Urbanization

The city of Los Angeles, California is an example of urbanization

Urbanization is the increase over time in the population of cities in relation to the region's rural population. Urbanization is studied in terms of its effects on the ecology and economy of a region, while the discipline of Urban sociology studies political, psychological and anthropological changes to human society that occur in an urban environment.

Definition

Urbanization is the growing number of people in a population living in urban areas, such as cities. Urbanization groups many people in a central location. Urban areas are different from suburban or rural areas because of population distribution and the development of businesses in the area. Urban areas tend to attract businesses because of the large population in the area. This in turn draws more people to the area, working in a kind of circular process.

In terms of a place, urbanization means increased spatial scale and/or density of settlement and/or business and other activities in the area over time. The urbanization typically involves the transformation of peripheral population from rural to urban, together with the settlement of incoming migrants. Urbanization could occur as a result of natural expansion of the existing population, however urban fertility rates tends to be lower than rural.

History

About two thousand years ago, the world had less than two hundred fifty thousand people, and cities exceeding over twenty thousand citizens were rare. Cities ranged from two thousand to twenty thousand up until the sixteenth century, when cities with populations climbing to and exceeding one hundred thousand began to spring up. From 1800 to present day, the population climbed to six times it's size, increasing urban inhabitants. In 1900, only a handful of cities had populations over one million. Today, roughly half of the world's population live in urban areas, increasing the number of cities over one million by many times its statistic in 1900.

Cities emerged from villages due to improvement in the cultivation and the preservation of food and other resources. The rise of the city broke down a mechanical way of life and led to an organic society: cities were not closed to outsiders, and often, many different types of people with new ideologies inhabited cities. Different processes led to the acceptance of the city over the village. Cities developed an organized social core, where the entire community centered itself; villages lacked this cohesiveness. A city also breaks the bonds humanity has with nature; when one stands in a city, they are surrounded by human made structures and technologies, and the former connection with nature as a provider is severed. These processes are detailed in different stages of urbanization. The first stage of urbanization was dependent upon the amount and productivity of the available agricultural land. Population increases had to be limited, more people could mean less resources. The second stage of urbanization was the development of sea-river transports and the creation of roads. This built off of the first stage, but because trade and industry were developed, populations were no longer limited in their growth. The third stage, which is still currently in progress, is the the shift in the economy to technological advances and population growth. This stage is set for an indeterminate amount of time, and is proving to change the interaction between urban dwellers and cities.

Urbanization Today

The 2005 Revision of the UN World Urbanization Prospects report described the twentieth century as witnessing "the rapid urbanization of the world’s population," as the global proportion of urban population rose dramatically from 13 percent (220 million) in 1900, to 29 percent (732 million) in 1950, to 49 percent (3.2 billion) in 2005. The same report projected that the figure is likely to rise to 60 percent (4.9 billion) by 2030.

Urbanization rates vary across the globe. The United States and 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.

• Urbanization in the United States has affected the Rocky Mountains in locations such as Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Telluride, Colorado, Taos, New Mexico, Douglas County, Colorado and Aspen, Colorado. The lake district of northern Minnesota has also been affected as has Vermont, the coast of Florida, the Birmingham-Jefferson County, Alabama area, and the barrier islands of North Carolina.

• In the United Kingdom, two major examples of new urbanization can be seen in Swindon, Wiltshire and Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. These two towns show some of the quickest growth rates in Europe.

Urbanization Projections

According to the UN-HABITAT 2006 Annual Report, sometime in the middle of 2007, the majority of people worldwide will be living in towns or cities, for the first time in history; this is referred to as the arrival of the "Urban Millennium." In regard to future trends, it is estimated 93 percent of urban growth will occur in Asia and Africa, and to a lesser extent in Latin America and the Caribbean. By 2050 over 6 billion people, two thirds of humanity, will be living in towns and cities.

Internet and Urbanization

The creation of the internet has impacted the way that people interact, work, and spend their leisure time. Office work and data entry is becoming dominated by internet protocol and programs, and so it is not uncommon to find employees for companies working from their homes. This is seen as an ideal for many; the prospect of being able to work from the comfort of home while completing the same duties as one would at an office is a desirable work environment. This area of work has come to be known as telecommuting or E-Work.

Telecommuting's idea is to replace the commute to a work or business with the distance it takes for the information from a computer to travel to another computer; it brings the work to the worker. This is seen as beneficial to the city as a whole. For one, it cuts back on traffic congestion. Less cars on the road lead to more room other commuters. It also decreases the amount of pollution in the city's air. A healthier environment benefits every person living in the area, increases the attractiveness of the city, and improves the quality of life for the population.

Examples of Urbanization

Seoul, South Korea

Few cities have seen such a rapid population growth as Seoul. Starting at a population of 900,000 in 1945, the population has risen to over 10,000,000 by 1990. This urbanization boom has brought increased revenue and economic prosperity for the city, but it also creates new kinds of problems. Incineration plants and garbage dumps are usually constructed without locals consent, leading to angry residents and possible migration from the area. Transportation systems have not been easy to coordinate, as competing transit systems have different bus routes and time tables. Construction also has played a role, as physically expanding a city requires heavy construction, which creates traffic congestion. The government of Seoul works closely with local authorities and citizens to manage these issues.

