The latest issue of Nature argues that a rural revival is needed globally to counter urbanization. The paper is co-authored by Professor Yansui Liu and Associate Professor Yuheng Li of the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professors Liu and Li are respectively chair and secretary of the recently established IGU Commission on Agricultural Geography and Land Engineering (AGLE). They argue that,while urbanization gets a lot of attention globally as cities grow, most particularly in Asia and Africa, the rural decline that has accompanied this seems to have gone largely unnoticed. 
The paper can be found here: https://www.nature.com/news/revitalize-the-world-s-countryside-1.22452