IGCSE Geography / Urban environments

Suburbanisation and counter-urbanisation revision notes

Edexcel International GCSE Geography (4GE1), chapter 6: Urban environments, specification point 6.1a. Free lesson.

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Suburbanisation moves people from a city centre to its edge, while counter-urbanisation moves people out of cities to small towns and rural areas. Their causes and effects help explain how cities and the countryside change over time.

How cities change over time

In developed countries, cities have often gone through these processes in roughly the same order. Urbanisation brings people into towns and cities. Later, people move outwards to suburbs or further into the countryside. Reurbanisation happens when people move back into inner-city areas, often after they have been rebuilt and improved. Suburbanisation is when a city grows outwards as people move from its centre to housing at its edge. These outer housing areas are called suburbs. Counter-urbanisation is when people leave cities for small towns and villages in the countryside.…

Why people move out of cities

Both processes involve a push, a pull, and something that makes moving possible. The reasons differ in detail because people moving to the suburbs still commute into the city, while people moving further away may work from home or travel from farther out. For suburbanisation, railways, buses and cars make it possible to live at the edge and commute, or travel to work each day. The push is crowded, noisy inner areas. The pull is a bigger, newer house with a garden on cheaper land. For counter-urbanisation, motorways, fast trains and working from home make it possible to live…

Effects on the places people leave and move to

Moving large numbers of people changes both the areas they leave and the places they move to. Some effects cause problems, while newcomers can also help keep village services open. With suburbanisation, the inner city can lose people, shops and jobs, leaving buildings empty. Farmland at the city edge may be built on. This outward spread is called urban sprawl. More people living in suburbs can mean more car journeys into the centre, causing more congestion. With counter-urbanisation, the city loses residents and the money they spent there. In villages, newcomers may push house prices up,…

Use precise definitions and developed explanations

Keep the direction of movement clear. Counter-urbanisation is not people moving from the countryside into cities to find work. That movement is rural-urban migration, which causes urbanisation. A clear definition of counter-urbanisation is the movement of people from cities to smaller towns and rural areas. For a four-mark question asking for two reasons, give two different reasons and explain how each leads people to move. Fast internet, for example, can allow people to work from home, so they no longer need to live near their office. For a two-mark question about an effect on a village,…

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