ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the origins of the rural space economy in Jamaica, as a key to understanding the structure of the modern rural periphery. It describes the development of the metropolitan core, focusing on the rise of Kingston as a primate city. The chapter presents the emergence of growth poles associated with the development of bauxite and tourism. It focuses on the rural periphery, but its main purpose is to illustrate how environmental factors need to be accommodated in order to obtain a holistic view of relations between the urban core and rural periphery. A concomitant of population pressure on land resources was a growing exodus of people away from the rural areas: rural-urban migration began to gather pace in the twentieth century. Concepts such as pole and periphery can help people analyze the structure of rural-urban relations, and to understand how regional differentials can get worse rather than better.
