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Rural-Urban Fringe
Concept, Meaning and Characteristics and Other Details:
Urban fringe of the modern city is a significant area because it signifies both urban as well as
rural characteristics. This should not be treated as two distinct zones as the city merges
perceptibly into rural countryside by way of mixed land uses.
In most of the western cities there is no break in its continuity which is strengthened by the
journey to work. People using automobiles make their daily trips to perform their jobs, from
the rear end of a city to its central area where their offices and economic institutions are
generally located.
FIG:1 Rural Urban Fringe
In India also, the same job has been performed by other-side population, i.e., by village
people who travel daily to earn their bread and come to neighbouring towns. But greatest is
the role of land uses which bind together town and village everywhere and “there is the
absence of clear break”. Thus, urban fringe is a marginal area both of town as well as
countryside. It can be better identified in terms of land uses or modifications of land uses than
in any other way.

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Rural-Urban fringe (R-U fringe) is a transitional zone and could be recognized recently on
social grounds by the presence of rural and urban groups. But modern means of
communications as well as means of movement of people and goods are making the social
attitudes between the two groups of rural and urban practically much diffused. In various
parts of Western Europe and North America, urban impact on social life has been felt well
away from the immediate surroundings of cities.
Therefore, it is no longer worthwhile to recognize a rural-urban fringe. Herington defines R-
U fringe more or less in the same context as “an area with distinctive characteristics which is
still partly rural and where many of the residents live in the country but are not socially and
economically of it”.
FIG:Rural urban fringe housing crisis
The city does not grow outwards in well-defined patterns. It sprawls haphazardly, making
rapid advances at one point, and hardly moving at all at another. This results into incoherent
landscape which is the characteristics of the fringe.
Another characteristic and an unique quality is a wide mix of land uses ranging from a variety
of commercial developments, including out-of-town shopping centres, to the city services and
industries which are conveniently located at the margins.
Fringe areas of the USA were like an ‘institutional desert’ because of the uncontrolled
location there of unpleasant and noxious establishments such as slaughter houses, junkyards,

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and wholesale oil storage, and of utilities such as sewage plants and cemeteries. But in the
present context the various land uses, older and newer, are intermingled in a random fashion.
To sum up the concept, it forms the outer suburban zone or, R-U fringe lying beyond the city
administrative limits. It is a wide rural area into which residential development is intruding
and new industrial sites and other urban uses are in the process of development along its main
lines of communication, often clustered around existing villages and small towns.
Fig: 3 Complex Pattern of Transition in R-U Fringe:
R-U fringe generally produces three distinct aspects as its
constituent parts;
Physical, socialand economic:
 Fringe as a distinctive physical area or region of the city,
 Fringe area where urbanization impinges on rurality to produce conflict between ways
of life, and
 The impact of urban expansion on agricultural land.

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Physical aspect is represented by an inner zone. The area is in an advanced stage of transition
‘from rural to urban uses’. Another aspect is of social change in attitudes of the people of the
outer fringe. Although primarily attitudes were rural, now with the impingement of
urbanization, city influences have begun to infiltrate and social transformation takes place.
Beyond the above stated two aspects, the third one constitutes economic transformation in the
area forming ‘an urban shadow’. It is here that agricultural land is being transformed with the
impact of urban expansion. One may observe there a sporadic and scattered representation of
the city in some non-farm residences.
Characteristics of R-U Fringe:
Walter Firey has also discussed some of the characteristics of R-U fringe while describing
the Flinct city, Michigan, USA. These include:

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a) There is a vast usurpation of agricultural land by residential tracts of the suburbs
including commercial, educational uses, etc.
b) Industries have sporadically cropped up.
c) People of the fringe area are overburdened because of the heavy taxes incurred to
manage urban amenities.
d) Land values have gone too high due to new constructions to be borne by medium-
class population.
e) One could observe a social shift in the attitudes of people.
In India, Sudesh Nangia studied Delhi Metropolitan region (1976), and highlighted some of
the chief characteristics of the R-U fringe around the metropolis. She pointed out that the
fringe area extended over 212 sq km and encompassed 177 villages within its fold. The zone
is not concentric but polygonal in shape.
Its structural units include slums and squatter-settlements, built-up dwellings without any
proper plan, mixed land uses, areas of agricultural production usurped by lot of industrial
units, dispersed location of settlements suffering from urban facilities, and also it commands
sewerage treatment plant and recreation centres as well.

