urban meaning for essay

Urbanization

The world population is moving to cities. Why is urbanization happening and what are the consequences?

By Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska and Max Roser

This article was first published in September 2018, and last revised in February 2024. We'd like to thank Diana Beltekian for great research assistance.

More than half of the world's population now live in urban areas — increasingly in highly dense cities. However, urban settings are a relatively new phenomenon in human history. This transition has transformed the way we live, work, travel, and build networks.

This topic page presents an overview of urbanization across the world, extending from the distant past to the present, and projections of future trends.

See all charts on urbanization ↓

Urbanization across the world today

Number of people living in urban areas, more than 4 billion people – more than half of the world – live in urban areas.

For most of human history, most people across the world lived in small communities. Over the past few centuries – and particularly in recent decades – this has shifted dramatically. There has been a mass migration of populations from rural to urban areas.

How many people live in urban areas today?

In the visualization, we see estimates of the number of people globally who live in urban and rural areas. More than 4 billion people now live in urban areas.

This means over half of the world lives in urban settings. The UN estimates this milestone event – when the number of people in urban areas overtook the number in rural settings – occurred in 2007.

You can explore the data on urban and rural populations for any country or region using the "Change country or region" toggle on the interactive chart.

Share of population living in urban areas

How does the share of people living in urban areas vary between countries?

In the chart shown below, we see the share of the population that is urbanized across the world.

Across most high-income countries – across Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, Japan, and the Middle East – more than 80% of the population lives in urban areas. Across most upper-middle-income countries – in Eastern Europe, East Asia, North and Southern Africa, and South America – between 50% to 80% of people do. In many low to lower-middle-income countries, the majority still live in rural areas.

But this is changing quickly. You can see how urbanization rates are changing with time using the "Edit countries and regions" toggle on the interactive chart. For many countries, you see a rapid migration of populations into towns and cities.

How urban is the world?

What we know about urban populations and why it matters.

Before looking in more detail at the differences in estimates of urban populations, we should first clarify what we  do know:

• Globally more people live in urbanized settings than not (disputes in these figures are all above the 50% urban mark);
• The broad distribution and density of where people live across the world (sometimes at very high resolution);
• Although it can seem like our expanding cities take up a lot of land, only a bit more than 1% of global land is defined as built-up area; 1
• rates of urbanization have been increasing rapidly across all regions (in 1800, less than 10% of people across all regions lived in urban areas );
• urbanization is expected to continue to increase with rising incomes and shifts away from employment in agriculture ; 2
• disagreements in urban population numbers arise from definition or boundary differences in what makes a population 'urban'.

Whilst disagreement on the numbers can seem irrelevant, understanding cities, urbanization rates, the distribution, and the density of people matters. The allocation and distribution of resources — ranging from housing and transport access to healthcare, education, and employment opportunities — should all be dependent on where people live. Understanding the distribution of people in a given country is essential to make sure the appropriate resources and services are available where they're needed.

The UN's 11th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) is to " make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable ". If our aim is to develop resource-efficient, inclusive cities, understanding how many people they must provide for is essential for urban planning.

Let's, therefore, look at the conflicting estimates of how urban our world is, and where these differences come from.

UN estimates: More than half of the world’s population live in urban areas

At first glance, this seems like a simple question to answer. Figures reported by the United Nations (UN) deliver a straightforward answer. 3

In the chart here we see the share of the world's population living in urban and rural areas, extending from 1960. 4 This is based on nationally-collated census figures, combined with UN estimates where census data is unavailable. As of 1960, the rural segment constituted more than 60% of the population. By the year 2007, the distribution between urban and rural residents had equalized, representing a balanced share of the population. However, since then, the share of individuals residing in urban areas has escalated, exceeding 50% of the total population.

The UN figures are the most widely referenced and cited on global urbanization. However, they're not without their critics: some researchers suggest that far more people live in urban areas than these figures suggest. Why are they so contested?

How is an urban area defined?

'What defines an urban area?' lies at the center of these debates.

There is currently no universal definition of what 'urban' means. The UN reports figures based on nationally defined urban shares. The problem, however, is that countries adopt very different definitions of urbanization. Not only do the thresholds of urban versus rural vary, but the types of metrics used also differ. Some countries use minimum population thresholds, others use population density, infrastructure development, employment type, or simply the population of pre-defined cities.

In the table, we highlight the varied definitions across a selection of countries. The UN World Urbanization Prospects database also provides a full  downloadable list of statistical definitions for each country.

National definitions of 'urban area' as used for a custom selection of countries 5

The table illustrates the broad range of definitions between countries which compromises cross-country comparisons. And since the reported global figure is simply the sum of nationally reported shares, the lack of a universal definition is also problematic for these aggregated figures.

Even if we could define a single metric to use — such as a minimum population threshold in a settlement — countries adopt very different thresholds.

In the chart here we have mapped the minimum population threshold for countries that adopt this within their definition of 'urban'. 2000 and 5000 inhabitants were the most frequently adopted threshold. However, the variation across countries was vast. Sweden and Denmark set this threshold at only 200 inhabitants; Japan at 50,000 (a 250-fold difference).

European Commission estimates: More than 8 in 10 people live in urban areas

Critics of current UN figures, therefore, say that such varied definitions of 'urban' lead to a significant underestimation of the world's urban population. Researchers from the European Commission, for example, reported that 85% of people live in urban areas. 6

Its project, Atlas of the Human Planet , combines high-resolution satellite imagery with national census data to derive its estimates of urban and rural settlements.

The European Commission applied a universal definition of settlements across all countries:

• Urban centers (cities) : must have a minimum of 50,000 inhabitants plus a population density of at least 1500 people per square kilometer (km 2 ) or density of build-up area greater than 50%.
• Urban clusters (towns and suburbs) : must have a minimum of 5,000 inhabitants plus a population density of at least 300 people per square kilometer (km 2 ).
• Rural areas : fewer than 5,000 inhabitants.

Using these definitions, it reports that around 44% of the world lived in cities, 43% in towns and suburbs, and 13% in rural areas in 2020 . This makes the total urban share 87% in 2020 ( more than 6.8 billion people ). The reported urban share by continent is shown in the chart below.

The European Commission's estimates are also not without its critics. Researchers at the Marron Institute of Urban Management (New York University) challenged these figures as a gross overestimation. 7

The authors suggest multiple reasons why such figures are too high: based on agricultural employment figures, they estimate urban populations cannot exceed 60%; the low urban-density threshold adopted by the European Commission means entire cropland regions are classified as urban; and that this low-density threshold is inconsistent with observed population densities on the fringes of cities.

Will we ever reach a consensus on urban population?

Clearly how we define an urban area has a significant impact on its estimated population. The UN figures report one-third fewer people residing in urban areas compared to the figures reported by the European Commission.

While there are clear differences in estimates at the global level, the overall trend in urbanization at national levels (regardless of their definition) is still important. It's vital for India, for example, to know that since 1990, its urban population has more than doubled . The rate of this change is important for its evaluation of progress, demographic change, and national planning. The lack of consensus on figures at the global level therefore shouldn't overshadow what they represent at national levels.

But would the world adopt a standardized definition? The UN Statistics Division has convened multiple expert groups in recent years to try to work towards a common definition, but none have been successful.

With such a wide array of national definitions, achieving this would be a difficult task. Countries have the right to define what they consider to be urban and rural settlements. One proposed option is to maintain individual definitions for national figures but to adopt a new universal definition for estimating the global and/or regional share.

This may, at least, bring us one step closer to an agreement on how urban the world really is.

Urban slum populations

Share of people living in slums, just under 1-in-4 urban dwellers live in slum households.

Quality of living standards in urban centers is of course an important measure of wellbeing. One metric of living standards is the share of the urban population living in slum households. A slum household is defined as a group of individuals living under the same roof lacking one or more of the following conditions: access to improved water, access to improved sanitation, sufficient living area, and durability of housing.

The most recent global estimates suggest just under 1-in-4 people in urban areas live in slum households.

The share of the urban population living in slums by country is shown in the chart. This data is available from the year 2000. Here we see that in the latest data, most countries across Asia and Latin America had between 10 to 50% of urban populations living in slum households. Slum households are most prevalent across Sub-Saharan Africa; in most countries, more than half of the urban populations live in slum households, and in some (such as Chad) around 8 in 10 people live in slum households.

We see that over time, for most countries, the share of the urban population living in slums has been falling. For example, in Vietnam, almost half of the population lived in slums in 2000. This figure has dramatically reduced to approximately 5% in recent years.

Number of people living in urban slums

This map shows the total number of people living in urban slum households in each country.

Urban density

Urban agglomerations.

Although the definition of 'urban' gives us some indication of population densities, it does not differentiate between those who live in small versus large urban settings. In the chart, we show the percentage of the total population that lives in agglomerations greater than one million people (i.e. large urban agglomerations). These figures are available in absolute terms (the total number of people living in large urban settings), found here .

Here we see large differences across the world. Smaller city-based nations such as Kuwait, UAE, Japan, Puerto Rico, and Israel tend to have high rates of large urban agglomeration: more than half live in large cities. Across much of the Americas, 40 to 50% live in large urban agglomerations. Most other countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa lie somewhere in the range of 10 to 40%.

There are a few countries that have a very low prevalence of large cities — in Germany and Poland, for example, less than 10% of the population live in cities over 1 million despite having large urbanization rates .

Population in largest city

We can also look at this centralization effect through the share of the urban population that lives in the single largest city. This is shown in this chart.

Here we have a handful of countries — such as Mongolia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Liberia, and Armenia — where more than half of the country's urban population live in its largest city. Overall, this share tends to be higher in countries across Africa and Latin America; a share of 30 to 50% is common. Rates across Europe, Asia, and North America are highly variable, ranging from over 40% to less than 10%.

City populations

Population of the capital city.

In the chart below we see the world mapped based on the population of each country's capital city. In 2018, Japan's capital — Tokyo — had the largest population of the world's capital cities at over 37 million people. This was followed by Delhi (India) at over 28 million; Mexico City (Mexico) at 21 million; and Cairo (Egypt) at 20 million.

Across the world, the most common capital size was in the range of 1 to 5 million people.

Population of cities

Many cities across the world have grown rapidly over the past 50 years in terms of their total population. The chart shows the estimated population of the world's 30 largest cities (by 2015 population) from 1950 to 2015, with projections through to 2035. 8

Beijing in 1950, for example, had a population of around 1.7 million. By 2015 this was more than 10 times higher, at more than 18 million. By 2035 it's expected this will increase further to more than 25 million. Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh) increased from less than half a million in 1950 to almost 18 million in 2015 (and is projected to reach more than 30 million by 2035). Using the "Edit cities" in the top-right of the chart, you can browse trends for the largest 30 cities.

Related chart – population density of cities. This chart shows the population density of cities across the world

Long-run history of urbanization

Urbanization over the past 500 years, migration to towns and cities is very recent – mostly limited to the past 200 years.

How has urbanization changed over longer timescales – over the past 500 years?

In the map below we see how the share of populations living in urban areas has changed in recent centuries. Data on urbanization dating back to 1500 is available only for select countries, with an estimated share at the global level. Using the timeline on the map (or by clicking on a country) you can see how this share has changed over time.

