城乡关系不是单纯的社会经济现象,需要对它进行文化地理的研究。影响中国城乡关系长期历史演变的主要是水域特征和政策-文化。中国和西方城乡关系历史的最大差异在于:地中海孕育了希腊化时代外向型的城市文明,而内河流域为主的地理特征奠定了中国内向型的农耕文明;中国农业文明对城市文明的牵制使得文化对政策的选择依附特征突出,从而形成长期的城乡融合,这与西方单线式的经由城乡对立达到城乡一体化的路径大相径庭。中国城乡关系变革的最终价值取向是实现城乡社会的平等与融合。

The relationship between city and countryside is one of the most important social and economic phenomena, and the rural-urban gap is a pressing problem with which China is confronted. However, they don't only belong to the themes of social and economic research. It is very necessary to study rural-urban relations from the view of history and cultural geography. The geographical conditions, especially whether a country abuts against sea and river or not, and institution-culture are essential reasons which decide the evolvement of rural-urban relations in China. At the beginning of civilization, both the East and the West emphasize and mainly develop agriculture, and regard the rural as a symbol of ‘nature’. However, in the course of transition from an agricultural society to urbanization, Chinese is different from the West. China is a long-term agricultural-oriented society, but the West, from the start of ancient Greece especially stresses the urban civilization. There are some differences on rural-urban relations among China, Japan and the West. Mediterranean breeds a kind of urban civilization in ancient Greece and Rome, but China as a country mostly making use of inland river like Yellow River and Yangtze River and facing the sea on the one side in the long history, mainly is a kind of rural civilization whose policies and culture emphasize on farming but restrain the development of trade and city. Under the influences of these cultural geographical factors, there is long-term harmonization between city and countryside about over 2,000 years in China, but long-term rural-urban confliction in the history of the Western Europe. This kind of historical characteristic has a profound impact on urbanization and rural-urban relations in China nowadays. The ultimate aim of reforming rural-urban relationships in China should be to realize equality and harmonization between the rural and the urban.