Urbanization
Urbanization is the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It can also mean population growth in urban areas instead of rural ones. It is predominantly the process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more people begin to live and work in central areas.
Although the two concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, urbanization should be distinguished from urban growth. Urbanization refers to the proportion of the total national population living in areas classified as urban, whereas urban growth strictly refers to the absolute number of people living in those areas. It is predicted that by 2050, about 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized. This is predicted to generate artificial scarcities of land, lack of drinking water, playgrounds and other essential resources for most urban dwellers. The predicted urban population growth is equivalent to approximately 3 billion urbanites by 2050, much of which will occur in Africa and Asia. Notably, the United Nations has also recently projected that nearly all global population growth from 2017 to 2030 will take place in cities, with about 1.1 billion new urbanites over the next 10 years. In the long term, urbanization is expected to significantly impact the quality of life in negative ways.
Urbanization is relevant to a range of disciplines, including urban planning, geography, sociology, architecture, economics, education, statistics, and public health. The phenomenon has been closely linked to globalization, modernization, industrialization, marketization, administrative/institutional power, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can be seen as a specific condition at a set time, or as an increase in that condition over time. Therefore, urbanization can be quantified either in terms of the level of urban development relative to the overall population, or as the rate at which the urban proportion of the population is increasing. Urbanization creates enormous social, economic and environmental challenges, which provide an opportunity for sustainability with the "potential to use resources much less or more efficiently, to create more sustainable land use and to protect the biodiversity of natural ecosystems." However, current urbanization trends have shown that massive urbanization has led to unsustainable ways of living. Developing urban resilience and urban sustainability in the face of increased urbanization is at the centre of international policy in Sustainable Development Goal 11 "Sustainable cities and communities."
Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. The first major change in settlement patterns was the accumulation of hunter-gatherers into villages many thousands of years ago. Village culture is characterized by common bloodlines, intimate relationships, and communal behaviour, whereas urban culture is characterized by distant bloodlines, unfamiliar relations, and competitive behaviour. This unprecedented movement of people is forecast to continue and intensify during the next few decades, mushrooming cities to sizes unthinkable only a century ago. As a result, the world urban population growth curve has up till recently followed a quadratic-hyperbolic pattern.
History
From the development of the earliest cities in Indus Valley Civilization, Mesopotamia and Egypt until the 18th century, an equilibrium existed between the vast majority of the population who were engaged in subsistence agriculture in a rural context, and small centres of populations in the towns where economic activity consisted only of trade at markets and manufactures on a small scale. Due to the primitive and relatively stagnant state of agriculture throughout this period, the ratio of rural to urban population remained at a fixed equilibrium. However, a significant increase in the percentage of the global urban population can be traced in the 1st millennium BCE.With the onset of the British Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, this relationship was finally broken and an unprecedented growth in urban population took place over the course of the 19th century, both through continued migration from the countryside and due to the tremendous demographic expansion that occurred at that time. In England and Wales, the proportion of the population living in cities with more than 20,000 people jumped from 17% in 1801 to 54% in 1891. Moreover, and adopting a broader definition of urbanization, while the urbanized population in England and Wales represented 72% of the total in 1891, for other countries the figure was 37% in France, 41% in Prussia and 28% in the United States.
As labourers were freed up from working the land due to higher agricultural productivity, they converged on the new industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham, which were experiencing a boom in commerce, trade, and industry. Growing trade around the world also allowed cereals to be imported from North America and refrigerated meat from Australasia and South America. Spatially, cities also expanded due to the development of public transport systems, which facilitated commutes of longer distances to the city centre for the working class.
Urbanization rapidly spread across the Western world and, since the 1950s, it has begun to take hold in the developing world as well. At the turn of the 20th century, just 15% of the world's population lived in cities. According to the UN, the year 2007 witnessed the turning point when more than 50% of the world population was living in cities, for the first time in human history.
Yale University in June 2016 published urbanization data from the time period 3700 BC to 2000 AD, The data was used to make a video showing the development of cities around the world during the time period. The origins and spread of urban centres around the world were also mapped by archaeologists.
Causes
Urbanization occurs either organically or planned as a result of individual, collective and state action. Living in a city can be culturally and economically beneficial since it can provide greater opportunities for access to the labour market, better education, housing, and safety conditions, and reduce the time and expense of commuting and transportation. Conditions like density, proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition are elements of an urban environment that are deemed beneficial. However, there are also harmful social phenomena that arise: alienation, stress, increased cost of living, and mass marginalization that are connected to an urban way of living. Suburbanization, which is happening in the cities of the largest developing countries, may be regarded as an attempt to balance these harmful aspects of urban life while still allowing access to a large extent of shared resources.In cities, money, services, wealth and opportunities are centralized. Many rural inhabitants come to the city to seek their fortune and alter their social position. Businesses, which provide jobs and exchange capital, are more concentrated in urban areas. Whether the source is trade or tourism, it is also through the ports or banking systems, commonly located in cities, that foreign money flows into a country.
Many people move into cities for economic opportunities, but this does not fully explain the very high recent urbanization rates in places like China and India. Rural flight is a contributing factor to urbanization. In rural areas, often on small family farms or collective farms in villages, it has historically been difficult to access manufactured goods, though the relative overall quality of life is very subjective, and may certainly surpass that of the city. Farm living has always been susceptible to unpredictable environmental conditions, and in times of drought, flood or pestilence, survival may become extremely problematic.
In a New York Times article concerning the acute migration away from farming in Thailand, life as a farmer was described as "hot and exhausting". "Everyone says the farmer works the hardest but gets the least amount of money". In an effort to counter this impression, the Agriculture Department of Thailand is seeking to promote the impression that farming is "honorable and secure".
However, in Thailand, urbanization has also resulted in massive increases in problems such as obesity. Shifting from a rural environment to an urbanized community also caused a transition to a diet that was mainly carbohydrate-based to a diet higher in fat and sugar, consequently causing a rise in obesity. City life, especially in modern urban slums of the developing world, is not immune to pestilence or climatic disturbances such as floods, yet continues to strongly attract migrants. Examples of this were the 2011 Thailand floods and 2007 Jakarta flood. Urban areas are also far more prone to violence, drugs, and other urban social problems. In the United States, industrialization of agriculture has negatively affected the economy of small and middle-sized farms and strongly reduced the size of the rural labor market.
Particularly in the developing world, conflict over land rights due to the effects of globalization has led to less politically powerful groups, such as farmers, losing or forfeiting their land, resulting in obligatory migration into cities. In China, where land acquisition measures are forceful, there has been far more extensive and rapid urbanization than in India, where peasants form militant groups to oppose such efforts. Obligatory and unplanned migration often results in the rapid growth of slums.
This is also similar to areas of violent conflict, where people are driven off their land due to violence.
Cities offer a larger variety of services, including specialist services not found in rural areas. These services require workers, resulting in more numerous and varied job opportunities. Elderly people may be forced to move to cities where there are doctors and hospitals that can cater to their health needs. Varied and high-quality educational opportunities are another factor in urban migration, as well as the opportunity to join, develop, and seek out social communities.
Urbanization also creates opportunities for women that are not available in rural areas. This creates a gender-related transformation where women are engaged in paid employment and have access to education. This may cause fertility to decline. However, women are sometimes still at a disadvantage due to their unequal position in the labour market, their inability to secure assets independently from male relatives and exposure to violence.
People in cities are more productive than in rural areas. An important question is whether this is due to agglomeration effects or whether cities simply attract those who are more productive. Urban geographers have shown that there exists a large productivity gain due to locating in dense agglomerations. It is thus possible that agents locate in cities in order to benefit from these agglomeration effects.