1. To encourage an adequate supply of wage labor at particular locations (rural or urban)
2. To prevent people leaving rural regions – rural areas and small towns;
3. To encourage agricultural area extension (the spread of settlement);
4. To increase agricultural productivity (by intensification of use or by mechanization);
5. To free land for other uses – rural (forests, game, reservoirs, large-scale agricultural production, mining) and urban (squatter resettlement for commercial/residential/ industrial/ transport development);
6. To prevent people entering towns;
7. To prevent people staying in towns;
8. To provide employment/housing etc. in towns (thereby encouraging migration); and
9. To produce a supposedly more efficient settlement pattern (judge by economic-spatial, or political criteria – both administrative and control).