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New-type urbanization and rural revitalization have gradually become national strategies, and are an objective requirement for China to be able to enter into a new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics and also an inevitable result of the integration of new-type urbanization and rural development in the new stage. This paper reviews the classic theories and cognition of the research on urban–rural relations at home and abroad, and outlines the stage evolution characteristics of urban–rural relations in China. It is believed that urban-biased urbanization has widened the development gap between urban and rural areas since reform and opening up. Under the guidance of the two strategies of new-type urbanization and rural revitalization, urban and rural areas have transitioned from “one-way flow” to “bilateral interaction”, and from “urban bias” to “urban–rural integration”. This paper puts forward a research framework and scientific issues regarding the integration of new-type urbanization and rural revitalization from multidisciplinary perspectives. The integration of these two major strategies will contribute to a new situation of the coordinated and high-quality development of urban and rural areas in the new era.

The Nile Delta is the most vital region of the desert-dominated country of Egypt. Due to its prominent level of vulnerability to climate change’s negative impacts and its low capacity for adaptation and mitigation, the current study aims to provide accurate quantification of temperature change across the Nile Delta as an integral basis for sustainability and climate change impacts assessment studies. This was achieved through monitoring urban dynamics and detecting LST trends in 91 cities and their rural surroundings. The relevant local urban bias was discriminated from regional/background changes present in diurnal/nocturnal temperature records. The temperature records were then corrected/adjusted by removing this urban bias. Owing to the insufficiency of ground-based meteorological observatories, the investigation utilized moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperatures (LSTs) and Landsat-based datasets (2000–2021). The widely used Mann–Kendall test (MKT) and Theil–Sen estimator (TSE) were employed to assess trends in urban sprawl, LST time series, and the implied association. The analysis revealed that the region has experienced dramatic urbanization, where the total urban expansion was greater than two-thirds (69.1%) of the original urban area in 2000. This was accompanied by a notable warming trend in the day/night and urban/rural LST records. The nocturnal LST exhibited a warming tendency (0.072 °C year−1) larger than the diurnal equivalent (0.065 °C year−1). The urban dynamics were positively correlated with LST trends, whereas the Mediterranean Sea appeared as a significant anti-urbanization moderator, in addition to the Nile River and the prevailing northerly/northwesterly winds. The urban–rural comparison approach disclosed that the urbanization process caused a warming bias in the nighttime LST trend by 0.017 °C year−1 (21.8%) and a cooling bias in the daytime by −0.002 °C year−1 (4.4%). All results were statistically significant at a confidence level of 99%. It is recommended that studies of climate-related sustainability and climate change impact assessment in the Nile Delta should apply a distinction of urban-induced local effect when quantifying the actual regional temperature change.

What do studies of land rights in China contribute to the broader discipline of political science? First, the Chinese case challenges orthodox theories of secure, private property rights as a prerequisite for growth and sheds light on the distinctly fiscal roots of urban bias, a phenomenon pervasive in countries making the transition from agriculture to industry. Second, studies of land grabbing in the Chinese case provide a basis for comparisons of state-society relations in authoritarian vs. democratic regimes. While democratic institutions create more openings for aggrieved actors to organize and shape policy, ordinary citizens in both authoritarian and democratic regimes use protest in order to capture a greater share of rents from land. Third, land grabbing exacerbates inequalities; research on the Chinese case in comparative context shows that exclusionary modes of land ownership and limits on full social and political citizenship are mutually reinforcing across all types of regimes.

Urban bias in government policy is a common phenomenon in many developing countries. Bates ( 1981 ) has famously argued that the wish to industrialize, paired with the political clout of urban residents, results in distinctly anti-rural policies. Empirically, however, the strength of urban bias varies substantially across countries and over time. This paper explains this variation by developing an argument about a countervailing force to urban bias: the threat of a rural insurgency. The direction of urban and rural bias is a function of the political threat that geographically distinct groups pose to the survival of the central government. When the rural periphery lacks collective action capacity, urban bias emerges, but if there exists a credible threat of rural violence, urban bias is diminished. I test this proposition and competing explanations using data on net taxation in the agricultural sector, covering up to 55 low- and middle-income countries from 1955 to 2007. The results show a strong relationship between past territorial conflict (which proxies for credible rural threats) and lower levels of urban bias in the developing world. The findings are robust to alternative model specifications, measures, and sensitivity analyses.

This study aims to estimate the affect of urbanisation on daily maximum and minimum temperatures in the United Kingdom. Urban fractions were calculated for 10 km × 10 km areas surrounding meteorological weather stations. Using robust regression a linear relationship between urban fraction and temperature difference between station measurements and ERA‐Interim reanalysis temperatures was estimated. For an urban fraction of 1.0, the daily minimum 2‐m temperature was estimated to increase by 1.90 ± 0.88 K while the daily maximum temperature was not significantly affected by urbanisation. This result was then applied to the whole United Kingdom with a maximum T min urban heat island intensity (UHII) of about 1.7K in London and with many UK cities having T min UHIIs above one degree. This paper finds through the method of observation minus reanalysis that urbanisation has significantly increased the daily minimum 2‐m temperature in the United Kingdom by up to 1.70 K. This paper finds through the method of observation minus reanalysis that urbanisation has significantly increased the daily minimum 2‐m temperature in the United Kingdom by up to 1.70 K.

