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THIS IS THE second issue of Environment &Urbanization focusing on rural–urban linkages. The first, which came out in 1998, described the reliance of many low-income households on both rural-based and urban-based resources in constructing their livelihoods. But the majority of the papers also underlined the fact that this straddling of the rural–urban divide is usually ignored by policy makers, and that the rigid division between “rural” and “urban” on the part of sectoral strategies actually makes life more difficult for low-income groups. The papers in this issue show many reasons why it has become even less realistic for development specialists to separate into rural and urban camps. The notion of a “divide” has become a misleading metaphor, one that oversimplifies and even distorts the realities. As these papers demonstrate, the linkages and interactions have become an ever more intensive and important …