Rural-Urban Transition in Central Java: Population and Economic Structural Changes Based on Cluster Analysis

In Central Java, in addition to the traditional view of urban transition as an aspect of urban industrialization, rural industrialization based on small- to medium-sized enterprises has become a concern, at least since the Indonesian economic crisis in 1997. Combinations of typical urban and rural activities have resulted in certain features of rural-urban transition as the urban population has continued to increase notably. The intention of this paper is to examine how rural-urban transition characterizes the industrialization of Central Java. Multivariate cluster analysis is applied to create a typology, with the district as the unit of analysis, to better understand the transition phenomenon in terms of the population and economic structure. The cluster solution shows that rural-urban transition occurs on at least two different paths. The first path could be described as industrialization from above, in which the transition takes place as a part of the urban growth process. The second path could be described as industrialization from below, in which rapid industrialization occurs far from the highest hierarchy of the urban center.