ABSTRACT
At the end of the twentieth century, the European Union was the most urbanised region of the world with around 80 per cent of its total population living in towns and cities compared with 77 per cent in Japan, 76 per cent in the US, 67 per cent in Central and Eastern Europe, and 35 per cent in the developing world (CEC, 1991b). In all EU countries, the process of urbanisation had been continual throughout the century, but since the 1960s it had been generally slower in the industrialised and highly urbanised north than in the more rural north or less urbanised south, where the movement of people from the countryside to the towns proceeded at a considerable rate (Table 11.1).
