The Future of the Countryside

The main assumption of Expanding Cities - Diminishing Space, is that, while, Cities are growing, agricultural land, but also natural retreats and buffer zones, are diminishing if not totally disappearing (Vacant Countryside). In what follows, I propose to challenge this central assumption. This assumption amounts to the idea that the urban condition is ubiquitous, it encloses everything; urbanization is planetary urbanization. Planetary urbanization absorbs the rural, disintegrates the hinterland and makes nature disappear; it is the urban without an outside. I will challenge this central proposition by looking briefly at India's policy of urbanization through development corridors and smart cities. Thus, the history of for instance, modern India is clear: industrialise, or perish. The government says agriculture has not done enough to generate employment and has pushed industry as a more lucrative alternative. means cities without country-side, without the nonurban (everything that is not the city). This generates a collision between the urbanizing imperative and the conditions of rurality (agrarian environments and the subjects that inhabit them). planetary urbanization tends to do without. Thus. Alternative models are needed.