ABSTRACT
Every nucleated settlement, whether hamlet, village, town or city, is, in varying degree, a centre of services and organization for a surrounding area. It is, indeed, common knowledge that the village is normally the centre for many of the activities of its parish, that the town is the centre for an area within a radius of about five to ten miles, and the great city for a still wider area which it serves in its capacity as a king among towns and a regional centre of economic and social organization. The location of these nucleated settlements has been fixed since the time of their origin in the Middle Ages, but, in the last hundred years, industries have caused some to grow as great excrescences upon the countryside without any organic relation to it, and services have tended to concentrate in fewer centres, since in that way they can be more efficiently rendered. Thus, fundamental changes in the social structure of the village and in the interrelations of town and village have appeared. The village community has been affected in many ways by the growth and concentration of services in neighbouring villages or small towns. Rural cultures have been profoundly affected by the impact of urban ways of life. In the vicinity of all urban agglomerations there appear changes in the conditions and ways of rural living which upset the balance of rural society. So deeply associated are town and village in their interrelations that in effect no clear-cut distinction can be drawn between the urban and rural ways of life. Towns are able to compete with each other as service centres, and to specialize on particular industries to the virtual exclusion of others. They are thus more closely bound up with neighbouring industrial towns and particularly with the metropolitan city, to which they look for their deficiencies of materials and services. The metropolis becomes ever more metropolitan, not only as the focus for its nearby “town-area” but also for the many towns that lie over a much wider area. In this chapter we shall attempt to examine some aspects of these trends, with particular reference to the village community and the smaller towns in rural areas and to the relations between the village and the town. We shall illustrate from Germany, the United States and England.
