Urbanisation in America

10 Key excerpts on "Urbanisation in America"

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  Politics and Society in the Developing World

  • Mehran Kamrava(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  One of the most immediate and dramatic consequences of industrial development in the developing world is rampant and unchecked urbanisation, which, since the Second World War, has proceeded at a dizzying pace. Even in countries where significant portions of the population still live in rural areas, sprawling metropolitan centres with large concentrations of urban dwellers, cramped houses and narrow streets and high-rise buildings have appeared. Development, in its broadest sense, has entailed not only economic and industrial changes but rapid urbanisation and the growth of cities. In fact, the preference of Third World governments and industrial concerns alike to establish factories and plants near existing large urban areas has resulted in the development of a complementary and mutually reinforcing relationship between the two processes of industrialisation and urbanisation. On the one hand, industrialisation serves as a main locus in enhancing the economic and political powers of existing urban centres as well as population and geographic size. On the other hand, cities have facilitated access to and provided the infrastructure, the skilled and the abundant labour and almost all of the other ingredients that are necessary for industrial growth and development. It is within this context, one which considers industrialisation and urbanisation as intertwined and complementary processes, that both phenomena need to be examined. Industrialisation and its various economic, political and cultural ramifications for developing countries were discussed in the previous chapter. This chapter focuses on the causes, processes and consequences of Third World urbanisation. However, before examining these developments in detail, some general observations regarding the nature and characteristics of urbanisation in the developing world are in order.

  Urbanisation is commonly understood as a rise in the proportion of people living in urban as opposed to rural areas. More specifically, it refers to the ‘transition from a dispersed pattern of human settlement to one concentrated around cities and towns’.1 In addition to changes in patterns of residence, the change from rural to urban surroundings carries with it definite, though at times gradual and latent, alterations in the values and the behaviour of those involved. Urbanisation involves considerably more than a mere change in residence from rural to urban areas. It sets into motion a series of social and cultural processes which fundamentally influence the course and direction of social change and the political culture of the country involved.2 Rural migrants to the cities, having left their original surroundings for urban areas in search of better jobs and higher living standards, become subjects of an intense social and cultural turmoil set off by urbanisation. Sooner or later, willingly or through force of time, even the more recent arrivals develop an ‘urbanised’ culture of their own, one which resembles neither the values they adhered to in the countryside nor those commonly held by the urban mainstream.

  In addition to providing great impetus for social and cultural change, urbanisation has the potential of serving as means for the accumulation of capital, and therefore economic and political power, not only for rural and urban residents but also for the state, local investors, and multinational firms. Some observers have even gone so far as to refer to cities as ‘theatres of accumulation’, arguing that metropolitan centres provide both the institutional framework and the modus operandi for local oligopoly capital, transnationals, and modernising states.3

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  A Social History of Twentieth-Century Europe

  • Béla Tomka(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  8

  URBANIZATION

   

  Cities have occupied an important role in the political, cultural and economic life of European societies for thousands of years and urbanization (often defined as the relative concentration of the population in towns and cities) has underpinned European history for several centuries. However, it is a relatively recent development that in certain countries and regions the majority of the population lives in cities and other densely populated areas. Although none of the mid-nineteenth century societies could be described as predominantly urbanized, all of the industrialized countries, as well as a significant proportion of the less advanced ones, belonged to this category one and a half centuries later. Furthermore, in several aspects, the process of urbanization continues even currently; nevertheless, many regional variations are manifest in Europe. Although the existence, as well as the significance, of this rapid transformation is widely recognized, many of its fundamental concepts, such as the city itself, or urbanization, have remained controversial to the present day. The meaning of these concepts varies in different eras and societies; moreover, it may also differ according to the specific fields of research. Towns and cities can be defined by emphasizing their administrative borders, by relying on functional criteria (such as a central role in the region's cultural and economic life, or in administrative affairs), or by focusing on demographic and ecological aspects, including size and density of the population. Urbanization, likewise, has numerous conceptualizations. The cultural or behavioural approach regards urbanization as the proliferation of a particular quality of social relations, of distinct urban mentalities as well as behavioural patterns (urbanitas ).1 The structural approach primarily considers urbanization on the basis of the structural changes in society caused by industrialization, such as shifts in the production and the occupational structure. Finally, the demographic approach, which is the most common, understands urbanization as the spatial concentration of the population, and it often implies that the population and the social and economic functions are distributed within the urban space in a specific way.2