Here we see clearly again that urbanization has largely been confined to the past 200 years. By 1800, still, over 90% of the global (and country-level) population lived in rural areas. Urbanization in the United States began to increase rapidly through the 19th century, reaching around 40% by 1900. 9 By 1950 this almost reached 65% and by 2000 1 in 8 people lived in urban areas.

China and India had similar rates of urbanization until the late 1980s. 10 By then, both had around 1-in-4 living in urban areas. However, China's rate of urbanization increased rapidly over the 1990s and 2000s. Over this 30-year period, its urban share more than doubled to more than half. India's rise has continued to steadily rise to around 1-in-3 today.

Urbanization over the past 12,000 years

The recency of urbanization becomes even more pronounced when we look at trends for countries and regions over even longer timescales – the past 10,000 years. This is shown in the visualization here, derived from the work of the History Database of the Global Environment . 11

As we see, urban living is a very recent development. For most of our history, humans lived in low-density, rural settings. Prior to 1000, it's estimated that the share of the world population living in urban settings did not reach 5%. By 1800, this share reached around 8%; and by 1900 had increased to around 16%.

Related chart – urban land area over the past 10,000 years. This chart shows the change in urban land area dating back to 10,000 BC.

Future urbanization

What share of people will live in urban areas in the future, by 2050, more than two-thirds of the world will live in urban areas.

The past 50 years in particular have seen a rapid increase in rates of urbanization across the world. Are these trends likely to continue?

The UN World Urbanization Prospects provide estimates of urban shares across the world through 2050. These projections are shown in the chart — using the timeline you can watch this change over time.

Across all countries, urban shares are projected to increase in the coming decades, although at varied rates. By 2050, it's projected that 1 in 7 people globally will live in urban areas. In fact, by 2050 there are very few countries where rural shares are expected to be higher than urban. These include several across Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Pacific Island States, and Guyana in Latin America.

Why, when most countries are expected to be mostly urban , is the global total just over two-thirds? This seems low but results from the fact that many of the world's most populated countries have comparably low urban shares (either just over half or less). For instance, India, which is anticipated to become the world's most populous nation, is estimated to have slightly over half of its population living in urban areas by the year 2050.

The other map shown here provides a snapshot overview of how the world is expected to continue to become more urbanized. It shows, for any given country, whether more people (the majority) live in urban or rural areas. Using the timeline feature and "play" button in the bottom-left of the chart, you can explore how this has changed over time. In 1950, it was predominantly high-income countries across Europe, the Americas, Australasia, and Japan that were largely urban. A century later — in 2050 — it's projected that most countries will have more people living in urban areas than not.

How many people will live in urban areas in the future?

By 2050, close to 7 billion people are projected to live in urban areas.

In the chart, we see estimates of urban and rural populations in absolute terms, projected through to 2050. Projected population growth based on the UN's medium fertility scenario. By 2050, the global population is projected to increase to around 9.8 billion. It's estimated that more than twice as many people in the world will be living in urban than in rural settings.

These trends can be explored by country or region using the "Change country or region" function in the top-right of the chart.

Using our timeline map of urbanization you can explore how countries are expected to transition from predominantly rural to urban in the coming decades. There we see that by 2050 it's projected that the majority of countries will have a majority (greater than 50%) of people living in urban areas.

How do living standards change as people move to urban areas?

Populations urbanize as they get richer.

In the chart, we show the relationship between the share of the population living in urban areas on the y-axis, and average income (gross domestic product per capita) on the x-axis. Here we see a strong relationship between urbanization and income: as countries get richer, they tend to become more urbanized.

The link between urbanization and economic growth has been well documented. 12

Urbanization is complex, however: there are many recognized benefits of urban settings (when developed successfully) including high density of economic activity, shorter trade links, utilization of human capital, shared infrastructure, and division of labor. 13

Is there causal feedback by which urbanization is also a predictor of future economic growth? The evidence for this is relatively weak  — assessments of this effect suggest that countries with a higher initial urban population share do not achieve faster or slower economic growth than countries with a low initial urban population share. 14

Urban populations tend to have higher living standards

There are many examples —  across broad areas of development —  that suggest that, on average, living standards are higher in urban populations than in rural ones. Some examples include:

• in nearly all countries electricity access is higher in urban  areas than in rural areas;
• access to improved sanitation is higher in urban areas;
• access to improved drinking water is higher in urban areas;
• access to clean fuels for cooking and heating is higher in urban areas;
• child malnutrition is lower in urban settings.

Note, however, that it is difficult to infer causality between urbanization and these examples. Since urbanization shows a strong correlation with income, such relationships may instead simply show the effect of higher incomes on electricity access, sanitation, drinking water, and nutrition. Furthermore, there can also be significant inequalities within urban areas; this is evidenced by the fact that across many low-to-middle-income countries, a high share of the urban population lives in slum households (which lack access to all of the basic resources).

Agricultural employment falls with urbanization

It would be expected that changing where populations live will have an impact on types of employment. Rural-urban migration has been empirically linked with the structural transformation process: as urban population shares increase, employment tends to shift from agriculture towards industry/manufacturing, or services. 15

In the chart, we see the share of people employed who are in agriculture (y-axis) versus the share of the population living in urban areas (x-axis). Here, in general, we see that agricultural employment tends to decline with urbanization. In our blog post 'Structural transformation: how did today's rich countries become deindustrialized?' we discuss and look at the data on this agriculture-industry-services shift in more detail.

Although this agriculture-urbanization link tends to hold true for most countries, there are a couple of clear outliers. Sri Lanka, Samoa, and Barbados, for example, appear to show relatively low levels of agricultural employment despite being predominantly rural. For Sri Lanka, this anomaly is explained by low urbanization rates, rather than relatively low levels of agricultural employment  — a labor share of just under 30% in agriculture is similar to neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region. In the case of Barbados and Saint Lucia, low agricultural production and employment are common for many small island states .

Definitions and measurement

How is an urban population defined.

There is no universal definition of what constitutes an 'urban area'. Definitions of an urban settlement vary widely across countries, both in terms of the metrics used to define them, and their threshold level. The UN World Urbanization Prospects (2018) database provides a downloadable list of underlying data sources and the statistical concepts used to define 'urban' by country. 5

In the chart, we have mapped the minimum threshold level of the number of inhabitants in a settlement needed for it to be classified as an 'urban area'. The data shown for a given country is its nationally-defined minimum threshold. When we look at the frequency at which a given threshold level is used by a country, we see that 2000 and 5000 inhabitants are the most frequently adopted (by 23 countries each). However, these ranges vary widely: Sweden and Denmark, for example, use a threshold of only 200 inhabitants whereas Japan adopts a very high threshold of 50,000 inhabitants.

Note that 133 countries do not use a minimum settlement population threshold in their 'urban' definition. Some use a variation of population density, infrastructure development, pre-assigned city populations, or in some cases no clear definition.

The UN adopts national definitions in its reporting of urban versus rural populations. This means urban populations are often not comparable across countries. Global urbanization trends also encounter this issue: world urban population is reported as the sum of nationally defined urban populations (therefore summing metrics/thresholds that are not directly comparable).

How is a slum household defined?

UN-HABITAT defines a slum household as a group of individuals living under the same roof in an urban area who lack one or more of the following 16 :

• Durable housing of a permanent nature that protects against extreme climate conditions.
• Sufficient living space which means no more than three people sharing the same room.
• Easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an affordable price.
• 4. Access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public toilet shared by a reasonable number of people.

Sometimes a fifth criterion is included:

• Security of tenure that prevents forced evictions.

It should be noted that although a single categorization of a 'slum household' is given, the conditions and level of deprivation can vary significantly between slum households. Some households may lack only one of the above criteria, whereas others may lack several.

How is urban density defined?

The density of a geographic area is measured on the basis of the average number of people per unit of area (for example, the number of people per square kilometer, km 2 ). It's therefore calculated as the population divided by the land area for that given population.

But what does urban density mean? Here, again, we encounter difficulty in agreeing on the standard boundary definition of what constitutes an urban area. The standard metric adopted (and encouraged) by the UN for urban density is the so-called "urban agglomeration population density".

An urban agglomeration is defined by the UN as:

The term “urban agglomeration” refers to the population contained within the contours of a contiguous territory inhabited at urban density levels without regard to administrative boundaries. It usually incorporates the population in a city or town plus that in the suburban areas lying outside of, but being adjacent to, the city boundaries. Whenever possible, data classified according to the concept of urban agglomeration are used. However, some countries do not produce data according to the concept of urban agglomeration but use instead that of ‘metropolitan area’ or ‘city proper’. If possible, such data are adjusted to conform to the concept of ‘urban’ agglomeration. When sufficient information is not available to permit such an adjustment, data based on the concept of city proper or metropolitan area are used.

This figure, which shows the urban definition boundaries for Toronto, is used by the UN to demonstrate these differences. 17

Here we see that the most commonly used definition of "urban agglomeration" is based on the population and area size of the central city or town plus its close suburban sprawls.

Interactive charts on urbanization

Built-up area is defined as cities, towns, villages, and human infrastructure.

In 1800 when urbanization rates were low, agricultural employment was very high — including in today's rich countries. For example, around 60% of the workforce in France was employed in agriculture in 1800. Today this figure is only a few percent.

UN World Urbanization Prospects (2018). Available at:  https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Download/ .

Note that this data can be viewed for any country or region using the "Change country or region" function in the top-right of the chart.

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2018). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision, Online Edition. Available at:  https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/ .

Pesaresi, M., Melchiorri, M., Siragusa, A., & Kemper, T. (2016). Atlas of the Human Planet - Mapping Human Presence on Earth with the Global Human Settlement Layer.  JRC103150. Publications Office of the European Union. Luxembourg (Luxembourg): European Commission, DG JRC . Available at:  https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/atlas-human-planet-mapping-human-presence-earth-global-human-settlement-layer .

Angel et al. (2018). Our Not-So-Urban World. The Marron Institute of Urban Management, New York University. Available at:  https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/uploads/content/Angel_et_al_Our_Not-So-Urban_World,_revised_on_22_Aug_2018_v2.pdf

Projections through to 2035 are published by the UN World Urbanization Prospects (2018) based on its medium fertility scenario of population growth and urbanization rates.

US Census Bureau. Population: 1790-1990. Available at:  https://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/table-4.pdf .

Bairoch (1988). Cities and Economic Development. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Klein Goldewijk, K. , A. Beusen, and P. Janssen (2010). Long-term dynamic modeling of the global population and the built-up area in a spatially explicit way, HYDE 3 .1. The Holocene20(4):565-573. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0

Bloom, D. E., Canning, D., & Fink, G. (2008). Urbanization and the wealth of nations.  Science ,  319 (5864), 772-775. Available at:  http://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5864/772.short

C. M. Becker, in International Handbook of Development Economics, A. Dutt, J. Ros, Eds. (Edward Elgar Publishing, Northampton, MA, 2008).

Henderson, V. (2003). The urbanization process and economic growth: The so-what question.  Journal of Economic Growth ,  8 (1), 47-71. Available at:  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1022860800744 .

Ciccone, A., & Hall, R. E. (1993).  Productivity and the density of economic activity  (No. w4313). National Bureau of Economic Research. Available at:  http://www.nber.org/papers/w4313 .

Montgomery, M. R., Stren, R., Cohen, B., & Reed, H. E. (2013).  Cities transformed: demographic change and its implications in the developing world . Routledge. Available at:  https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781134031665 .

Black, D., & Henderson, V. (1999). A theory of urban growth.  Journal of Political Economy ,  107 (2), 252-284. Available at:  https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/250060 .

Michaels, G., Rauch, F., & Redding, S. J. (2012). Urbanization and structural transformation.  The Quarterly Journal of Economics ,  127 (2), 535-586. Available at:  https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/127/2/535/1824278 .

UN-HABITAT (2007). State of the World's Cities. Available at:  http://mirror.unhabitat.org/documents/media_centre/sowcr2006/SOWCR%205.pdf

United Nations (2017). The World's Cities in 2016. United Nations Population Division. Available at:  http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/urbanization/the_worlds_cities_in_2016_data_booklet.pdf .

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• What Unites and Divides Urban, Suburban and Rural Communities

Amid widening gaps in politics and demographics, Americans in urban, suburban and rural areas share many aspects of community life

Table of contents.

• 1. Demographic and economic trends in urban, suburban and rural communities
• 2. Urban, suburban and rural residents’ views on key social and political issues
• 3. How people in urban, suburban and rural communities see each other – and say others see them
• 4. Views of problems facing urban, suburban and rural communities
• 5. Americans’ satisfaction with and attachment to their communities
• 6. How urban, suburban and rural residents interact with their neighbors
• 7. Life satisfaction and social support in different communities
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology
• Appendix: Additional tables and maps

Large demographic shifts are reshaping America. The country is growing in numbers, it’s becoming more racially and ethnically diverse and the population is aging. But according to a new analysis by Pew Research Center, these trends are playing out differently across community types.

Urban areas are at the leading edge of racial and ethnic change, with nonwhites now a clear majority of the population in urban counties while solid majorities in suburban and rural areas are white. Urban and suburban counties are gaining population due to an influx of immigrants in both types of counties, as well as domestic migration into suburban areas. In contrast, rural counties have made only minimal gains since 2000 as the number of people leaving for urban or suburban areas has outpaced the number moving in. And while the population is graying in all three types of communities, this is happening more rapidly in the suburbs than in urban and rural counties.

At the same time, urban and rural communities are becoming increasingly different from each other politically . Adults in urban counties, long aligned with the Democratic Party, have moved even more to the left in recent years, and today twice as many urban voters identify as Democrats or lean Democratic as affiliate with the Republican Party. For their part, rural adults have moved more firmly into the Republican camp. More than half (54%) of rural voters now identify with or lean to the GOP, while 38% are Democrats or lean Democratic.

Against this backdrop, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that many urban and rural residents feel misunderstood and looked down on by Americans living in other types of communities. About two-thirds or more in urban and rural areas say people in other types of communities don’t understand the problems people face in their communities. And majorities of urban and rural residents say people who don’t live in their type of community have a negative view of those who do. In contrast, most suburbanites say people who don’t live in the suburbs have a positive view of those who do.

In exploring the attitudes, experiences and changing demographics of Americans in different types of communities, this report relies on two distinct approaches to defining urban, suburban and rural areas. For the analysis of findings from the new Pew Research Center survey (Chapters 2-7 of the report), references to urban, suburban and rural communities are based on respondents’ answer to the following question: “How would you describe the community where you currently live? (1) urban, (2) suburban, (3) rural.”

The analysis of how urban, suburban and rural communities are changing along demographic lines (Chapter 1), based on U.S. Census Bureau data, relies on county-level classifications created by the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In determining how to draw the lines between “urban,” “suburban” and “rural” communities, Pew Research Center consulted a series of social scientists with expertise in this area. To be sure, there are many ways – and no one right way – to classify communities. Because the survey explored issues related to how Americans are experiencing life in their local communities, including how they relate to their neighbors and how attached they feel to their communities, we settled on a definition based on people’s description of the area where they live.

The classification based on counties used in the analysis of census data makes it more challenging to speak to the specific localities where Americans live, but it has the advantage of allowing for the data to be more easily linked among government data sources to analyze changes over time across the country.

The divides that exist across urban, suburban and rural areas when it comes to views on social and political issues don’t necessarily extend to how people are experiencing life in different types of communities. Rural and suburban adults are somewhat more rooted in their local areas, but substantial shares in cities, suburbs and rural areas say they have lived in their communities for more than 10 years. And about six-in-ten in each type of community say they feel at least some sense of attachment to their communities, though relatively few say they are very attached.

For adults who currently live in or near the place where they grew up – roughly half in rural areas and about four-in-ten in cities and suburbs – family ties stand out as the most important reason why they have never left or why they moved back after living away. And, when it comes to their interactions with neighbors, urban, suburban and rural residents are about equally likely to say they communicate with them on a regular basis.

In addition, urban and rural residents share some of the same concerns. Roughly equal shares of urban (50%) and rural (46%) residents say that drug addiction is a major problem in their local community. When it comes to the availability of jobs, rural adults are somewhat more likely to say this is a major problem where they live (42% say so), but a substantial share of urban dwellers (34%) say the same, significantly higher than the share in suburban communities (22%). Other problems – such as access to affordable housing in cities and access to public transportation in rural areas – are felt more acutely in some areas than in others.

The nationally representative survey of 6,251 adults was conducted online Feb. 26-March 11, 2018, using Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel . 1  It explores the attitudes and experiences of Americans in urban, suburban and rural areas, including their views on key social and political issues, how they see people in other types of communities, and how they’re living out their lives in their local communities. The survey sheds light on what divides and unites Americans across community types as well as on differences within urban, suburban and rural areas – sometimes driven by partisanship, sometimes by demographics. The study also includes a detailed analysis of demographic trends in urban, rural and suburban counties. Among the report’s key findings:

There are significant gaps in measures of economic well-being in urban, suburban and rural counties

In addition to the divergent demographic trends taking place in urban, suburban and rural communities, the analysis finds that rural counties lag behind their urban and suburban counterparts when it comes to some measures related to economic well-being. The average earnings per worker in urban areas were $49,515 in 2016, followed by $46,081 in the suburbs and $35,171 in rural areas, though these figures don’t account for differences in living costs across county types. And while the number of employed adults ages 25 to 54 rose in urban and suburban counties since 2000, it declined in rural counties overall.

When it comes to the number of people living in poverty, however, the suburbs have seen much sharper increases since 2000 than urban or rural counties – a 51% increase, compared with 31% in cities and 23% in rural areas. Overall, the poverty rate is somewhat higher in rural (18%) and urban (17%) areas than in suburban (14%) counties.

Rural Americans, especially those without a college degree, are less optimistic about their financial future

Majorities of Americans in urban (68%), suburban (59%) and rural (62%) communities say they don’t currently have enough income to lead the kind of life they want. But while about half of those in cities (46%) and suburbs (49%) who say this is the case believe they will have enough income in the future, rural residents are less optimistic: 63% of adults in rural areas who say they don’t currently have enough income to lead the kind of life they want don’t expect to in the future, while 36% think they eventually will.

The gap in financial optimism across community types is driven by a marked concern among rural residents without a bachelor’s degree. In rural areas, about a third (34%) of those with some college or less education who say they don’t currently have enough income to lead the kind of life they want think they will in the future; higher shares in cities (44%) and suburbs (46%) say this is the case. In contrast, similar shares of those with a bachelor’s degree or more education in urban (53%), suburban (58%) and rural (53%) areas think they will eventually have enough income to lead the kind of life they want.

Across community types, majorities say rural areas get less than their fair share of federal dollars

About seven-in-ten rural residents (71%), and somewhat narrower majorities in suburban (61%) and urban (57%) communities, say rural areas receive less than their fair share of federal dollars. These views don’t vary considerably across demographic or partisan lines.

When it comes to the amount urban areas receive from the federal government, about half of urban dwellers (49%) say cities receive less than their fair share; only about a third of those in suburbs and rural areas share this view. Across community types, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say urban areas receive less than their fair share, while Republicans are more likely to say these types of communities receive more than their fair share. Similar shares of Democrats and Republicans within each community type say urban areas receive about the right amount of federal dollars.

About six-in-ten rural residents say the values of urban dwellers don’t align with theirs; 53% of urban residents say the same about the values of those in rural areas

Most Americans say people who live in the same type of community as they do generally share their values, but they are less convinced that those in other types of communities do. For example, a majority of rural residents (58%) say the values of most people in urban areas are very or somewhat different from theirs.

Among urban dwellers, 53% see an urban-rural divide on values, while 46% say most people in rural areas have values that are similar to their own. About half in urban and rural areas say most people in suburbs share their values, while suburbanites are somewhat more likely to say most people in rural areas have values that are similar to their own (58%) than to say the same about those in urban areas (51%).

There’s a clear political dimension to these attitudes. For example, majorities of Republicans in urban (64%) and suburban (78%) communities say most people in rural areas share their values, while about six-in-ten Democrats in these communities say the values of most rural residents are different from theirs.

Conversely, Democrats in suburban and rural areas are far more likely than their Republican counterparts to say most people who live in cities share their values. Even among Republicans who live in urban areas, only about half (48%) say most people who live in cities share their values.

Urban and rural Americans differ sharply in their views of some key social and political issues, but in some cases this has more to do with partisanship than geography

Americans in urban and rural communities have widely different views when it comes to social and political issues, including their assessments of President Donald Trump and opinions about race, immigration, same-sex marriage, abortion and the role of government.

In many cases, the differences between urban and rural residents can be attributed to the fact that rural areas tend to have a higher concentration of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, while majorities in urban communities identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party. For example, while urban dwellers are far more likely than their rural counterparts to say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, that the government should do more to solve problems, and that whites benefit from advantages in society that black people do not have, these differences shrink when partisanship is taken into account. In other words, Democrats across community types share similar views on these issues, as do Republicans in urban, rural and suburban areas.

On other issues, differences across community types remain, even after controlling for partisanship. Rural Republicans are more likely than Republicans in urban areas to say the legalization of same-sex marriage is a bad thing for society, and they are also more likely to express very positive views of Trump. In turn, Democrats across community types express different views on immigration, with those in urban areas more likely than their rural counterparts to say the growing number of newcomers strengthens American society.

Seven-in-ten urban dwellers – vs. about half in rural areas – say it’s important to them to live in a community that is racially and ethnically diverse

Rural residents are far more likely than their suburban and urban counterparts to say that, as far as they know, all or most of their neighbors are the same race or ethnicity as they are (69% vs. 53% and 43%, respectively). And urban residents place a much higher priority on living in a community that is racially and ethnically diverse than do those in suburban and rural areas: 70% of city dwellers say this is very or somewhat important to them, compared with a narrower majority of those in suburbs (59%) and about half in rural areas (52%).

Across community types, relatively few say all or most of their neighbors share their political views: About a quarter in urban (25%) and rural (24%) communities and 19% in the suburbs say this is the case. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the political makeup of urban and rural communities, majorities of Republicans in cities (59%) and Democrats in rural areas (57%) say only some or none of their neighbors share their political views.

Living among politically like-minded people is not a top priority for most Americans: Only one-in-ten or fewer in urban (10%), suburban (8%) and rural (6%) communities say it is very important to them personally to live in a community where most people share their political views. Still, many say this is at least somewhat important to them (46%, 43% and 38%, respectively).

Urban and rural residents see drug addiction as a top-tier problem in their local community

About half of urban (50%) and rural (46%) adults say drug addiction is a major problem where they live; a smaller but substantial share in the suburbs (35%) say the same about their local community.

