John Turner revisited: an intra-urban migration model for colonial-type cities in Latin America

The author uses the intra-urban migration model developed by John Turner in the early 1960s to examine population movements in the city of Arequipa, Peru. Ways in which the model applies in the case of Arequipa are summarized, as are quantitative and qualitative differences between the model and the Arequipa study. The Turner model employs economic (industrialization level), demographic (level of rural-to-urban migration), and political (housing policy) criteria to distinguish a city's transitional phase. "According to these criteria Arequipa clearly belongs to the mid-transitional phase. The pattern of intra-urban migration, however, shows a mixture of Turner's mid and late transitional phases (e.g. center acts still as a reception area, but at the same time a major number of migrants settle directly in the periphery).... The town itself has a limited industrial development and hardly any municipal housing policy worth mentioning.... It is above all the demographic factor in combination with the town's morphology (a large colonial-type center, etc.) which in the case of Arequipa regulates the pattern of intra-urban migration."