Cultivating plants started in out of the way places in the natural habitat of grains (high ground). Herding of animals stated by Pastoral Peoples over wide area. No towns in either case.
Small craft based manufactories develop, located in villages - fortified sites which grew into towns/cities. This
Large scale industrial production, which has to serve a wide geographical area. Very large agricultural estates, though also small farmers. Medieval Manors where a peasant's land holding was scattered all over the manor evolve into modern farms with farmers' land in one place. Towns & Cities grew.
Specialisation, where machinery and chemicals make former waste and common land of manors cultivatable - where large farms tend to form. More land taken by cities, towns and industries.
Large population rises, and more land taken by cities and towns. Most villages swell out over the original medieval 3 field systems of the manors (best agricultural land), with the farms on the former waste and common lands - with further machinery and chemical fertilisers.
Numbers of people working on the land contracts to a few %. But much of food consumed imported from other parts of the world, a form of New World Trading Patterns seen in Manufacturing. This is interrupted by World Wars and subsidies given to Food Production. By end of period efficiency of Agriculture very high, but mountains and lakes of over food productions cause subsidies to slacken - and imports again affecting farmers' profitability.
Original medieval market towns as centres of exchange for agricultural products within a day's animal walking distance change - much larger scale agricultural distribution systems occur. The large cities had become the main manufacturing centres. But by the end of the period manufacturing is leaving the cities for smaller town sites, or the edges of cities. People also prefer to live in the country, so leaving the cities and swelling the villages and smaller towns.
The Constant Trend here involves relationship between one development
and others. While there is a continual increase in the invented
processes, in specialisation, and in the range of goods and services
available, one development cannot occur in isolation.
Thus the city develops in symbiosis with the country.
Illustrating Slide Show.
The Agricultural - Town Symbiosis in Mass Production Societies
With agricultural products going to Integrated Distributors (Super & Hyper
Markets) and later to food processors, the role of the town declined steeply
as a market place and distributor of food products. As safety increased
(travel needed an armed escort before c 1800 - bandits rules outside the
manor strong points), there was no need to site manufacturing within City
walls or fortified sites (as were the early ones). Also helped by improved
communications and pressure on city sites, manufacturing moved out of major
cities, to edges of them, to smaller towns, or green field sites.
Thus Cities cease its prime role of market for exchange of goods and a
secure site for manufacturing. Instead the City and the town become centres
where:
Thus the city & town is becoming primarily a centre for features of the modern
Communication Society - end points for Integrated Distributors, Services,
and Communications.
The town itself is having less impact on Agriculture than in the past -
though farmers as businesses need the above services as other businesses -
while the farmers as people will buy much of their food like everyone else.
Over this period, largest cities have tended to fall in size somewhat as
manufacturing has moved out. Smaller towns & villages have increased in
size due to (1) manufacturing moving out of the largest cities, (2) continual
drift of people off the land through continual increase in efficiency of
agriculture. Size of agricultural holdings has increased, as the small farm
has become un-economic and unable to support a farmer and his family.
Movement of Manufacturing out of large cities continues; the pace quickened
by the migration of Manufacturing out of Post Industrial Countries - the
successor activities look more like information/communication/service activities
(from New World Trading Patterns).
The roles of City/Town as an end point for Integrated Distributors weakens as
(1) more efficient to site really large end points out of cities or on their
edges, (2) reduction in the inefficient practice of moving many goods into
city centres and then move them out again by or to the consumer - a trend of
more
items for display only at the end points, distribution from out of town
depots, with more home
Computer-Media ordering of goods
(which are dispatched from depots). With more mobility it is less critical
to concentrate facilities.
The trend has been for more building up of the villages and small towns and
the countryside as people have wanted larger homes in the country - which
has blurred the distinction between town/city and the country.
With a weakening of the need to concentrate distribution end points,
communications and services, this trend is likely to continue. Perhaps
eventually the blurring will go so far that the distinction between town &
country becomes difficult to seen in many cases.
Whether the distinction disappears completely in the very long term, or
whether there remain concentrations of communications/services is
problematical. Certain factors will cause such bunching to continue -
international communications (London), regional or local government,
transport systems (automated motorways).
If it had not been for the activities of local government stopping people
building in the country and spoiling it, and so creating false
markets in agricultural and building land (giving huge rise in the price of
housing in congested societies like the UK) this trend would have been
much further advanced that it is. Such government activity is more likely
to slow the trend than stop it (as so far has been the case).
Land Values
The increasing efficiency of agriculture resulting in the building up of
surpluses seen in the History, hydrophonic type methods tending to cut the
dependence of agriculture on land somewhat there is the possibility of the
land shortages even in crowded countries like the UK turning into land
surpluses - causing a fall in land values underpinning the very high cost of
housing - which may reverse. This is considered to be a primary cause of
the UK house price fall and negative equity problems of the early - mid 1990s,
which was also mirrored in other parts of the world.
These events could be traced to Weak Signals observed in the 1980s:
The most important factor in this equation is the increased supply of building
land (countryside gets built up faster) stimulated by farmers' surpluses of
land, and its value as agricultural land. This agricultural value has been
propped up by government payments to farmers to keep it idle, as well as
subsidies to farmers generally. We cannot expect these sorts of subsidies to
continue for ever - and farmers' subsidies generally can be expected to reduce
under government funding problems
(From Government). The efforts of farmers to
diversify has produced the sort
of results generally found when businesses try to enter areas new to them:
such as an over supply of golf courses. In time no doubt other economic
uses will be found for land, but that does not mean its value will
necessarily match its former use for Food Production. Indeed there has
been an increased problem with cheaper food imports occurring recently,
which was mentioned in the History.
It is uncertain if this building land supply will over balance the positive
factors in the land price equation. But any future land price rises are
likely to be lower, if not a decline, at least in some areas. The large
falls in land values in 1990s, and possibly some of the bounce back in the
2000s was also affected by the
Banking Crisis.
There may be more tendencies in future for land and house price falls following
boom price rises. In the recession phase of the Business Cycle supply issues
tend to predominate in a market, and the extra building land supply is
additional to the historical position.
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THE AGRICULTURAL - TOWN SYMBIOSIS - CONSTANT TRENDS
THE AGRICULTURAL - TOWN SYMBIOSIS IN POST INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES