Is It What It 's Cracked Up?

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

Urban development is the social, cultural, economic and physical development of cities. The development of cities is the main topic of human geography. Urban development can be used in different ways by the researchers. It can cause the price of things to increase fast. Urban development occurs in major cities like New York City, Tokyo, Japan. Urban development started back in the earlier cities like Mesopotamia, Egypt. This spreads the culture that affect people which makes them want to go to the major cities. Over fifty percent of the earth’s population lives in urban areas. Studies show by 2045 that the number of people living in a urban area will increase.

If the population of the United States grows from 325 million to 400 million over the next 35 years, we will see a greater population in urban areas and the rural areas will turn into cities: “The urban population of developing regions will grow rapidly as people migrate from rural to existing urban areas and transform rural settlement into cities ”. More people and more and larger cities will increase the demand for natural resources.

I know population is projected to rapidly increase in coming decades (mainly due to advances in technology as well as agriculture and medical breakthroughs). To me this means that cities are most likely going to be the last place that

“In 1800 only 3% of people lived in a city of 1 million or more; by the year 2000, it was 47%. In 1950 there were only 83 cities worldwide with populations over 1 million; by 2007 there were 468. In April 2008, the world passed the 50% urbanization mark. Cities have evolved into a more complex space inter-linked by a number of systems and planners generally have failed to read the ‘Urban Progression’ and thus cities have failed significantly in terms of the ‘Quality of Life’ of the urbanites.”

It is estimated that in the near future, 2 out of 2 people will live in cities. This is due to main reason that people naturally tend to concentrate in areas with desirable conditions. What does the cities offer as to why it is stated that the “cities will be our future”.

Urban is in, relating to, or characteristic of a city or town. Cities like Toronto and Tokyo are classified as Urban because of there high population densities, they also have a lot of buildings like malls and convenient stores which is a common characteristic of and urban city. The opposite of Urban is rural, rural areas generally have low population densities and populations. Rural areas often are farmlands or areas that are hard to inhabit because of its natural characteristic’s. The median age of Toronto is believed to be 38.6 as of 2011, the median age of Tokyo is in the high thirties along with Toronto.

Rural areas are disappearing as we know it. With the population raising villages becoming towns and towns becoming cities. With rural, it is described as a place that has more of an countryside than a town. Evening technical is a population that has less than 2,500 people in that location, anything over 2,500 is considered urban.

With more than 385 million people living in south America, It has become the most urbanized area in our developing world. Urbanization is the shift from Rural to an urban society, which can be appealing to many who are looking for opportunities. A census was taken in the 2000s that showed that 80% or 3.8 million of the SOuth American population lived in the continents Big cities.There are some that deem this crazy, but, can we blame them? Cities offer a shorter distance to resources and good jobs, and in return can create higher prices and economies can flourish.

Urbanisation is the process which has led to an increasing proportion of a country's population living within urban areas. It is impossible to say exactly when the process began, but in Britain it was around the time of the industrial revolution. Many people moved from rural to urban areas in search of regular employment. The MEDC's around the world are all urbanised now, with annual growth rates of urbanisation still increasing, but sustainably. LEDC's however are still rapidly urbanising. In this essay I am going to look at all the factors that cause urbanisation and evaluate why it is occurring.

With the start of globalization and international expansion cities became a more significant part for various industry sectors. By 2000, more than 500 cities had more than one million inhabitants. According to the United Nations, 54% of the world’s population currently live in urban areas. Urbanization combined with the overall growth of the world’s population could add another 2.5 billion people to urban populations by 2050, with close to 90 percent of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa. This significant change of urbanization will lead to challenges in satisfying the needs for housing, infrastructure, transportation, energy supply and employment, as well as for basic services such as education and health care .

Each month, in developing countries, five million people have access to the cities. The trend towards concentration in some developed countries like the US is clamorous: 243 million Americans are concentrated in urban 3% of the country.

Urbanization is defined as rapid population growth in urban areas. There are four major causes for urbanisation including: rapid economic growth, population increase, economies of scale and multiplier effect. The environment around us is heavily affected by urbanisation, bringing advantages and disadvantages along with it. Almost 45 per cent of the world's population which is two and a half billion people are living in urban areas.

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

Urbanization causes financial problems to the overwhelming majority of the people. This is because problems with money are widespread in urban areas. First of all, urbanization leads to the extreme growth of unemployment. For instance, as reported by the International Labour Organization, International unemployment rose to 210 million people in 2010 (David & Vicente 2012, p.154). According to David & Vicente (2012, p.156) vast amounts of unemployment results in human resources not being used efficiently across cities which cause social inequality. This evidence shows that urbanization causes unemployment. Urbanization leads to significant overpopulation in the central cities, which causes high competition and as a result lower job opportunities for most people in the labor market. As businesses and governments cannot produce enough jobs to meet the demand of a fast-growing population, a lot of individuals are faced with a shortage of employment and deprived of a vital source of income. As a result, lack of revenue leads to inequality in society. Secondly, urbanization leads to a lack of affordable housing for the overwhelming majority of urban people. According to Gan (et al., 2017, p.427) in the forthcoming future, the global urban population will reach around 6.3 billion people in 2050, and about 94% of them will be in developing countries. Furthermore, approximately 828 million people from developing countries currently live in inadequate housing and this number will rise