Urban Growth

• Urbanisation is the growth in the proportion of a country’s population living in urban areas

  • more than 50% of the worlds population currently live in urban areas
  • The rate of urbanisation differs between countries that are richer and those that are poorer
• In ACs, urbanisation happened earlier than in less developed counties so most of the population now already live in urban areas

  • ACs have slow rates of urbanisation differs between growth
  • people desiring a better quality of life move away from cities to rural areas
  • good transport networks mean people in ACs can live in rural areas and commute to cities
• LIDCs are less economically developed

  • fastest rates of urbanisation
• EDCs are those were economic development is increasing

  • the percentage of the population living in urban areas varies
• there are 2 types of cities

  • megacity
  • world city
• megacity

  an urban area with over 10 million people living there
• world city

  a city that has an influence over the whole world

  • centres for trade and business
  • hubs for culture and science
  • have international media centres
• in the 1950s, megacities were found in advanced countries, whereas now there are many more but more than two-thirds of them are found in EDCs and LIDCs