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 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.
Urbanization Today
The 2005 Revision of the UN World Urbanization Prospects report described the 20th century as witnessing "the rapid urbanization of the world’s population," as the global proportion of urban population rose dramatically from 13% (220 million) in 1900, to 29% (732 million) in 1950, to 49% (3.2 billion) in 2005. The same report projected that the figure is likely to rise to 60% (4.9 billion) by 2030.[1]
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, AL 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% 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.
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. [2]
New Urbanism
New Urbanism was a movement in Urban Design which started in the late 80's. 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.
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
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.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- ↑ World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision, Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UN
- ↑ Chan Gon Kim. 2000. Urban and Metropolitan Management of Seoul: Past and Present Policy Planning Bureau.
External links
- Urbanisation worldwide - World Bank 2005 WDIs (PDF file)
- City Program — courses and free public lectures on urban development from Simon Fraser University
- The Natural History of Urbanization, by Lewis Mumford
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