Concerns about drug addiction vary significantly along socio-economic lines. Across community types, those without a bachelor’s degree are more likely than those with more education to say drug addiction is a major problem in their local community.

Certain problems are felt more deeply in some types of communities than in others. For example, rural adults are more likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to say access to public transportation and to high-speed internet are major problems. For their part, urban dwellers express greater concern than those in suburban and rural areas about the availability of affordable housing, crime, poverty and the quality of K-12 education in public schools.

About four-in-ten U.S. adults live in or near the community where they grew up

About half of rural residents (47%) say they live in or near the community where they grew up, including about a quarter (26%) who say they have always lived there. Among those in urban and suburban areas, about four-in-ten say they currently live in or near the community where they grew up (42% and 38%, respectively), with about one-in-five in each saying that has always been the case.

In urban, suburban and rural areas, more point to family ties than to any other factor as one of the main reasons why they stayed in the community where they grew up or why they left and later returned. About four-in-ten of those who left and came back (42%) and 35% of those who have lived in or near the same community their entire lives say they have done so to be near family. For both groups, factors related to the quality of life in the community, such as the cost of living, the climate, amenities, schools, or the sense of community, are the second most-cited reasons; 22% of those who left and returned and 17% of those who never left point to these factors.

About half of adults who have always lived in or near the community where they grew up (52%) say all or most of their extended family members live within an hour’s drive from them, compared with 38% of those who moved away and returned, and even smaller shares of those who don’t live in or near the community where they grew up (17%).

Across community types, relatively few say they feel very attached to the community where they live

A majority of Americans (59%) say they feel some attachment to their local community, but only 16% say they feel very attached; 41% say they are not too or not at all attached to the community where they live. Adults in urban, suburban and rural areas report nearly identical levels of attachment to their local community.

In each of the three types of communities, those who have lived in their community for more than a decade and who have made connections with their neighbors are the most likely to feel a sense of attachment. About seven-in-ten adults who have lived in their community more than a decade (69%) say they feel very or somewhat attached to their local community, compared with 54% of those who have lived in their community six to 10 years and 44% of those who have done so less than six years. And while 77% of those who say they know all or most of their neighbors say they feel attached to their local community, a narrower majority of those who know some of their neighbors (55%) and about a third of those who don’t know any of their neighbors (32%) say the same.

Smaller shares of adults in rural areas than in cities and suburbs say they’d like to move away

About a third of U.S. adults (32%) say they would want to move to a different community if they could, while 37% say they would not want to move and 31% aren’t sure. One-in-four rural residents say they would move if given the chance, compared with 37% of those in urban areas and 34% of suburbanites. Among adults younger than 30, however, about an equal share in urban (42%) and rural (39%) areas say they would move if they could; 48% of young adults in the suburbs say the same.

Among those who say they would want to move, many, particularly in suburban and rural areas, say they would like to stay in the same type of community. For example, about four-in-ten adults in the suburbs who would like to move (41%) say they would choose to move to another suburban community. Similarly, 40% of those in rural areas who report they would like to move say they would move to another rural community.

Among urban dwellers who say they would like to move, similar shares say they would like to stay in an urban area (28%) as say they would like to move to a rural community (30%). About four-in-ten (41%) would like to move to the suburbs.

Rural residents are more likely than those in cities or suburbs to say they know all or most of their neighbors, but no more likely to interact with them

Four-in-ten adults in rural communities say they know all or most of their neighbors, compared with 28% in the suburbs and 24% in urban areas. However, among those who know at least some of their neighbors, rural Americans are no more likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to say they interact with them on a regular basis.

About half of adults who know at least some of their neighbors in urban (53%), suburban (49%) and rural (47%) communities say they have face-to-face conversations with a neighbor at least once a week. Other forms of communication, such as exchanging emails or text messages or talking on the phone with neighbors, are less common: About one-in-five or fewer in urban, rural and suburban areas say this happens at least once a week.

Americans are generally trusting of their neighbors, but those in suburban and rural areas are more so. For example, about six-in-ten of those in the suburbs (62%) and in rural communities (61%) say they have a neighbor they would trust with a set of keys to their home, compared with about half (48%) in urban areas.

There is little variation among those living in different types of communities in the share reporting they have social support, feel optimistic about their lives or feel lonely. And the idea that life in the city feels more hectic than life in the country is not borne out by the data – only about one-in-ten urban, suburban and rural residents say they always or almost always feel they are too busy to enjoy their lives.

For the analysis of findings from the new Pew Research Center survey (Chapters 2-7 of the report), references to “urban,” “suburban” and “rural” are based on respondents’ answer to the following question: “How would you describe the community where you currently live? (1) urban, (2) suburban, (3) rural.”

The analysis of how urban, suburban and rural communities are changing along demographic lines (Chapter 1), based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, relies on county-level classifications created by the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Throughout the report, the terms “urban” and “city” are used interchangeably.

All references to party affiliation include those who lean toward that party: Republicans include those who identify as Republicans and independents who say they lean toward the Republican Party, and Democrats include those who identify as Democrats and independents who say they lean toward the Democratic Party.

References to Millennials include adults who are ages 22 to 37 in 2018. Generation Xers include those who are ages 38 to 53, Baby Boomers include those who are 54 to 72 and members of the Silent Generation include those ages 73 to 90.

References to college graduates or people with a college degree comprise those with a bachelor’s degree or more. “Some college” includes those with an associate degree and those who attended college but did not obtain a degree. “High school” refers to those who have a high school diploma or its equivalent, such as a General Education Development (GED) certificate.

References to whites, blacks and Asians include only those who are non-Hispanic and identify as only one race. Hispanics are of any race. Nonwhites include blacks, Hispanics, other races and people who identify with more than one race.

“Upper class” refers to those who said they belong in the upper or upper-middle classes. “Lower class” refers to those who said they belong in the lower or lower-middle classes.

• The survey includes an oversample of adults living in rural areas. For more details, see the Methodology section of the report. ↩

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Introductory essay

Written by the educators who created Ecofying Cities, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in their field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

Right now, our economy operates as Paul Hawken said, "by stealing the future, selling it in the present and calling it GDP." And if we have another eight billion or seven billion people, living on a planet where their cities also steal the future, we're going to run out of future really fast. But if we think differently, I think that, in fact, we can have cities that are not only zero emissions, but have unlimited possibilities as well. Alex Steffen

The urgency of urban planning today

Within a few decades' time, we can expect the planet to become more crowded, resources more precious, and innovative urban planners increasingly important. By midcentury, the global population will likely top nine billion, and more than half will live in cities. What will these cities look like? Will we have the resources to power them and comfortably provide for their residents? Will global urbanization harmonize with efforts to curb climate change and secure a sustainable future, or are these forces hurtling towards a head-on collision?

The TED speakers featured in Ecofying Cities underscore the urgency, but also suggest that some optimism's in order as they outline the issues and offer imaginative solutions.

There's no single reason for or response to the complex environmental, economic and social challenges that are part of our future in cities. They call for multiple approaches, originating from different sources — individuals, communities, governments, businesses — and deployed at different levels — in the home, the neighborhood, the city, region, nation and across the globe — to respond to the challenges at hand. As Alex Steffen reminds the urban planners, architects, designers, elected leaders and others involved in the effort, "All those cities are opportunities."

Urbanism and the environment: A brief history

For centuries, successful city-building has required careful attention to the environmental consequences of urban development. Without this, as Jared Diamond demonstrated in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed , a city inevitably ended up fouling its nest, thus entering a spiral of epidemics, economic hardship, decline and, ultimately, oblivion. Civilizations evolved different ways of dealing with environmental considerations — some with more success than others. For example, thanks to elaborate aqueducts and sewer systems, the Romans were able to build and sustain for centuries large cities that featured a reliable public water supply and state-of-the-art public health conditions.

In other civilizations, however, residents simply abandoned cities when they could no longer rely on their environment to supply the resources they needed. Often this was a direct result of their own activities: for example, deforestation and the attendant erosion of fertile soil, epidemics due to contaminated water and, with the advent of coal-fired industrialization, air pollution.

Urban planning got its start as a profession largely dedicated to averting different types of crises arising from urban growth and providing conditions for public health. This was particularly true in the many 19th century European and North American cities transformed by industrialization and unprecedented rates of population growth. Rapidly deteriorating air and water quality made it necessary to introduce regulations to protect the health of the residents of these cities.

The planners' first-generation improvements included sewers, water treatment and distribution, and improved air quality through building codes and increased urban green space. It's especially remarkable today to think that these interventions were adopted in response to observable health consequences, but without knowledge of the contamination mechanisms at work: germ theory didn't arrive on the scene until Louis Pasteur published his work in the 1860s. From the late 19th century onward Pasteur's findings bolstered the case for even more urban sanitation improvements, particularly those designed to improve water quality.

Starting in the 1950s, however, planners no longer narrowly targeted immediate health effects on urban residents as their chief environmental concern. Their work also absorbed and reflected Western society's deeper understanding of, and respect for, natural processes and growing awareness of the long-term environmental impacts of cities from the local to the planetary scale.

Rachel Carson is often credited as the first to popularize environmentalism. Published in 1962, her landmark book Silent Spring sounded a warning call about how pesticides endanger birds and entire ecological systems. Soon after, air pollution became a rallying point for environmentalists, as did the loss of large tracks of rural and natural land to accelerated, sprawling development. Today, sustainable development and smart growth, which largely overlap and address multiple environmental considerations, enjoy wide currency; most urban planning is now based on these principles.

Today, as we reckon with population growth, advancing rates of urbanization, and widespread recognition of climate change, we know that the cities of the future share a common destiny. The choices we make about how we build, inhabit and maintain these cities will have global and long-term effects.

Sustainable development: Two schools of thought

In modern urban planning, there are two general categories of sustainable development. The first doesn't challenge the present dynamics of the city, allowing them to remain largely low-density and automobile-oriented, but still makes them the object of measures aimed to reduce their environmental load (for example, green construction practices). Ian McHarg spearheaded this approach as a way to develop urban areas in harmony with natural systems; the planning principles he formulated gave special care to the preservation of water and green space. His lasting influence is visible in many of the more enlightened suburban developments of recent decades which respect the integrity of natural systems. Today, the Landscape Urbanism movement promotes these same ideas.

A second school of urban development focuses on increasing urban density and reducing reliance on the automobile. This approach advocates transit-oriented and mixed-use development along pedestrian-friendly "complete streets." On a regional scale, it aims to reduce sprawl by creating a network of higher-density multifunctional centers interconnected by public transit. Today, it's common for plans with a metropolitan scope to follow this approach.

Studying the city: About these materials

Cities are arguably the most complex human creation (with the possible exception of language) so it's not surprising that we study them at multiple scales and from diverse perspectives. We can approach cities through a narrow focus on an individual building or a neighborhood, expand the investigation to consider a metropolitan region in its entirety, or study the global system of cities and its interconnections. What's more, we can think about cities as built environments, social networks, modified ecologies, economic systems and political entities. Aware of the multiple ways that we engage with cities, the Romans had two words to refer to them: urbs referred to the physical city with its wall and buildings, and civitas , the city as a collection of residents.

