Module outline
1. What is the Rural?

2. Economic Change: The Productivist Countryside

3. Economic Change: The Post-Productivist Countryside

4. Population Change in the Countryside

5. Selling the Countryside

6. Rural Conflicts

7. Conserving the Countryside

8. Changing Rural Lifestyles

9. Hidden Rural Lifestyles

10. Urban Industrial Decline

11. Global Cities and the Global Economy

12. The Polarised City?

13. Urban Poverty and the Underclass

14. The City of Consumption, Gentrification and Culture

15. Selling the City of Spectacle

16. Post-modern Architecture and Urban Design

17. Edge Cities

18. Cities of Privatisation and Partnership

Aims of the module
This module aims to introduce students to urban geography and rural geography, and specifically to help students develop an
understanding of the processes of conflict and change in rural and urban areas.

Module objectives / Learning outcomes
By the end of this module, students should be able to: a) understand the key processes shaping contemporary urban and rural
change; b) relate these processes to a range of theoretical and conceptual literatures on urban and rural change; c) appreciate
the policy implications emerging from such change; d) develop skills of critical reading, interpretation and evaluation.