Urban change

• Urbanisation is the process by which an increasing percentage of a country’s population comes to live in towns and cities.
• Urbanisation varies across the globe

  • HICs show the highest levels of urbanisation
  • Africa and South east Asia show lowest levels of urbanisation
• The urban population has grown faster than the overall population because of the industrial growth in NEEs

  • the decline of industry in developed countries caused them to move overseas to NEEs and LICs to take advantage of a cheaper workforce, government incentives, tax breaks and etc
  • therefore people pull from rural regions to urban areas, with the hope for better life and employment
• Countries become more urban as they develop economically
• A megacity is a city with a population of over 10 million people.
• Mega cities have been increasing in number overtime
• More transportation and communication have led to urban areas expanding into rural regions, creating conurbations
• A conurbation is an extended urban area, consisting of many towns merging with the suburbs of a central city
• Urbanisation growth rates differ between countries across the globe and within countries.
• HICs experience a slow or declining rate of growth because:

  • the Industrial Revolution ‘pulled’ the population into developing urban areas at that time
  • Nowadays, many people in HICs are being ‘pushed‘ away from overcrowded cities to rural settlements
  • HICs have good transport and communication networks therefore can live in rural areas and commute to cities or work from home
• NEEs and LICs experience fast rates of urban growth (LICs more than NEEs) because:

  • investment from the government and TNCs means key trade hub cities are seeing greater growth than others (NEEs)
  • Most new economic development is concentrated in the big cities through investments in low cost manufacturing of textiles garments and shoes (LICs)
  • push and pull factors lead to high rates of rural to urban migration
  • Cities are experiencing higher levels of natural increase in population
• Main factors affecting rate of urbanisation:

  • speed of economic development: economic growth starts urbanisation, the faster the growth of secondary and tertiary jobs, the faster the growth of urbanisation
  • Rate of population growth: economic growth requires labour, this demand can be met by: natural increase which would be slow, and rural urban migration which is more important because it’s attracts a wider pool of people into the urban region
  • Natural increase: the majority of the reason for urban growth, due to decreased death rates and higher birth rates
• The reasons for people to migrate to and from urban areas are classified to be called push and pull factors.
• push pull factors are unique to each person depending on their end goal: pull factors are different for everyone
• push pull factors are divided to: social, economic, political and environmental