA, Rodolfo F. Alves. "Urban and rural space"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/geografia/espaco-urbano-rural.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