Ecofying Cities explores urban areas at different scales. In some cases, the TED speaker focuses on a neighborhood project, like The High Line in Manhattan; others describe city-wide transformation, as in Curitiba, Brazil, or a regional or national initiative like China's plan for a network of eco-cities to house its growing urban population. Likewise, the talks explore cities from different disciplinary perspectives including urban planning, urban design, transportation planning, architecture, community organization and environmental science. What unites them all? A commitment to sustainability and a belief that sustainability is more about creating positive effects rather than reducing negative impacts.

The message emanating from Ecofying Cities is one of complexity, optimism and uncertainty. We can't be sure that the changes these speakers suggest will be enough to help us balance supply and demand in the sustainability equation. But we can expect that their ideas and efforts will improve the built environment — as well as quality of life — in cities, thereby providing hopeful perspectives for a sustainable future.

Let´s begin with writer and futurist Alex Steffen´s TEDTalk "The Sharable Future of Cities" for a look at the interplay between increasing urban density and energy consumption.

Alex Steffen

The shareable future of cities, relevant talks.

Jaime Lerner

A song of the city.

Majora Carter

Greening the ghetto.

Robert Hammond

Building a park in the sky.

Michael Pawlyn

Using nature's genius in architecture.

William McDonough

Cradle to cradle design.

James Howard Kunstler

The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs.

Ellen Dunham-Jones

Retrofitting suburbia.

Essay on Urbanization for Students and Children

500 words essay on urbanization.

Urbanization refers to the movement of the population from rural areas to urban areas. It is essentially the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas. Furthermore, urbanization is quite a popular trend in the contemporary world. Moreover, people mostly undertake urbanization due to more work opportunities and a better standard of living. According to the expert prediction, by 2050, 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized.

Causes of Urbanization

First of all, political causes play a big role in urbanization. Many people get forced to leave rural areas for urban areas due to political unrest. Therefore, many families go to urban areas in search of food, shelter, and employment .

Another important cause of urbanization is an economic cause. Furthermore, poverty is a widespread phenomenon in rural areas. Moreover, farmers are finding it very hard to earn enough money and make a living. Consequently, rural people move to urban areas in search of better job opportunities.

Education is a strong cause of urbanization. Urban areas offer opportunities for seeking high-quality education. Moreover, urbanization offers opportunities for studying at universities and technical colleges. Such handsome education opportunities attract many young people in rural areas to move to urban areas.

Environmental degradation also plays a part in contributing to urbanization. Deforestation destroys the natural habitat of many farming families. Furthermore, mining and industrial expansion also harm the natural habitat of farming families.

The social cause is another notable reason for urbanization. Many young rural people migrate to urban areas in order to seek a better lifestyle. Moreover, many young people want to escape the conservative culture of rural areas. Most noteworthy, urban areas offer a more easy-going liberal lifestyle. Furthermore, cities have clubs to attract youth.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Benefits of Urbanization

First of all, urban areas are much more efficient in providing resources than rural areas. Important and basic amenities like housing, clean water, and electricity are easily available in urban areas.

People in urban areas find it quite easy to access to various important services. Most noteworthy, these services are high-quality education, expert health care, convenient transportation, entertainment, etc. Furthermore, some or all of the services are unavailable in rural areas.

Urban areas offer better employment opportunities. Furthermore, these employment opportunities are the result of industrialization and commercialization.

Urban areas play a critical role as creators and disseminators of knowledge. This is because of the highly connected urbanized world. Most noteworthy, the geographical proximity of people in urban areas helps in the propagation of ideas.

Urban areas enjoy the benefits of technological development. Furthermore, many types of technologies get implemented in urban areas. Moreover, urban people quickly get in touch with the latest technology. In contrast, many rural individuals remain ignorant of many types of technologies.

To sum it up, urbanization is a process which is on a continuous rise. Furthermore, urbanization ensures the transformation of rural culture into urban culture. Moreover, the government must be vigilant to the rapidly increasing urbanization. A fully urbanized world looks like the ultimate destiny of our world.

FAQs on Urbanization

Q1 State any two causes for urbanization?

A1 Any two causes for urbanization are high-quality education and good job opportunities in urban areas.

Q2 Why urban areas offer better employment opportunities?

A2 Urban areas offer better employment opportunities due to high industrialization and commercialization.

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Urban Culture: Definition and Contextualization

As the subtitle suggests, the essay is divided into two main thematic parts, which are related to each other. The definition of urban culture begins taking into account, in a macro perspective, capitalism as an ordering economic logic of space in western cities and referring to how each city is a living system of cultural reproduction. In the first part, the systemic logic of determination that undergoes the reproduction of urban culture is stressed. The meaning of " culture " is rediscovered in order to bring attention to the spatial attributes of its existence, and directly related to how urban culture works. The main examples used are: First, role of Music and its capability to mediate identity and space, creating a sense of place from which culture is rooted, both being a modality of transmission between the related culture and creation of space, and, in reply, as an element of connection capable of evoking and reminding listeners (outsiders) of the insights of the related urban culture; Second, the attributes of the Street as example of " spatialization " (Lefebvre), both as field of power stratification and as space of the possible reformulation of power itself. In the second part of this essay, through a presentation of W. Benjamin's flaneurie , the complex nature of perception will be highlighted, linked to how the nature of urban culture manifest itself. A micro sociological approach of inquiry will be demonstrated to be the more suitable, as a response to how urban culture can be truly understood.

Related Papers

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This article deals with the meaning and the historical change of the term urbanity with the aim of making urbanity as an analytical term fruitful. Since urbanity is both a historical concept and the object of analysis, a brief semantic history must be undertaken. It takes us (at least) back to the time of the Roman Republic, experiences a change of meaning in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, and shows how urbanism and urbanity finally found their way into scientific discourse, starting with the social sciences about 100 years ago. Far from representing a uniform concept, it is also often normative or based on quantitative, measurable criteria, thus neglecting practices and ideas. All this (historical change, regional differences, tendency towards normativity in scientific discourse) makes it seem necessary to venture a new approach. My proposal is therefore to understand urbanity as a concept of form that allows for the analysis and better understanding of spatiotemporal configurations, practices and representations in relation to cities.

Giada Di Trinca

The essay is focused on urban plannning and environment in the light of Modernism paradigm as a new way of building and conceptualising the metropolis. In particular, Russian research in 1920s and 1930s on linear cities by OSA group are ambitious and remarkable examples of such reserach which was spread all over European countries and the U.S.A. This work tries also to rewrite the history of Modernism according to Leonardo Benevolo study which underline as Postmodernism is a misunderstanding concept in order to correctly evaluate Modern Architecture.

Estudos de Sociologia

Lucas Amaral de Oliveira , Rafael Arantes

This essay, which opens the dossier "Practices and Processes of Urban Space Production: Decentering Perspectives," takes this tension as a premise. The classical perspective that understood and analyzed the city as the ground for civil progress, the development of human potentialities—or as a stage for the reverberation of "modern" mistrusts and fears—overlooked a series of urban life experiences that have accumulated and evolved on the outskirts of global capitalism. On the one hand, these experiences are marked by the colonial past—hence by the effects of transatlantic slave trade, massive displacement of people, slavery, genocide, and racism—that historically interweaves "North-South" and "South-South". On the other, by the persistent legacies of this past, which obstruct the resolution of contemporary issues, such as segregation, inequalities, lack of infrastructure, problems in urban-environmental regulation and management, among others.

Aleksandra Kunce

C. Cellamare (2014), “Self-organization, appropriation of places and production of urbanity”, in C. Cellamare & F. Cognetti (eds, 2014), Practices of Reappropriation, Planum Publisher, Milano, ISBN: 9788899237011, p. 35-40

Carlo Cellamare

In this historical phase, cities are intensely crossed by processes and practices of appropriation and re-appropriation of places and life environments. Motivations are at different levels: necessity, political and personal. The fieldwork shows, however, another reason, namely a need for urbanity and quality of urban life. Space is the medium of all these experiences. Places and everyday life have a strong centrality in them. In fact, these experiences find in the texture and spatiality of places their solidification point, their drive and motivation, often their raison d'être, as well as an activator for their passion. A place is a material and significant space, which precipitates the linear chronographic time and turns it into everyday lifetime. The process of self-organization in / with the territory becomes a principle and a process of individuation. Finally, some experiences directly and explicitly pose questions about the modes of production of politics and institutions, thus entering into a broad debate.

Daniela Sandler

This article develops the idea of a "territorial dimension of culture" (proposed by Raquel Rolnik) in the context of contemporary grassroots urbanism in São Paulo, in particular in the peripheries of the city. The central argument of the article is the value of culture as an integral element in urbanism, and not as a separate area that is occasionally brought to bear on it. The article examines the use of culture in the construction of public spaces in the periphery-spaces defined not by their formal aspects, but for sustaining a diverse and inclusive public sphere. Culture is understood as urbanism both because it helps in critically understanding urbanization processes, and also because it aids in intervening in these processes concretely. The article also suggests a broadening of the epistemological assumptions of urbanism, so as to include practices and bodies of knowledge by diverse communities and groups, which are not necessarily recognized by official educational and professional institutions. Such a broadened vision has the potential to generate a more democratic, participatory and efficient urbanism, and a more just and humane city.

UNESCO City of Music - Kirsheir International Music Symposium. Ed. Fenomen (Turkey), pp. 485-496

Javier Ares Yebra

The experience of art always comes with a utopian tension. The source of this tension is the binary dimension of artistic work: while reflecting on the world, it also speaks to us about non-actualized possibilities. In the case of music, its degree of abstraction, multiple textualities, and the indefinite nature of sound itself, favor the construction of a thought based on what reality could be, and not so much about what it is. Listening to music allows us to open and access possible worlds in everyday life. From a critical perspective which begins with the assessment of existing societies in general as unsustainable community models, this text explores the functions and creative possibilities of music and acoustic signals in various contexts of the city. To do this, an interpretation of reality as a plurality of worlds and sound cultures is proposed. In this sense, listening emerges as an act of creation and, at the same time, of ethical-political, plural, and participatory commitment, which decisively influences how we build communities and inhabit our space-time reality. Thus, the ways of listening and inhabiting combine as transformative actions from which to reconfigure the sound as a commonplace and, with it, open new horizons in everyday life.

La Tempesdad

Camillo Boano

Benjamin Fraser

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• Key Differences

Know the Differences & Comparisons

Difference Between Urban and Rural

Another important difference between the two human settlements is that while urban areas are highly populated, rural areas have comparatively less population than the urban ones. Take a read of this article, in which we’ve compiled the important point to distinguish the two.

Content: Urban Vs Rural

Comparison chart, definition of urban.

The term urban simply refers to the region or area which is densely populated and possess the characteristics of the man-made surroundings. The people residing in such area, are engaged in trade, commerce or services. In this settlement, there is high scale industrialisation that results in better employment opportunities. The Urban settlement is not confined to the cities only, but towns and suburbs (suburban areas) are also included in it.

There are many advantages of life in urban areas like easy access to various amenities, better transportation facilities, entertainment and education options, health facilities. Although it suffers certain drawbacks like pollution, caused due to large scale industrialisation and means of transportation like buses, trains, cars and so on, leading to increasing in health problems in the people living in that area.

Definition of Rural

We define the term ‘rural’ as a region located on the outskirts. It refers to a small settlement, which is outside the boundaries of a city, commercial or industrial area. It may include, countryside areas, villages or hamlets, where there are natural vegetation and open spaces. There is a low density of population in such area. The primary source of income of the residents is agriculture and animal husbandry. Cottage Industries also form a chief source of income here.

