ABSTRACT
What and where is the urban fringe? A precise definition and map are not possible, but generally the urban fringe means those areas just beyond the built-up part of a city, although still close enough to the city to be subject to intense development pressures (for a discussion of definitions, see Bourne and Simmons 1978: pp. 18–41). The fringe is not a line on a map; it is a zone of radially diminishing urban-style activities. It is the existence of a fringe that prevents one being able to distinguish the urban from the rural, since the fringe has features of both. Yet it is more than an amalgam of the two; the fringe is a distinctive place with features of its own. It is, above all, a place of heightened land-use conflict, uncertainty and profit potential, hence its interest to geographers.
