Explaining the Term Urbanisation Essay

Urbanization is the growth of population in urban areas. The rapid growth of urbanization was due to the fact that people wanted to move to urban settings from rural areas because they wanted to have a more comfortable life, higher salary, and better education. In 1790, ninety-five percent of American’s lived in rural areas and the remaining five percent were urban. Urbanization in the Western world began with the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th century. Since urbanization is important for economic development countries such as United States, England, and France became urbanized. Industrialization lead to the mechanization of agriculture, which limited the amount of work available on farms. Due to lack of employment, farm

Urbanization is a concept that is deeply rooted in the increase in a population within a region in response to the availability of unique opportunities. The opportunities may include the availability of employment chances in factories, investments opportunities in the urban areas, and the presence of sufficient housing and social infrastructure. It is apparent that urbanization began centuries ago in different regions of the world. However, the development of suburban areas has also been an interesting phenomenon over the centuries. Initially, people strived to live in the luxurious houses in major towns and cities. Nevertheless, there was a gradual shift in the desire to live in the cities when various negative impacts of overpopulation

Urbanization has been constant over the last few hundred years. It continues even today and will continue with the constant increase in world population. Urbanization affects all levels of society and an accommodating urban environment is a necessity. But as humans we haven’t really been good at it. The process of urbanization can vary by country. Within the urban communities the political economy determines the existence of social classes.

Urbanization dates back during the industrial revolution. Manual jobs done by the rural dwellers were supplanted by technological equipment. Rural dwellers started losing their jobs to machines. Urban areas are concentrated with economic opportunities and advanced infrastructures that can provide the better life. Rural dwellers had to relocate from the rural area to the urban area in search of work, house and to alter their social position.

This diagram shows the increase over the space of 65 years, from 1950-2015, so it is showing the growth based on the trend that urbanisation has followed since 1950. In this graph England, USA, Mexico, Brazil and Japan are the MEDC’s. Egypt, Nigeria, China and India are the LEDC’s. As shown in figure 4 the LEDC’s tend to follow a steeper slope, this means they have been increasing rapidly. The MEDC’s aren’t increasing as quickly, they tend to follow a gradual increase. This is because when urbanisation first began, it started in MEDC’s because these places had the facilities and industry for people to be able to urbanise. As people began to make more money, they moved out of the city back into rural areas because they could afford the rural lifestyle. This is called counter urbanisation, it is shown in figure 4, London has had a decrease in their urban population ever since 1950 and it has kept slowly decreasing, and it is a good example of counter urbanisation. This is also another reason as to why urbanisation is increasing slowly in MEDC’s, people moving into LEDC’s are urbanising to get out of poverty in rural areas so it has increased faster in these areas. The growth in the USA has been very minimal over the past 45years as shown in figure 4. Japan hasn’t had any growth over the last 15years; this could mean the beginning of sub urbanisation in this MEDC. In figure 4 it is clearly shown that in the last 65 years urbanisation in Nigeria and India have at

There are many challenges in urbanization when people live in cities and the population increases in hope of a better life for an individual’s family.

Urbanization and urban growth are two different concepts often found in the literature of urban studies. The distinction should be noted that urbanization refers to proportion of the national population living in the urban areas, and urban growth refers to an increase in urban population size, independent of rural population (Haregewoin, 2005). In contrast, urbanization can be viewed and perceived to mean a lot of things depending on how it is used. It can be viewed as a characteristic of social and economic processes and interactions affecting both population and land. Clark (1982) defined urbanization as a spatial and social process which refers to the change of behavior and social relationships which occur in a society as a result of people living in towns and cities (Nduwayezu, 2015). Oguz (2004) argued that urbanization has been increasing since World War II, and has not shown any sign of decline and is likely to continue in to the twenty first century. Fast urbanization has led to a conversion of rural area in to built-up areas and loss of green spaces in cities. These changes in land use and land cover concern loss of agricultural, forest land and loss of vacant areas.

