Urban, rural and transitional environments: A geographical typology for the extended city
The words “city”, “countryside”, “urban”, “rural” and “suburbs” have all become part of our everyday language. But what do they really mean? Traditional difficulties in defining and delimiting the typology differentiating between geographical spaces take on a whole new dimension in the context of globalization and metropolitanization. Does this mean that the rise of the knowledge economy and the popularity of the Internet are ringing the death knell of what we understood until now was meant by the term “territories”? In this article, we present a progress report on the nomenclature used in urban studies and consider new forms of extended urbanization, which we describe as transitional environments. These are areas that can be defined as territories that diverge from recognized rural and urban ideal types. They are heterogeneous spaces that reflect the complexity of the ecumene resulting from the extended city. Their heteroclitic nature is not a passing phenomenon; it is here to stay. Transitional environments are the product of metropolitanized urban societies and pose a number of significant challenges in terms of education, societal issues and sustainable development.