In India, a town whose population is below 15000 is considered as rural, as per the planning commission. Gram Panchayat is responsible for looking after such areas. Further, there is no municipal board, in the villages and maximum percentage of the male population are engaged in agriculture and related activities.

Key Differences Between Urban and Rural

The fundamental differences between urban and rural are discussed in the following points:

• A settlement where the population is very high and has the features of a built environment (an environment that provides basic facilities for human activity), is known as urban. Rural is the geographical region located in the outer parts of the cities or towns.
• The life in urban areas is fast and complicated, whereas rural life is simple and relaxed.
• The Urban settlement includes cities and towns. On the other hand, the rural settlement includes villages and hamlets.
• There is greater isolation from nature in urban areas, due to the existence of the built environment. Conversely, rural areas are in direct contact with nature, as natural elements influence them.
• Urban people are engaged in non-agricultural work, i.e. trade, commerce or service industry. In contrast, the primary occupation of rural people is agriculture and animal husbandry.
• Population wise, urban areas are densely populated, which is based on the urbanisation, i.e. the higher the urbanisation, the higher is the population. On the contrary, the rural population is sparse, which has an inverse relationship with agriculturism.
• Urban areas are developed in a planned and systematic way, according to the process of urbanisation and industrialisation. Development in rural areas is seldom, based on the availability of natural vegetation and fauna in the region.
• When it comes to social mobilisation, urban people are highly intensive as they change their occupation or residence frequently in search of better opportunities. However, in rural areas occupational or territorial mobility of the people is relatively less intensive.
• Division of labour and specialisation is always present in the urban settlement at the time of job allotment. As opposed to rural areas, there is no division of labour.

So, with the given discussion, it is easily understood that these two human settlements are very different, regarding the density of human structures and the residents of that area. The standard of living in urban areas is higher in comparison to the rural areas. At present, the maximum part of the total population resides in urban areas, as well as the total land area occupied by the urban region is greater than the rural areas.

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Rajendra Koduru says

July 2, 2017 at 7:34 pm

Well compared, employment and income sources are very less in rural areas which is leading to migrate to urban

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October 11, 2023 at 7:08 pm

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December 25, 2017 at 3:02 pm

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May 5, 2021 at 1:44 pm

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An urban area includes the city itself, as well as the surrounding areas.

Geography, Human Geography, Social Studies, U.S. History, World History

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An urban area is the region surrounding a city . Most inhabitants of urban areas have non-agricultural jobs. Urban areas are very developed, meaning there is a density of human structures, such as houses, commercial buildings, roads, bridges, and railways.

" Urban area " can refer to towns , cities, and suburbs . An urban area includes the city itself, as well as the surrounding areas. Many urban areas are called metropolitan areas , or "greater," as in Greater New York or Greater London.

When two or more metropolitan areas grow until they combine, the result may be known as a megalopolis . In the United States, the urban areas of Boston, Massachusetts, eventually spread as far south as Washington, D.C., creating the megalopolis of BosWash , or the Northeast Corridor.

Rural areas are the opposite of urban areas . Rural areas , often called "the country," have low population density and large amounts of undeveloped land. Usually, the difference between a rural area and an urban area is clear. But in developed countries with large populations, such as Japan, the difference is becoming less clear. In the United States, settlements with 2,500 inhabitants or more are defined as urban. In Japan, which is far more densely populated than the U.S., only settlements with 30,000 people or more are considered urban.

Throughout the world, the dominant pattern of migration within countries has been from rural to urban areas. This is partly because improved technology has decreased the need for agricultural workers and partly because cities are seen as offering greater economic opportunities. Most of the world's people, however, still live in rural areas.

One type of urban area is a town . A town is generally larger than a village , but smaller than a city . Some geographers further define a town as having 2,500 to 20,000 residents.

Towns usually have local self-government , and they may grow around specialized economic activities, such as mining or railroading .

The western part of the United States, for instance, is dotted with " ghost towns ." Ghost towns no longer have any human population. They are full of abandoned buildings and roads that have been overtaken by shrubs and natural vegetation .

Many ghost towns in the western U.S. are the remains of " boom towns ," which developed after gold or silver were discovered in the area in the 19th century. Economic activity boomed in these towns, most of it centered on mining. When all the gold and silver was mined, economic activity stopped and people moved away, leaving ghost towns of empty homes and businesses.

Growth of Suburbs

Suburbs are smaller urban areas that surround cities. Most suburbs are less densely populated than cities. They serve as the residential area for much of the city's workforce . The suburbs are made up of mostly single-family homes , stores, and services.

Many city residents move to suburbs , a situation known as suburban migration . Homes in suburbs are usually larger than homes in cities, and suburbs usually have more parks and open spaces. Residents may move to escape the traffic, noise, or to enjoy a larger residence.

Large groups of Americans began to move to suburbs in the late 1800s. The invention of the streetcar made it possible for residents to commute from their homes to their city jobs.

At the end of World War II , the U.S. government enacted a program that gave home loans to returning war veterans . This created an explosion of single-family homes and increased the growth of suburbs across America.

The establishment of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 also contributed to the growth of suburbs and urban areas . The Highway Act created 66,000 kilometers (41,000 miles) of interstate roadway systems. The original plan for the highway system was for the evacuation of large cities in case of a nuclear or military attack. What the Highway Act created instead was suburban sprawl .

Suburban sprawl continues to be a phenomenon in the U.S. First, outlying areas of a city widen. Slowly, these outlying areas become more crowded, pushing the suburbs farther into rural areas .

Housing and businesses that serve suburban communities eat up farmland and wilderness . More than 809,000 hectares (two million acres) of farmland and wilderness are lost to development every year in the U.S.

Smart Growth

Recently, experts have tried to curb the spread of suburban sprawl , or at least create urban areas that are developed more purposefully. This is known as " smart growth ." City planners create communities that are designed for more walking and less dependency on cars. Some developers recover old communities in down town urban areas , rather than develop the next piece of farmland or wilderness .

U.S. states such as Oregon are passing laws to prevent unplanned urban sprawl. They have created boundaries around cities that limit the growth of development. Officials have created laws stating that the minimum size of a plot of land is 32 hectares (80 acres). This is to prevent developers from creating suburban communities. An 80-acre plot of land is too costly for a single-family home!

Other smart-growth communities are creating new types of development. Some have large amounts of undeveloped " green space ," organic farms , and lakes .

Urban areas typically drain the water from rain and snow , which cannot collect in the paved-over ground. Rather than use drainage pipes and ditches, smart-growth communities create wetlands designed to filter storm runoff .

More city planners are developing urban areas by considering their geography. Engineers build structures that blend with their natural surroundings and use natural resources . White roofs, for example, reflect the sun's rays and lower the cost of air conditioning. Homebuilders in urban areas as diverse as Los Angeles, California, U.S., and the island communities of Greece create homes and businesses with white plaster or tile roofs for this reason.

There is also a move toward preserving and maintaining more green areas and planting more trees in urban areas . Landscape designers often consult with city planners to incorporate parks with development.

Suburban Sprawl Phoenix, Arizona, one of the fastest growing communities in the U.S., has been spreading outward at the rate of an acre an hour.

White Flight One type of suburban migration is connected to the history of racism in the United States. After World War II, many African Americans migrated to cities in the north of the country, such as Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. Some white residents of these cities then moved to the urban areas surrounding the cities, a suburban migration known as "white flight."

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Related Resources

Urbanisation Essay

500+ words urbanisation essay.

Urbanisation is an integral part of development. It is an index of transformation from traditional rural economies to modern industrial ones. The process of urbanisation started with the industrial revolution and resulted in economic development. Urban areas are an integral part of India’s development and growth. It accounts for two-thirds of India’s GDP. India’s urban population has increased rapidly over the past decade and this rapid urbanisation is set to continue in the future. This urbanisation essay discusses the opportunities that urban areas have and the major challenges faced by them. So, students must go through this essay to gather the information and then try to write the essay in their own words. They can also get the list of CBSE Essays on different topics to practise essays on various topics.

Meaning of Urbanisation

When people move from village or rural areas to towns/cities or urban areas for better job opportunities where they can get involved in non-agricultural occupations such as manufacturing industry, trade, management etc. is known as urbanisation. People mainly migrate to cities in search of jobs, new opportunities and to have a better lifestyle.

Urbanisation in India – History and Present Situation

Urbanisation in India is said to have begun somewhere around 600 B.C. culminating in the formation of early historical cities. During ancient and medieval periods of Indian history, the kings established various capital regions, which developed into towns. For example, Pataliputra (now Patna) and Vaishali developed as towns during the Magadh rule. Kanauj was the capital town of Harshavardhana in Uttar Pradesh. The establishment of the East India Company and the onset of British colonial control of India from the seventeenth century led to the growth of the urban centres of Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. These cities (except Delhi) developed along the seacoast in the respective regions where the British had established administrative systems in various provinces.

In the present scenario, the urban population is growing rapidly. Because of this, opportunities are also increasing. Urbanisation in India is mainly due to the expansion of cities and the migration of people. Investments are made in housing, urban transport, road network, water supply, smart cities, power-related infrastructure and other forms of urban management.

Consequences of Rapid Urbanisation

Rapid urbanisation often leads to both healthy and unhealthy consequences and aspects.

Positive Aspect of Urbanisation

Urbanisation resulted in the development and setting up of many industries in the cities. Manufacturing units and the service sector started to grow in the urban areas. This has created employment opportunities for the people. This has resulted in rural-urban migration and caused the “industrialisation urbanisation process” to set in. The growth of cities has given rise to external economies. Urbanisation results in changes in the attitudes and mindset of the urban people resulting in modernisation in behaviour. This indirectly helped the country to attain faster economic development.

Negative Aspect of Urbanisation

Growing urbanisation has increased the congestion in urban areas, which has resulted in problems like traffic jams and too much concentration of population. Too much population is another unhealthy aspect of urbanisation. It has created urban chaos related to housing, education, sanitation, pollution, medical facilities, growth of slums, unemployment, violence, inadequate water supply, overcrowding etc. All these resulted in deteriorating the quality of human life.

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Urban geography: meaning, scope and concepts (with statistics).

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Nature and Scope of Urban Geography :

Urban geography is the study of urban places with reference to their geographical environment. Broadly speaking, the subject matter includes origin of towns, their growth and devel­opment, their functions in and around their surroundings.

The subject of urban geography has gradually taken a special place among the various branches of geography in the period after the Second World War in various foreign and Indian universities and colleges. With the increase of population globally, towns and cities have become magnets of economic, social and political processes.

The changes brought about by these processes have become instructive as well as interesting too in case of the single phenomenon, i.e., city in a spatial context. Under these circumstances, the studies of towns and cities have formed an essential part of the branch of Human Geography.

Meaning of an Urban Place :

It is one of the most essential and immediate problems to decide ‘what is urban?’ How does it differ from its counterpart, i.e., rural? In everyday life we are aware that difference between rural and urban depends upon their nature of work – the former being engaged in agricultural operations and the latter in non-agricultural activities.

But it is a difficult task to transform the above stated meaning between the two different natures of settlements into precise and scholarly terms. This is because of the fact that ‘an urban place’ has been defined differ­ently by different scholars and agencies. Even the United Nations Demographic Year Book (UN, 1990) has given a wide range of examples covering the various countries defining demographically.