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  Africa's Urban Revolution

  • Doctor Edgar Pieterse, Susan Parnell(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Zed Books

    (Publisher)

  Drawing on the work of economic historians and historical demographers, I sketch the stylised facts of world urbanisation in the pre-industrial era and articulate an integrated, 14 | Fox 259 historically grounded explanation of urbanisation based on these observations. I then apply this theory to urbanisation trends in Africa. First, I offer statistical evidence that cross-country variation in colonial experience – an important historical determinant of institutional and technological change – accounts for a significant proportion of the variation in patterns of early urbanisation in the region. Second, I examine the dynamics of African urbanisation in the postcolonial era and demonstrate empirically that ‘urbanisation without growth’ and exceptionally rapid urban population growth are largely accounted for by sub-Saharan Africa’s unique historical circumstances and population dynamics. I conclude with a brief comment on the policy implications of the theory and evidence presented here. Economic and demographic theories of urbanisation The traditional economic theory of urbanisation, which has dominated in both academic and policy circles since the 1950s, revolves around the relation-ship between structural economic change and the spatial dynamics of the labour market. The premise is straightforward: as the modern urban sector (i.e. manufacturing and services) expands, surplus labour from the ‘backward’ rural economy (i.e. agriculture) is drawn to towns and cities, attracted by higher wages (Lewis 1954; Fei and Ranis 1964). In other words, this economic model suggests that urbanisation is fundamentally driven by rural-to-urban migration stimulated by a wage gap between rural and urban areas that arises in the early stages of industrialisation.

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  Urban World/Global City

  • David Clark(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3Urban growth and urbanisation: historical patterns

  By the end of this chapter you should:

  • be able to distinguish between urban growth, urbanisation and the spread of urbanism;
  • understand the main ways in which urban growth and urbanisation are occurring;
  • be familiar with the concept of counterurbanisation and understand its causes;
  • understand the ways in which the distribution of population in and around cities changes over time;
  • be aware of the major changes which have occurred in the course of global urban development and the reasons for them.

  Introduction

  The present pattern of global urban development is merely the most recent product of processes of urban change that began over 8,000 years ago. It represents an intermediate stage in the progression from a wholly rural to what will possibly be a completely urban world. The global urban pattern is changing in three different and unconnected ways through urban growth, urbanisation and the spread of urbanism. Urban growth occurs when the population of towns and cities rises. Urbanisation refers to the increase in the proportion of the population that lives in towns and cities. Urbanism is the name that is most commonly used to describe the social and behavioural characteristics of urban living that are being extended across society as a whole as people adopt urban values, identities and lifestyles. This chapter and Chapter 4 identify and attempt to identify and account for recent patterns of urban growth and urbanisation at the global scale. The origins and spread of urbanism are the focus of Chapter 6 .

  Urban growth and urbanisation are separate and independent trends. Urban growth refers to the absolute increase in the size of the urban population. It occurs both through natural increase, which is an excess of births over deaths, and through net in-migration. In most cities both factors operate together and reinforce each other, although the relative balance varies from place to place and at different times. Growth rates are compounded when the in-migrants are young adults. These are the most fertile age group and their influx is likely to raise the rate of natural increase. However, if the in-migrants are predominantly of one sex, the accompanying rate of natural increase is likely to be lower. As an actual rather than a percentage figure, urban growth is not subject to any ceiling. It can take place without urbanisation occurring so long as rural growth occurs at the same rate. It is likely to continue after urbanisation has ceased, as the population, which will all be living in urban places, goes on growing through the excess of births over deaths.

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  The New Urban Sociology

  • Mark Gottdiener, Randolph Hohle, Colby King(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER

  4

  URBANIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES

  A mericans have a long-standing distrust of cities and city life. Thomas Jefferson (1977 [1785]) suggested that cities were a source of evil and corruption that would threaten the young democracy’s political system. Despite such sentiments, the growth of urban centers in the United States has been prolific. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, urban development in the United States is defined by the deconcentration of commercial, retail, and government services from the historic inner city and the reconcentration of these land uses in functionally specialized regional minicenters. This regional spatial pattern is the product of global capitalist economic changes, real estate investment, and government intervention.

