The Arhus, Denmark Village Project

EXPANDING cities devour their adjacent rural lands; geographers study this appetite and advance proposals for curbing it.1 In 1974 and 1975 the Geographical Institute of the University of Aarhus, Demark, executed for the municipality of Arhus a research project which examined the social and physical milieu characteristics of 105 villages and hamlets dotting the hinterland of this city of a quarter million. The collected data and our analyses were subsequently forwarded to the city council in the form of a handsome research report,2 which was augmented by two public exhibitions of portions of the project findings. The purpose of the village project was to collect and present data and analyses to the city council and the planning offices of the municipality so that their deliberations about planned urban expansion would be more consciously informed regarding the habitational resources of the adjacent great and small suburban and rural satellites. This article indicates, first, how this large project was organized and carried out. Thereafter, the study of the physical milieu of the villages is discussed in detail before a more summary description of the parallel survey of social conditions is presented. The results of combining these two parts of the project so as to describe the total village milieu are sketched; and in conclusion some of our findings are outlined

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