Rural flight (or rural exodus) is the migratory patterns of peoples from rural areas into urban areas.
In modern times, it often occurs in a region following the industrialization of agriculture when fewer people are needed to bring the same amount of agricultural output to market and related agricultural services and industries are consolidated. Rural flight is exacerbated when the population decline leads to the loss of rural services such as stores and schools, which leads to greater loss of population as people leave to seek those features.
This phenomenon was first articulated through Ravenstein's Laws of migration in the 1880s, upon which modern theories are based.
Read more about Rural Flight: In The United States and Canada, Contemporary Developing Countries
Famous quotes containing the words rural and/or flight:
“No, in your rural letter box
I leave this note without a stamp
To tell you it was just a tramp
Who used your pasture for a camp.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“it pleaseth me when I see through the meadows
The tents and pavilions set up, and great joy have I
When I see o’er the campana knights armed and horses arrayed.
And it pleaseth me when the scouts set in flight the folk with
their goods;
And it pleaseth me when I see coming together after them an host of
armed men.”
—Bertrans De Born (fl. 12th century)