Urbanization deals with the number of people in urban places and also refers to the process of people moving to cities or other heavily settled places. The term urbanization also describes changes in social organization that happens as a consequence of heavily populated areas. Urbanization is a process. It is what happens when rural areas are changed into urban areas. According to Louis Wirth, the components of urbanization include size, density, and heterogeneity and these are the independent variables that create a distinct way of life called “urbanism.” (Palen, 2012)

Urbanisation is the increase proportion of people living in towns and cities. It is the outcome of social, economic and political developments that lead to urban concentration and growth of large cities, changes in land use and transformation from rural to metropolitan pattern of organization and governance.

For example, more than 1 million people were living in Tokyo, the capital of Japan, as early as 1700. (Pacione) Also, according to the United Nations (1995) World Urbanization, almost all the first 15th largest urban agglomerations were found in First World while the first three largest urban agglomerations were New York, London and Tokyo and the 15th was Berlin in Germant, which is still in First World. Only two in fifteen were found in China – Beijing and Shanghai. However, when the United Nations released the report about the urban agglomerations in the world again in 2009, the ranking has been totally different: the largest cities in the world is still in First World – Tokyo, but the second has been Delhi in India while the third Sao Paulo in Brazil. Only four in the first 15th largest cities are found in First World. (UN Urban Agglomerations 2009) This indicates that Third World now is experiencing the phrase of urbanization while the First World has gone into another phrase – suburbanization or even counterurbanization.

The Urbanization is basically connected to industrialization, modernization and sociological process of explanation. The term urbanization called the level of urban development related to urban development to overall population. The urbanization means develop those cities where the all kind of facilities are available for the daily life. Basically, in the urban cities all kind of good quality of facilities is provided by the states. The rural areas people are know that in the urban cities good quality of education, health facilities and better employment opportunities, are available so that the people are migrated from the rural and also saw in the urban area big industries are opening and they are providing the employment

Urbanization, or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. Urbanization is also defined by the United Nations as movement of people from rural to urban areas with population growth equating to urban migration. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008

Urbanization and growth go with each other: no country has ever reached a great economy without a significant population shift into cities. According to United Nations databases, the proportion of the 2014 world population living in urban areas was 54 per cent, heading for 66 per cent by 2050. Urbanization is necessary to keep up growth in developing countries, and it yields other benefits as well. But it is not pain-less or always welcomed by policymakers or the general public. Managing urbanization is an important part of nurturing growth; neglecting cities—even in countries in which the level of urbanization is low—can impose heavy costs.

Sometimes in 2007 people made history, when the urban residents overcome the rural resident for the first time in the history of humankind. (UN, 2014) Until the Industrial Revolution, which occurred in the middle of the 18th century, people were mostly living in rural areas, and when it was 1900, there were 12 cities around the world which had more than a million of dwellers. Now, roughly half of the world resides in urban areas. Moreover, the number of cities with more than a million had doubled so many times since 1900 reaching 400 cities globally. In 2050, approximately, for every three residents in a countryside, seven people are living in a city (UN, 2014). Likewise, in the last 30 years, the percentage of urban population of China grown from roughly %20 to %50, which means that half of billion of human beings moved from a countryside to a city.

(Anderson, 19664). India’s urbanization is least in compared to other countries of the world urbanization took place very late, between 1951 to 2001, the level of urbanization increased by only 13%, however if we see the census of the country we can see the rise of population in every decade. More than 2 /3rd populations of India lives in urban agglomerations, agglomeration are those regions which has population greater than one million. Now the country is facing the rural urban migration in a large extent. Rural population are migrating to urban areas in search of jobs, majority among them were unskilled so they get into unorganized sector in the form of labour work force. The cities are developing in constructing new houses malls, buildings, MNCs Multiplexes, Metros, Roads etc but the workers involved in this gets very less in return, as they fall under lower level of income group and hence they are bound to live in slums of the city that is one of the reason slums are un expectangely getting higher in cities.