Book excerpt: The suburbanisation process is an inherent, integral feature of urbanisation and the growth of cities around the world. Since an increasing amount of people are seeking to live in cities, the latter must grow spatially, encroaching more and more markedly upon surrounding areas. The research on the degree to which development in rural areas is sustainable, as well as on the directions that development is taking is making the multi-aspect nature of the process clear, as was noted in the course of discussions on the obtained results taking place at different stages in the international fora. Many questions arising were concerned with specific conditioning and requirements inherent in bringing sustainable development into effect in areas as diversified as the rural and agricultural areas present around the world. The monograph presented here has suburbanization processes as its lead topic. In fact, a great number of studies have already been devoted to this, as well as to the closely related issue of urban sprawl. Indeed, in every country in which urban agglomerations are taking shape and metropolitanisation is occurring, there are also manifestations of suburbanization, and inevitably also research into that phenomenon.