UNO defines a permanent settlement with a minimum population of 20,000 as an urban place. But several countries have their own minimum such as Botswana (5,000), Ethiopia (2,000), Argentina (2,000), Israel (2,000), Czechoslo­vakia (5,000), Iceland (200), Norway (200), Portugal (10,000), Japan (50,000), Australia (1,000), India (5,000), etc.

But, the UN Demographic Year Book concludes: “There is no point in the continuum from large agglomerations to small clusters or scattered dwellings where urbanity disappears and rurality begins the division between urban and rural popula­tions is necessarily arbitrary.” A review of the problems of rural and urban centres as revealed by the Census Reports of various countries identifies a few bases for reckoning a place as urban.

(1) A place designated by administrative status;

(2) A minimum population;

(3) A minimum population density;

(4) A concept of contiguity to include or exclude under suburban area or loosely scattered settlement;

(5) A proportion engaged in non-agricultural occupations; and

(6) A functional character.

In case of our country (India), the census of 1981 has identified the following places as urban:

(1) Centres having Municipality, City Board, Cantonment Board/Notified Town Area;

(2) A minimum population of 5,000;

(3) 75 per cent males engaged in non-agricultural activities;

(4) A minimum population density of 400 persons per square km or 1,000 persons per square mile; and

(5) Centres defined by urban amenities prescribed by the Director, Provincial Census.

Two important facts must be borne in mind before accepting the meaning of urban and rural. One is the fact that it is rather impossible now to identify a dividing line between the rural and urban – the two being merged to create a sort of diffusion and present a landscape which is neither purely agricultural nor engaged wholly in tertiary activities.

Industrial­ization has brought into being a large number of settlements which are not certainly villages but are nucleated settlements of agricultural population. Another problem is about the concept of what is urban, which is not static and is subject to change with time as well as with space.

The proportion of population engaged in agricultural activities is the most effective measure. But capitalization of agriculture in modern times and rural depopulation by commuting urban workers have made the criterion of proportion irrelevant.

Thus, to conclude the discussion one reaches to the point that with the changing nature of both rurality and urbanity, there has developed the functional overlap between the two. Therefore, the distinction between what is urban and what is rural has lost its meaning in reality.

Attributes of a Town :

What are the attributes or characteristics qualifying a town?

Several qualities of a city or town may be summarized as:

(a) Town is a kind of settlement having a social organization of much greater scope than a simple rural establishment.

(b) It does not represent a mere greater number of people agglomerated in a vast area. But it represents a stage of civilization quite different from a locality expressing rural way of life.

(c) Cities and towns have their historical origin Blache has pointed out that cities characteristically possess mythical halo surrounding their genesis (ritual, eponymous hero, etc.).

(d) Towns and cities are creatures of commerce, and politics accompanying the earliest developments such as: Babylon, Athens, London, Paris, Delhi, etc.

Emrys Jones has also expressed various attributes of towns and cities which also resemble whatever has already been discussed above:

…a town is a physical agglomeration of streets and houses, a centre of commerce and administration, a kind of society, even a cultural frame of mind of urbanite or a way of life.

Attributes forming the scope and contents of urban geography have been summarized in Table 2.1.

Scope of Urban Studies and Definitions :

Urban geography studies urban centre in the context of geographical factors. The factors operate spatially to explain processes – economic, socio-cultural and also political. But the subject of urban geography has its limited scope in the sense that it deals with these processes in relation to only one phenomenon, i.e., town or city. Some of the general principles on which a town is based form the subject-matter.

Commonly, it includes in the very beginning, consideration about the origin of an urban place. The genesis about a town is invariably related to its history. Who is behind its origin? What is that which makes a town to take its root where it is, and why it is there? Town site or the ground on which it is sited has some specific and geographic attributes. These need explanation to bring forth personality of a town.

Another point which has been emphasized by D. Stamp to cover the scope of urban geography is the study of the actual town itself, i.e., town as an entity. He further has added that influence of the town on its surrounding area too forms a signif­icant aspect of the study. This means that ‘townscape’ and also hinterland including ‘umland’ are vital issues for studying urban geography.

One of the pioneer scholars in urban studies in India, R.L. Singh has stressed on three broad categories under the scope, viz.

(a) The physical structure of the city,

(b) The stage of its historical development, and

(c) The process influencing the structure.

Dickinson defines urban geography as the study of a city commanding the surrounding region. He describes the city as a king among the surrounding towns. His trait for cities of all ages has been institutional supremacy for their surrounding territory.

Their existence depends upon the resources of the surrounding areas, and also, by virtue of their interaction through their physical, social and economic infrastructure. Their interdependence with their surrounding regions is the spatial reality.

Raymond E. Murphy points out the dual role of urban geographer, i.e.,

(i) To analyze cities as entities in terms of locations, characters, growth, and relations to the surrounding countryside, as well as,

(ii) To discuss patterns of the city’s interior – land use, social and cultural patterns, patterns of circulation, and above all, natural patterns of environment – all as they exist in interrelation and interaction in the urban area.

Harold Carter opined that since the geographer is concerned with the analysis of the variable character of the earth’s surface, and thus, “the populations and the buildings agglomerated together to make up towns constitute the special interest of the urban geographer”. Since considerable population of the world live in towns, and the problems of the urban environment are paramount, the study of urban geography is important and its relevance to applied geography needs no further stress.

Towns and cities have their wide impact on human life and activities. Overall growth rate of city population has been faster during the last two-three decades. It is only after Second World War that the study of urban geography got due recognition in the universities in India and abroad. Prior to that period, it was taught as a theme within human geography where its scope was restricted to the description of site-situation of towns including their description as a part of settlements.

Since the publication of the major work of Doxiadis, urban geography has made much headway in and outside India. Brian J.L. Berry also encouraged the urban studies by intro­ducing urban systems as consequences of economic development. In the present circumstances the scope of urban studies has reached far-flung areas and is not restricted to its site-situation structural approach.

The ICSSR Report of the Fourth Survey of Research in Geography, covering the period 1976-82 in India has pointed out various themes of urban phenomena bringing into light the scope of the subject. These include trends and patterns of urbanization; rural-urban migration; urban systems and hierarchical orders; morphology; economic base; land use; functional housing classification; slums and squatter settlements; rural-urban fringe, surrounding areas of influence, umland and interaction between a city and surrounding settlements; urban environment; pollution; poverty; crime and quality of life; urban services and amenities; urban politics and administration; tourism; urban planning and problems including urban metropolises.

N. Baransky, the founder of Soviet economic geography, has pointed out that study of cities has a wide scope in the sense that it has now become the subject matter of historians, geogra­phers, statisticians, economists and sociologists. Similarly, planners and plan designers are interacted in cities, each in their own way, as well as architects, financial specialists and represen­tatives of a number of special fields.

He further advocates that the studies of cities may vary in terms of their territorial scope and can be studied in a global context, in the context of a country, or in the context of an individual region. One may carry out comparative studies of cities belonging to a particular category.

Finally, one may engage in a geographical study of a particular city constituting the subject of a monograph. Baransky stresses that from an economic-geographic point of view a city together with its network of roads constitutes the skeleton on which everything else hangs that defines the relevant territory, and endows it with a specific configuration. About planning, Baransky has opined that cities may be viewed as applied urban micro-geography.

Bases and Concepts :

Cooley, in his treatise on transportation, made it clear – “why is a town there, where it is?” He has pointed out the geographical qualities which govern the site of a town is ‘binary’. On the one hand, it is bountiful with respect to its resources and facilities of production, while on the other, it is equipped with transportational facilities.

Site-Situation Concept:

Taylor’s various classes and types of cities are the product of their natural site like hills; cuestas; mountain-corridors; passes; plateaux; eroded domes; ports, including fiords, rias, river-estuaries, and roadsteads; rivers, falls, meanders, terraces, deltas, fans, valleys, islands; lakes, etc. All of these are ‘controlled’ primarily by the topography of sites.

Dickinson’s point of view about a city is that of natural beginning. But with the passage of time, town’s natural setting is changed by its utilization of the available resources and its adaptability with the locality and the surrounding region. Its growth and expansion sometimes diffuses natural site to the extent to make it beyond recognition. In this context there was little scope for the development of a true urban geography.

The aim was restricted and hardly it was possible to explain a complex economic function and social system. Crowe, writing on methodology, pointed out that treatment of towns as “indicative of the inability of geographers to penetrate beyond the superficial”.

He further stressed that the application of the ‘site and situation’ formula was meaningless “where site had nothing but historical interest as situation was viewed in terms of routes and not currents of movement”. Such state of affairs rejected the stereotyped concept of ‘site and situation’.

Concept of Ecology:

Plant ecology came into being to influence geographical phenomena during the two World Wars. Robert Park opined that because of increase in population and city region there came a change in the ecological processes of a city. Urban ecology influenced the relationship with the surrounding areas of a city and had its sway over the people and their environment.

Park, in 1925 published a book The City in which he introduced the typical process of the expansion of the city. The process of expansion was best illustrated by Burgess for number of American cities in general and of Chicago in particular. He made it clear that during the course of time city – land use tended to display a zonal organization concentrically arrayed about the city centre.

Encircling the downtown area there is normally an area of transition which is being invaded by business and light manufacture, a third area is inhabited by the workers in industries who have escaped from the area of deterioration but who desire to live within easy access of their work. Beyond this zone is the area of high-class residences, and further out beyond the city limits, is the commuters’ zone – suburban areas or satellite cities.

The concept of Burgess, of course, initiated the specialized spatial patterns where residential zones of varied ecology made their headway characterized by successive areas with different land uses. Nevertheless it is a model in the proper sense, but it was criticized on the ground that by the late 20th century it was anachronistic and limited to large Western industrial cities.

It is true that urban ecological and social patterns are determined by geographical, economic, industrial and transportational factors but these do not have their evenly spread impact everywhere and in all times on socio-economic life of cities.

Behaviouralism and Urban Centres :

Berry’s contention about city and its growth is related to its consumer’s behaviour who are the befitting choice makers for using land. It depends upon three variables, viz.,

(1) Value of residential unit – buying cost or rent?

(2) Quality of residence, and

(3) Relationship with place of work and neighbourhood?

Family income is an important component for the choice of site in the city, and this depends upon the ability of behavior to interact with space by its users. But as a general tendency, it is evident that people of almost the same income group agglomerate make their choice for an even space.

In the context of India, social relationship and behavior are the products of caste-ridden values and culture. These have given rise to ‘mohallas’ of the same communities. The city, of course, has its geographical base, but nonetheless important is behaviour of its citizens and their socio-cultural background. It is because of this behaviouralism of the residents that cities have been able to infuse in them their own smell.

Concept of Radicalism:

An important aspect of the urban world is the concept of ‘total change’ brought into play by development of metropolises. This has changed totally the consumers’ ideas. These ranged from the relative deprivation of immobile residents of small-country towns who are isolated from standard urban services which are concentrated at only big cities.

The people of inner city are better placed than the residents of the peripheral sectors. These sorts of people have to depend on the private institutions. The situation becomes worse when these institu­tions exploit the common masses, and finally, control the city.

These radical reactions also affect urban planning and capitalist city overpowers the rights of the masses. Radical urban concept “stresses the constraints that society as a whole, and particularly certain groups within it, impose on the behavior of individuals”.

