Pressures of Hybridity: An Analysis of the Urban-Rural Nexus
Date
2014-01-29
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Abstract
As cities expand their boundaries into surrounding territories, it has created a dilemma in how we understand the spaces on the outskirts of urban centres. Urban analysts and the general public are equally disenchanted with traditional dichotomies of urban and rural to describe these hybrid areas. Existing scholarly literature has addressed this shift through the use of concepts like suburbs, exurbs, and edge cities which represent the invasion of urban forms into rural areas. However, these concepts fail to capture the contested nature and hybridity of this territory where rural and urban confront each other through opposing values, interests and perceptions of the land.
Rocky View County, surrounding the city of Calgary in Alberta, provides a significant case study of the clash between urban and rural. Following a mixed methods research protocol, this thesis moves the literature in new directions by utilizing discourse analysis and social constructionism to reveal the range of pressures, internal conflicts and competing interests within the county. Instead of the traditional distinctions between urban and rural, the term urban-rural nexus is proposed and described as a hybrid space that must be viewed as a distinct settlement type. Hybridity is understood as the coexistence of opposing urban and rural land uses and values that create conflict among multiple constituent groups holding different social interpretations of this shared space. This thesis breaks new ground by offering an alternative analytical framework through the dimensions of conflict approach to identify and investigate the multifaceted nature of conflict in the urban-rural nexus.
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Sociology, Urban and Regional Planning
Citation
Gondek, P. (2014). Pressures of Hybridity: An Analysis of the Urban-Rural Nexus (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27422