Purpose This paper studies the political economy of the endogenous urban-rural divide in two dimensions: labor market and provision of public goods. Design/methodology/approach This paper gives a dual-sector model endogenously depending on the consumption of public goods (club goods), the number of rural-urban migrants and the tax rate (transfer payments). Findings According to the research findings in this paper, the constraints on the participation of rural residents portray the rural residents' bargaining power, and in the game between the urban elites and the rural residents, tax rates depend on the preferences of the urban elites and the constraints urban elites and the rural residents jointly face. Therefore, the urban elites have to set tax rates deviating from the most preferred ones. The model in this paper can explain a series of empirical findings and yield new theoretical findings for empirical testing. Originality/value Significantly, the paper finds that the increase in agricultural productivity will lead to industrialization, accompanied by the disintegration of the dual-sector model. However, though the increase in industrial productivity can accelerate industrialization, it will further expand the urban-rural divide.

The theory of urban bias was a major contribution to the evolution of contemporary theories of political economy that remains highly relevant today. Yet theorists of urban bias have still not produced a general explanation that accounts for anomalous cases of what we call “rural incorporation,” or coalition strategies based on modest rural producers. These anomalous cases suggest that the collective action underpinnings of urban bias theory underdetermine outcomes. This paper advances a new explanation of the anomalous African cases of Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Zimbabwe. After detailing the costs of rural incorporation, we theorize the conditions that would motivate state elites to overcome their pro-urban biases and offer substantial material benefits to non-elite agrarian producers. Rural incorporation is an optimal strategy only when state elites are locked in unusually intense conflict with their rivals. Most nationalist movements in Africa did not meet this condition and their leaders followed pro-urban policies. The three outliers are all cases of settler colonialism: bitter rivalry between European settlers and native planters created the conditions for rural incorporation. We show how native planters and their political allies selected rural incorporation as a political-economic instrument of commercial competition and political supremacy. Case studies of Ghana and Nigeria demonstrate that in the absence of political and economic rivalry with settlers, African leaders selected the “default” strategy of urban bias.

This article reviews the current state of the debate around the concept of ‘urban bias’. It first reviews Michael Lipton’s original formulation of an Urban Bias Thesis (UBT), and the initial debates that took shape in regard to his work and the work of Elliott Berg and Robert Bates. The main body of the article, however, considers a recent reworking of the UBT by Robert Eastwood and Michael Lipton, and four sets of objections that can be raised against it. Central to these objections are new accounts of the importance of mobility in constructing rural-urban livelihoods and claims emanating from the ‘new economic geography’ about the economic advantages of towns and cities. The article concludes with a short review of the implication of the continuing debate on ‘urban bias’ for public policy and Poverty Reduction Strategies.

Background International policy towards access to essential medicines in Africa has focused until recently on international procurement of large volumes of medicines, mainly from Indian manufacturers, and their import and distribution. This emphasis is now being challenged by renewed policy interest in the potential benefits of local pharmaceutical production and supply. However, there is a shortage of evidence on the role of locally produced medicines in African markets, and on potential benefits of local production for access to medicines. This article contributes to filling that gap. Methods This article uses WHO/HAI data from Tanzania for 2006 and 2009 on prices and sources of a set of tracer essential medicines. It employs innovative graphical methods of analysis alongside conventional statistical testing. Results Medicines produced in Tanzania were equally likely to be found in rural and in urban areas. Imported medicines, especially those imported from countries other than Kenya (mainly from India) displayed 'urban bias’: that is, they were significantly more likely to be available in urban than in rural areas. This finding holds across the range of sample medicines studied, and cannot be explained by price differences alone. While different private distribution networks for essential medicines may provide part of the explanation, this cannot explain why the urban bias in availability of imported medicines is also found in the public sector. Conclusions The findings suggest that enhanced local production may improve rural access to medicines. The potential benefits of local production and scope for their improvement are an important field for further research, and indicate a key policy area in which economic development and health care objectives may reinforce each other.

We present a theory of the allocation of rural and urban government services in the presence of household migration to the city. Assuming policy makers cannot directly allocate households across rural and urban regions, we find there are circumstances where a second-best efficient allocation of government services is independent of the relative weights the policy maker places on the welfare of rural and urban households. An ‘efficient’ urban bias ensures that wages are maximized for urban and rural households and that migration to the city is not excessive. Thus, inequities in the provision of government services are not necessarily a sign of political favoritism. In these circumstances, a second public policy instrument is needed to effect redistribution in favor of urban households. A ‘redistributive’ urban bias takes the form of restricting migration flows to the city and not in altering the allocation of government services.