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R.L. Singh studied R-U fringe of Varanasiandcalled it
an extension of the city itself, actual and potential.
According to him, “the R-U fringe is an area where
most of the rural land is forced into urban uses
prematurely”. U. Singh studied urban fringe of
‘KAVAL’ towns and concluded that their fringe areas
coalesced togetherinheriting all the evils of large
conurbations such as horrible slums, appalling house
and traffic congestion and long daily trip to work.
Pahl attemptedto summarize the characteristics of the
fringe as segregation, selective immigration,
commuting and collapse of geographical and social

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hierarchies. The British Countryside Commission
organized a conference on the urban fringe which
revolved around five topics.
This is clear from the report that the major
issues of urban fringe includes:
(a) Changing agricultural milieu of R-U fringe,
(b) Competition and development pressures,
(c) Prospects of recreation in the urban fringe,
(d) Land-use relationships and conflicts, and
(e) Interaction between policies in the urban fringe.
Delimitation of the R-U Fringe:
An ideal method of the delimitation of R-U fringe
actually depends upon intensive fieldwork from
village-to-village around a limit of nearly 10 to 15 kms
from the central city limits. But the scholars have not
yet been able to delimit the fringe of a city based on
actual studies from village-to-village, especially in
India. Whateverwork is being done in this respect it is
based either on a sample survey of the villages or it is
wholly based on the secondary data of the censuses.

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Some of the metropolitan cities have been studied and
none of these studies in India is based on actual field
survey for delimitation of the R-U fringe. Delhi,
Bangalore, Varanasi, Hyderabad, Kolkata are notable
studies but these suffer from an inadequate and
ambiguous conceptual framework for the delimitation
of the fringe zone, being overwhelmingly based on the
census of India.

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Practically, the delimitation of the R-U fringe is a
matterof thorough understanding about its structural
composition. It is composed of several attributes like
city municipal limits, contiguous small urbanised
towns, urbanised villages around the city, and also
villages associated with the city by virtue of their other
functions. Figure 17.3 reveals the structure of the R-U
fringe by patheticallyin its spatial perspective.

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On the above basis as indicated in the figure
the fringe area of a city may fall into the
followingthree main categories:
(i) Generally around the central-city limits for about
two kilometers, an innermost ring of the fringe may
develop. It contains small towns and urbanized
villages. In case of metropolitan area, for example, the
Greater Mumbai, the fringe may begin within the city
limits.
(ii) The next level of the fringe area extends further for
a distance of five kilometers or more around the
previous one. It forms the middle zone of the fringe
and includes non-municipal towns and urbanized
villages.
(iii) The third category forming the outer zone includes
the villages having little or no urban land uses.
Nonetheless, theyare linked with the city by their
allied functions.
The above categories are imperceptibly merged into
each other and cannot be easily identified without
closely examining their land uses in the concerned

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area. It is once again reiteratedthat for a proper
demarcation of the inner and outer boundaries of the
R-U fringe, a field survey of all the villages is a
necessity.
The Delhi and Bangalore studies in the R-U
fringe used the following variables to
determine the outer boundary:
(a) Densityof population – 400 km2 or more,
(b) Population growth in the preceding decade – 40
per cent or more,
(c) Females per thousandmales – 800 or less,
(d) Proportion of workers to non-agricultural activities
– 50 per cent or more, and
(e) The out limit of city bus services or local train
services.
Conclusion:
On the basis of the discussion as stated above this can
be concluded that the inner zone of R-U fringe is in the
advanced stage of transition from rural to urban uses.
The outer zone shows that gradual change is in the

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process and city influences have begun to appear.
Beyond the outer zone is a diffused area where
dispersal of some non-farm residences appears.
At the city margins everywhere, the fringes contain a
wide mix of land uses ranging from a variety of
commercial developments to the city services and
industries. Some of the cities of the Western world
have their fringes turned into ‘unpleasant
environment’ by noxious industrial units, junkyards,
wholesale oil storage, sewage plants, and even
cemeteries. Out-of-town shopping centres also form a
part of the western cities’ fringes.
In India, urban fringe has become almost jumbled by
coalescing of settlements inheriting all the evils of
conurbations such as slums full of ‘jhuggi-jhonparis’,
drainageless unpaved narrow lanes and traffic
congestion not far off the city centre.

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Fringes have usurped the land which was formerly
under the agricultural production – ‘baris’ and
orchards. In brief, R-U fringe areas in India offer the
greatest challenges to the urban planner.