Counterurbanisation: a challenge for socio-theoretical geography: Fid-Bau Portal

Counterurbanisation: a challenge for socio-theoretical geography

Vartiainen, Perttu

Abstract The discussion around certain deconcentration trends in the settlement structure of the developed capitalist world has been very challenging within a rather specialised circle of population and settlement geographers. The idea of counter-urbanisation in particular seems even to revolutionize the urban-industrial world view of modern geography. While this discussion has typically rested on a very restricted ‘geographical’ manner of conceiving the world through formal spatial categories, it has also gradually led the way towards some rather more detailed interpretations of the social processes behind such changing spatial forms. The current interest of geographers in social theory has at the same time greatly progressed in explaining the structural logic of the urban capitalist world, even where this has been interpreted in more localised conditions. The basic challenge taken up in this article is, therefore, the evaluation of the actual separation, though also apparent complementarity, of these two rather distinct ‘worlds’ of academic geography. The approach adopted will consist of a critical evaluation of the limits of the idea of Counterurbanisation from a socio-geographical viewpoint, and, simultaneously, of its potential contribution to the discussion going on around some of the new so-called ‘post-industrial’, ‘post-Fordist’ or ‘post-modern’, socio-economic formations.