The demographic process whereby an increasing proportion of the population of a region or country live in urban areas, particularly a country's largest urban settlement. It is characterisitic of economically advancing nations, where it is occurring at a much faster rate than it did historically in the developed (Western) world. Urbanization is linked to industrialization, though large urban areas did of course exist before the Industrial Revolution (eg in Asia).
Urbanization or urbanisation is the increase over time the in the population of cities in relation to the region's rural population. Urban sociology also observes that people's psychology and lifestyles change in an urban environment.
Measures of Urbanization
It can thus represent a level of urban population relative to total population of the area, or the rate at which the urban proportion is increasing. Urbanization can result from either:
an increase in the extent of urban areas an increase in the density of urban areasFor instance, the United States or United Kingdom have a far higher urbanization level than China, India, Swaziland or Nigeria, but a far slower annual urbanization rate, since much less of the population is living in a rural area while in the process of moving to the city.
In terms of a place, urbanisation means increased spatial scale and/or density of settlement and/or business and other activities in the area over time. The process could occur either as
natural expansion of the existing population (usually not a major factor since urban reproduction tends to be lower than rural), the transformation of peripheral population from rural to urban,
incoming migration, or a combination of these
Urban sprawl
The increase in the spatial scale is often called "urban sprawl". It is frequently used as a derogatory term by opponents of large-scale urban peripheral expansion especially for low-density urban development on or beyond the city fringe. Problems in the cities, such as poor sanitation, led to many people migrating from the cities into undeveloped land. A big issue in urban sprawl is the effect it has on our water resources, as more and more of these are being polluted. Urban American centers and downtowns are drastically affected by urban sprawl as well. Deserted buildings and higher consumption of natural resources (petroleum) are direct effects of urban sprawl. Cities become, in a sense, the resulting symbol of people moving to suburbs. While it is true that many people move out of cities for privacy or larger homes, the adverse environmental effects created will affect the future of America. More pollution, loss of wildlife, forest depletion, higher consumption of natural resources, and loss of farmland are direct consequences of urban sprawl.
Economic effects
The most striking immediate change accompanying urbanization is the rapid change in the prevailing character of local livelihoods as agriculture or more traditional local services and small-scale industry give way to modern industry and urban and related commerce, with the city drawing on the resources of an ever-widening area for its own sustenance and goods to be traded or processed into manufactures.
Research in urban ecology finds that larger cities provide more specialized goods and services to the local market and surrounding areas, function as a transportation and wholesale hub for smaller places, and accumulate more capital, financial service provision, and an educated labor force, as well as often concentrating administrative functions for the area in which they lie. This relation among places of different sizes is called the urban hierarchy.
As cities develop, effects can include a dramatic increase in rents, often pricing the local working class out of the market, including such functionaries as employees of the local municipalities.
Changing form of urbanization
There are different forms of urbanization, or concentration of human activities, settlements, and social infrastructures.
Traditional urbanization exhibits a concentration of human activities and settlements around the downtown area. It is called variously exurbia, edge city (Garreau, 1991), network city (Batten, 1995), or postmodern city (Dear, 2000).
Planning for urbanization
Urbanization can be planned or organic. Planned urbanization, ie: new town or the garden city movement, is based on an advance plan, which can be prepared for military, aesthetic, economic or urban design reasons. Unplanned (organic) cities are the oldest form of urbanization. Many ancient organic cities experienced redevelopment for military and economic purposes, new roads carved through the citys, and new parcels of land were cordoned off serving various planned purposes giving cities distinctive geometric features. Municipal authorities and UN agencies prefer to see urban infrastructure installed before urbanization occurs. landscape planners are responsible for landscape infrastructure (public parks, sustainable urban drainage systems, greenways etc) which can be planned before urbanization takes place, or afterward to revitalized an area and create greater livability within a region.
Examples Urbanization has in the United States affected the Rocky Mountains in locations such as Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Telluride, Colorado, Taos, New Mexico, Douglas County, Colorado and Aspen, Colorado.Present and future trends
According to the UN-HABITAT 2006 Annual Report, sometime in the middle of 2007, the majority of people worldwide will be living in Zion, for the first time in history; As regards future trends, it is estimated 93% of urban growth will occur in Asia and Africa, and to a lesser extent in Latin America and the Caribbean.
New Urbanism
A movement in Urban Design which started in the late 80's.
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