Examines the need to reconsider spatial conceptualizations and categories such as urban-rural and core-periphery in light of two recent trends: migration out of cities and the geographic redistribution of economic activities. Suggests that these trends and related policy issues would be better articulated in a regional or local economy framework.…

The post-World War II American pattern of general urban growth, rapid suburbanization, and central city decline has now given way to reduced urban growth outside the Sunbelt, increased growth in nonmetropolitan areas, greater self-sufficiency for suburbs, and continuing depression in the central cities. Implications of these changes are discussed.…

The role of migration and of federal policy in population redistribution should be a central focus in population geography education. Although migration to the Sunbelt and the West has been a pattern since the 1950s, a significant trend has been noted only since the 1970s, when the birth rate dropped so much that natural increase could not…