The End of Urbanization? Towards a New Urban Concept or Rethinking Urbanization

Abstract

Urban growth and development have always been associated with specific nodes in an urban system. This association, however, does not make much sense in a world where the functional areas of many large cities have merged to form continuous urban landscapes. When more than 85% of a country's population is urbanized, the process of urbanization as commonly understood has come to an end, so that traditional means of analysis no longer suffice. Within a Danish context, this paper discusses limits to traditional urban analyses based on individual urban places and an urban rural dichotomy. It argues for the use of an alternative concept related to localization within a larger urban landscape and goes on to demonstrate how the pattern of urban growth in Denmark over the last 25 years may be explained by increasing mobility and improved access to labour markets.