Africa

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Africa south of the Sahara had a total urban population of less than five percent, most opting for more traditional agricultural jobs. By 2000, the number of urban inhabitants reached nearly thirty-eight percent, with an expected jump to over forty-five percent by 2015. The growth of urbanization in Africa is slow, but it is steady. Predictions on Africa's urbanization have been inaccurate, however, and this is partially due to the AIDS epidemic, unexpected government coups, and wars between nations. Times of war have seen a strong rural-urban population flux. Nevertheless, the Nigerian city of Lagos which, in 1963, had 665,000 residents , jumped to nearly nine million residents in 2000 and is expected to reach sixteen million residents by 2015, making it the eleventh largest city in the world. Urbanization is happening in Africa, just slower than expected.

American New Urbanism

New Urbanism was a movement in Urban Design which started in the late 80's in the United States. New Urbanism believes in shifting design focus from the car-centric development of suburbia and the business park, to concentrated pedestrian and transit-centric, walkable, mixed-use communities. New Urbanism is an amalgamation of old-world design patterns, merged with present day demands. It is a backlash to the age of suburban sprawl, which splintered communities, and isolated people from each other, as well as had severe environmental impacts. Concepts for New Urbanism include people and destinations into dense, vibrant communities, and decreasing dependency on vehicular transportation as the primary mode of transit.

Europe

The European Urban Renaissance, a movement stemming from American New Urbanism, was unveiled in 1996. Many of the criteria for urbanism in Europe included revitalizing the city garden, healing the city, founding new traditional cities, urbanizing the suburbs, and constructing new traditional public buildings. The success of urbanism projects in Europe has led to new projects throughout the continent, some of which include re-inventing major cities to the standards of new urbanism.

Economic effects

The most striking immediate change accompanying urbanization is the rapid change in the prevailing character of local areas. As agriculture, more traditional local services, and small-scale industry give way to modern industry the 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. For example, in Eric Hobsbawm's book The age of the revolution: 1789–1848 (published 1962 and 2005) chapter 11, it was stated "Urban development in our period [1789–1848] was a gigantic process of class segregation, which pushed the new labouring poor into great morasses of misery outside the centres of government and business and the newly specialised residential areas of the bourgeoisie. The almost universal European division into a 'good' west end and a 'poor' east end of large cities developed in this period.." This is likely due the prevailing south-west wind which carries coal smoke and other airborne pollutants downwind, making the western edges of towns preferable to the eastern ones.

Planning for urbanization

The construction of new towns by the Housing Development Board of Singapore, is an example of planned 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. Examples can be seen in many ancient cities; although with exploration came the collision of nations, which meant that many invaded cites took on the desired planned characteristics of their occupiers. Many ancient organic cities experienced redevelopment for military and economic purposes, new roads carved through the cities, and new parcels of land were cordoned off serving various planned purposes giving cities distinctive geometric 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.

Urbanization to Suburbanization

Traditional urbanization exhibits a concentration of human activities and settlements around the downtown area. When the residential area shifts outward, this is called suburbanization. A number of researchers and writers suggest that suburbanization has gone so far to form new points of concentration outside the downtown. This networked, poly-centric form of concentration is considered by some an emerging pattern of urbanization. It is called variously exurbia, edge city (Garreau, 1991), network city (Batten, 1995), or postmodern city (Dear, 2000). Los Angeles is the best-known example of this type of urbanization.

Conclusions

Urbanization has led to the revitalization of the city and the focus on its population's quality of life. The realization of environmental dangers has led to city planning that de-emphasize the automobile and encourage walking, car pooling, or public transportation as a method to cut down on pollution. Urbanization, especially in the New Urbanism movement, shows that city architecture and construction can be a display of art. With this rise in urban artistic expression comes a greater cultural pride for living in the city. The city life becomes more attractive through urbanism; it no longer looks overpopulated, crowded, and stifling. Urbanism creates a new way to look at city life, while bringing in new businesses and people. As these new businesses create new jobs the city becomes an economic capital, generating commerce and prosperity for the increasing urban population. Urbanization, without clear attempts to adapt the city to the population increase, is detrimental to the city's survival. Traffic congestion, increased pollution, limited real estate, and decreasing resources are all possible side effects for urbanization if it is not properly addressed. Urbanization has been the trend of many countries for the past century, and this trend seems to be growing with few signs of slowing down.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Champion, A. G., Graeme Hugo, and Tony Champion (Eds). 2003. New Forms of Urbanization: Beyond the Urban-Rural Dichotomy. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 0754635880
• Connell, John. 2001. Urbanization of the Pacific. Routledge. ISBN 0415246709
• Correa, Charles. 2000. Housing and Urbanization: Building Solutions for People and Cities. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500282102
• De Vries, Jan. 1984. European Urbanization: 1500-1800. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674270150
• Dutt, A.K., A.G. Noble, G. Venugopal, and S. Subbiah (Eds). 2003. Challenges to Asian Urbanization in the 21st Century. Springer. ISBN 1402015763
• Falola, Toyin and Steven J. Salm. 2005. Urbanization and African Cultures. Caroline Academic Press. ISBN 0890895589
• Keil, Roger. 1998. Los Angeles: Globalization, Urbanization, and Social Struggles. Academic Press. ISBN 0471983527
• Osborne, Robin and Barry Cunliffe (Eds). 2007. Mediterranean Urbanization 800-600 B.C.E.. British Academy. ISBN 978-0197263259
• Rakodi, Carole. 1996. The Urban Challenge in Africa: Growth and Management of Its Large Cities (Mega-city). United Nations University Press. ISBN 9280809520

External links

• Mumford, Lewis. The Natural History of Urbanization Retrieved May 13, 2007.
• Urbanization worldwide - World Bank 2005 WDIs (PDF file) Retrieved May 13, 2007.

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