1. Suburbs as natural ecological extensions:
Suburbanisation as a natural process of organic and evolutionary growth; expansion takes place from the inside outward to the fringe, but is still tied to the urbanised core for jobs and services.

2. Suburbs as a means of escapism:
As a means of escape from the health, housing and environmental problems of the industrial inner cities.

3. Suburbs as macro-economic policy tools:
Suburbs as Keynesian policy instruments of macro-economic management and regulation, and for generating local employment multipliers.

4. Suburbs as vehicles for capital accumulation:
As a means for landowners, the financial sector and the property industry to capture the social surplus, deriving from the profits from the development of newly built suburban environments on the fringe.

5. Suburbs as a means of social engineering:
As a means of rescuing the poor and the disadvantaged from themselves, and of re-establishing a traditional and presumed superior moral order of earlier times and communities.

6. Suburbs as the logical outcomes of rational locators:
Reflecting the rational decisions of firms and households seeking lower-cost locations and more efficient and less regulated landscapes, within a competitive urban environment.

7. Suburbs as maps of consumer preferences and choices:
Emphasising the dominat role in suburbanisation of the preferences of individual consumers for more space, new housing, social homogeneity and certain public goods.

8. Suburbs as socio-political strategies:
Strategies building on manipulation of the political fragmentation of the metropolis, entrenched local autonomy and the demands for social exclusiveness.

9. Suburbs as asylums:
As defensive strategies, driven by fear of others, of the inner city and by uncertainty over property values, and stressing security and exclusion.

10. Suburbs as rural nostalgia:
Reflecting a desire to return to the countryside and rural roots, but without also severing connections to the urban core (Pacione 2001).

عمليات ضد التمدن، تمدن للخارج، إعادة تمدن describes a process where the agglomeration is losing population and a net population movement into smaller urban regions and rural areas. Such signs of a population reversal in rural areas were first identified in the US, similar trends were soon detected in other advanced nations like Canada, Australia, Western Europe and Britain (Pacione 2001).

Exurbanisation is the extended version of suburbanisation when it reaches its greatest extent. Exurbs respresent a transition stage between urban and rural life and are dominated by middle-class residents. In the US, exurbs absorbed 25% of recent national population growth and 60% of recent manufactoring investment. Four principle factors can be identified:

• a continued deconcentration of employment and the rise of exurban industrialisation
• a latent anti-urban and rural location preference of households
• improved technology that makes exurban living possible, and
• an apparent policy bias favouring exurban development over compact development (primary in the USA) (Pacione 2001)

Reurbanisation means a population growth or a reduced population decline in the core of metropolitan areas. This process has not yet emerged as a significant feature in the urban systems. Moreover the process of decentralisation is likely to continue as a major feature of post-industrial urbanisation (Pacione 2001).