Radicals believe in the replacement root and branch of the operation of ‘laissez faire’ market forces and the inequities generated by them. They offer alternative system of ‘socialist city’ – the city of planning controls and central direc­tions ensure egalitarianism as well as plenty for all.

But recent events have revealed that the radicals’ proposals are no more than an Utopian dream. These bring about economic conditions even worse than those of market forces. The rigid totalitarian controls are far from reality. They are responsible for breeding massive bureaucracies.

Concluding the discussion, urban geography is more of an amalgam of different approaches. It is nearer perhaps to a multidisciplinary analysis of its object rather than a systematic geographical study. The town cannot be viewed as an object of study as a geologist would appraise a piece of rock.

The urban environment has a vast domain of world’s people spending their lives with a central theme of humanism. The prime objective is the fact that people of varied nature within a city aspire for the good life with a degree to which it may be met spatially.

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Urban Memory: Cognition, Signs, Symbols, Identity, and Beyond

• First Online: 03 April 2021

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• Ali Cheshmehzangi 2  

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Memory of places are often overlooked and are not appreciated enough as valuable assets to cities. In urbanism, we often deal with developing urban environments that are meant to be attractive, profitable, and human-friendly.

As an artificial world, the city should be so in the best sense: made by art, shaped by human purposes. —Kevin Lynch

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Cheshmehzangi, A. (2021). Urban Memory: Cognition, Signs, Symbols, Identity, and Beyond. In: Urban Memory in City Transitions. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1003-5_1

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Guest Essay

Why Aren’t We Saving the Urban Forests?

By Margaret Renkl

Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She reported from Nashville.

The volunteer black walnut sapling in our front yard arrived courtesy of a local squirrel. Deep into its third spring, it looks like the kind of tree a child would draw: a narrow trunk topped by a ball of leaves. I had to mark it with a little flag to make sure my husband didn’t mow over it by accident.

As with all the other trees that have appeared in our yard through no effort of our own, I am besotted with this squirrel-planted young walnut. The baby Eastern red cedars and the baby black cherries and the baby red mulberries were all planted by birds. The baby sugar maples were planted by the wind. Some day they will be all food for the creatures who share this yard. (The baby willow oak and the three baby shingle oaks that appeared two years ago have already fed the rabbits.)

This black walnut won’t reach full maturity for another 150 years or so, and that’s if no one cuts it down — a bet I would not take. Most suburban Americans prefer a lawn unpocked by nuts and unvisited by birds, a square of nature that belongs to nothing natural.

When it comes to trees, human beings tend to like them big and tall and inconceivably ancient — preferably growing at some pretty distance. Trees are meant to grow in community with other trees, but for many people the ideal tree stands alone in an otherwise desolate landscape, tucked next to a dip in an old stone wall or visible across the vastness of fallow fields.

Last summer, in the days after a catastrophic wildfire in Maui, Hawaii, Lahaina’s historic banyan tree was rightly a focus of concern far beyond the island. When vandals cut down the legendary Sycamore Gap tree in Britain’s Northumberland National Park last fall, that too caused an international uproar . These were movie-star trees. For us they had ceased to be a part of the nameless, inscrutable forest and become instead themselves. A living organism. A friend.

But human beings cut down old trees all the time, for no reason but the inconvenience of their falling leaves or their burgeoning fruit, or because they are in the way of a road or a subdivision, or because of foolish notions of safety. The fear of a falling limb has cost many a suburban tree its life. In the 21st century we have become so separate from the natural world that we don’t feel safe in the presence of perfectly healthy trees.

I wonder what the world would be like if we could harness the outrage engendered by a tree felled in an act of vandalism, or the grief engendered by a tree at risk of dying in a wildfire, and turn it toward protecting the trees we still have left.

The overwhelming majority of Americans live in cities. In an analysis of 44 U.S. cities by the nonpartisan nonprofit Climate Central , roughly 55 percent of the study’s population live in neighborhoods with an average temperature that is at least eight degrees higher than it is in the surrounding rural areas. This phenomenon, where the built human environment is even hotter than the rest of the rapidly warming world, is known as the urban heat island effect. In New York City, the urban heat island index is a whopping 9.5 degrees.

We know forests can capture and sequester carbon before it adds to the heating climate, and we know we need to protect the forests we still have . But too few of us understand the crucial contribution that trees make in our cities and suburbs: cooling hot buildings, preventing storm-water runoff, improving air quality, pulling carbon out of the air, and the like. Not even to mention the habitat — food, shelter, nesting sites — that trees provide our wild neighbors. As the proliferating seedlings in my own yard attest, trees are an essential part of the ecosystem for local wildlife.

Newly planted saplings can help, but with nowhere near the same effectiveness as mature trees. And yet we have somehow gotten the idea that planting a tree in urban and suburban areas has the same practical effect and moral force — there, I said it — as preserving one. A tree is a tree, right? If one happens to be growing in a place where you don’t want it to grow, just cut it down and plant another in a more convenient spot.

In rapidly growing cities, where even a robust plan for planting trees can’t possibly keep pace with development, the preservation of existing trees would go a long way toward keeping the city livable for human beings as well as for wildlife. Here in Nashville, we actually have a tree-protection ordinance , though it doesn’t apply to duplexes or single-family homes, where so many of the remaining trees still live. There are ways to preserve the trees on construction sites , of course, but spec-house builders rarely bother.

As a species, we don’t have 150 years to wait for a black walnut seedling to reach its full glorious height before we start protecting the black walnut trees still among us. The parent tree of my own baby walnut lies across the street from a house that was recently torn down by a developer, along with every tree not in the public right of way. The tree surgeon who carted them off in pieces said the builder’s instructions were to clear every tree from the lot.

Today is Earth Day and Arbor Day is on Friday. Both will be celebrated across the country by a great communal effort to plant trees.

I get it. There’s something very heartwarming about watching a community come together to install a whole row of ornamental trees on a nature-impoverished city street, or to pick up a free seedling from one of the many tree giveaway efforts that sprout up among conservation nonprofits at this time of year. It feels good to dig a hole to the right depth and the right diameter, to set a baby tree down inside it and pat the soil gently around its roots. We are a tenderhearted species, and it feels very good to nurture a baby tree.

We just need to remember how good it feels to sit beneath the cooling shelter of mature trees, too. And we need to fight just as hard to save them as we work to replace the trees we’ve already lost.

Margaret Renkl , a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “ The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, ” “ Graceland, at Last ” and “ Late Migrations .”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Watch CBS News

What is cloud seeding and did it play any role in the Dubai floods?

By Li Cohen , Tracy J. Wholf

Updated on: April 18, 2024 / 8:46 PM EDT / CBS News

Stranded airline passengers and a cat submerged in floodwaters clinging to a car door handle became notable moments this week in Dubai as the normally arid city was inundated with historic levels of rain. Claims have gone viral that the deluge was brought on by cloud seeding, a technique that aims to increase precipitation, that is heavily utilized in the United Arab Emirates. 

But is it really to blame? 

Daniel Swain , a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that getting to the bottom of the "record-shattering extreme rainfall" requires breaking down the science behind the event and the technique. 

"There's currently a disconnect in the online discourse between the kind of human activities that likely did affect it (greenhouse warming) versus those which have actually been the focus of the online conversation thus far (cloud seeding), and what this means for how we collectively understand our ability to actively affect the weather on different spatial and temporal scales," he said in an emailed statement. 

What is cloud seeding? 

Many have questioned since the downpour in Dubai whether cloud seeding was to blame. But what is cloud seeding and how does it work exactly?

Cloud seeding is a technique used to improve precipitation. According to the Desert Research Institute, scientists do this by putting tiny particles called nuclei into the atmosphere that attach to clouds.

"These nuclei provide a base for snowflakes to form. After cloud seeding takes place, the newly formed snowflakes quickly grow and fall from the clouds back to the surface of the Earth, increasing snowpack and streamflow," the institute says. 

In the Middle East, instead of precipitation in the form of snow, its cloud seeding program generates increased rain. 

Scientists typically go about cloud seeding in two ways – using either generators on the ground or distributing the nuclei via aircraft. 

What caused the rain in Dubai? 

But was the rain in Dubai from cloud seeding? 

"Did cloud seeding play a role? Likely no," Swain said. "But how about climate change? Likely yes!" 

The world is continuing to see month after month of record-breaking heat and 2023 was the hottest year globally ever recorded. Scientists have found that warmer temperatures increase evaporation, resulting in more frequent and intense storms, such as the one that occurred in Dubai. Those conditions also fuel other extreme weather events, including droughts , putting opposing forces at intense odds that will likely strain communities without adequate adaptation. 

Andrew Kruczkiewicz, senior researcher at Columbia Climate School, told CBS News he doesn't believe there's any current evidence at this time that cloud seeding pushed the downpour over the edge. 

"This event was forecast fairly well days in advance and I think it's unlikely that a cloud seeding operation would move forward given the well-forecast intense rainfall," he said.

The nation's  National Emergency Crisis and Management Authority issued weather warnings on Monday before the storm's arrival, urging people to comply with local instructions from authorities and asking them to stay at home and only leave in the case of an emergency. 

Meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, gave the Associated Press a more definitive answer: "It's most certainly not cloud seeding." 

"If that occurred with cloud seeding , they'd have water all the time," he said. "...when it comes to controlling individual rain storms, we are not anywhere close to that. And if we were capable of doing that, I think we would be capable of solving many more difficult problems than creating a rain shower over Dubai ."

The deluge, he said, "speaks more to questions around what are the resilience measures that are integrated into the urban planning standard operating procedures." 

"Almost everywhere on Earth there is a risk of flash flooding," he said. "Yet, since it's not the most frequent type of extreme event, sometimes it's lower on the priority list when decisions need to be made around infrastructure or resilience, or just urban development more broadly."  

How significant was the flooding in Dubai?  

More than 5.59 inches of rain fell over Dubai within 24 hours. While a half-foot of rain may not seem like much numerically, that's more than what the city sees in an average year, and other parts of the UAE saw even higher levels. 

It was a "historic weather event," the state-run WAM news agency said, adding that it was beyond "anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949." 

Dubai is normally dry and with a downpour like this being so unprecedented, the city's infrastructure was not prepared. The drainage systems were overwhelmed and Dubai International Airport, one of the busiest in the world, had to temporarily halt operations. One plane passenger told Reuters many people were waiting more than 12 hours to be able to resume travel. Footage from the airport shows planes taxiing in eerie floodwaters. 

"Over a year's worth of rainfall was experienced in just a few hours," Kruczkiewicz told CBS News. "And why that's important to to understand is that when you see this amount of rainfall in semi-arid arid area, the soil isn't designed to filter the water as fast as in other areas. ... You don't need that much water falling or rainfall falling in a short period of time to cause major issues." 

Is cloud seeding effective? 

According to the Desert Research Institute, how effective cloud seeding is depends on the specific project in which it's being used. Citing several studies, the institute said it's helped increase overall snowpack in some areas by at least 10% per year. Another study found that a five-year project in New South Wales, Australia resulted in a 14% snowfall increase.  

The UAE's National Center of Meteorology launched the Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science to advance the technology, saying that for dryer regions across the world, cloud seeding "could offer a viable, cost-effective supplement to existing water supplies." Many regions even beyond the Middle East have been suffering from water scarcity issues, including Colombia , Mexico and Hawaii . 

• Science of Weather
• United Arab Emirates
• Climate Change
• Severe Weather

Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending content writer for CBS News.

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