  Going back to the founding of America in 1776, city life was much different than today. Yet, over time, the city-building process in the United States exhibited several features that exaggerated aspects of urbanization found elsewhere. These features are the lack of walls or fortifications around cities, real estate development as a major component in the economy of capitalism, the emphasis on privatization—which limits the role of the state and emphasizes individual accomplishments as the basis of community—immigration on an immense scale and population churning within cities, and the regional dispersal of the metropolis.

  We find that the distinctive American style of urbanization takes place over four historical stages of urban growth. These are: 1) the colonial period, 1630 to 1812; 2) the industrial period, 1812 to 1920; 3) the metropolitan period, 1920 to 1960; and 4) the deconcentration and restructuring of settlement space within the multicentered metropolitan region that has taken place since 1960. The outcome of these four stages is the formation of the multicentered metropolitan region (MCMR). The next chapter deals exclusively with changes in the metropolitan region since 1960. What follows here is the earlier history of urbanization in the United States according to Lefebvre’s Production of Space

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  Population Geography

  • Rodolfo B. Valdenarro(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Delve Publishing

    (Publisher)

  URBAN, URBANIZATION, AND HUMAN POPULATION 7 CONTENTS 7.1. Introduction .................................................................................... 164 7.2. History of Urbanization .................................................................. 166 7.3. Causes of Urbanization ................................................................... 170 7.4. Examples of Urbanization ............................................................... 174 7.5. Factors Affecting Urbanization ........................................................ 177 7.6. Impacts of Growth In Urban Centers ............................................... 179 7.7. Growth of Modern Cities ................................................................ 185 7.8. Challenges of Urbanization ............................................................ 189 Population Geography 164 7.1. INTRODUCTION The description of ‘urban’ changes from nation to nation, and, with occasional re-categorization, can also change inside one nation over the duration, making precise contrastingly hard. An urban locality can be described by one of the following: administrative principle or civil barriers (for instance locality in the administration of a municipality or town task force), an opening size of populace (where the margin for an urban settlement is originally in the locality of 2,000 people, even though this varies worldwide betwixt 200–50,000), density of population function of economy (for instance where a meaningful majority of the populace is not elementarily involved in agriculture, or where there is excess employment) or the presence of urban aspects (for instance, concrete streets, sewerage, lighting of electricity). In the year 2010, about 3.5 billion people resided in localities categorized as urban.

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  Urban Geography

  An Introductory Analysis

  • James H. Johnson, W. B. Fisher(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  C H A P T E R 1 FACTORS IN URBAN GROWTH T H E growth in the number of people who live in cities and the diffusion of urban life to every part of the habitable world is one of the characteris-tic features of twentieth-century life. Although there have been towns in some restricted parts of the earth since prehistoric times, the modern situation, in which a substantial part of the population of many parts of the world has become urban dwellers and in which cities increasingly dominate social and economic life, had its origins in western Europe only two centuries ago Since then few cultures have resisted the trend towards city life and the results that this has had on the organization of society and production. What were the technological, economic and social changes which allowed this development to take place ? In examining the factors promoting urban growth, a distinction must be made between those forces which are encouraging the expansion of modern cities to unprecedented size and those which caused the foun-dation and spread of cities before the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps it is debatable to go as far as Gideon Sjoberg, who has recognized the pre-industrial city as a distinct urban type, all the examples of which have common economic and social traits, regardless of where they are found in place or in time. Yet at least the contrast in size is valid and indicates the existence of two distinct technological situations. The first situation was established when the first prehistoric cities were built; the second followed the technical and economic changes associated with the Industrial Revolution. It is not easy to produce a clear definition of what constitutes an urban settlement and the usual approach is to define a settlement of a certain size, density of population and structure of occupations as being urban (with population living outside such settlements being taken as rural).

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  Urbanization in the Americas from its Beginning to the Present

  • Richard P. Schaedel, Jorge E. Hardoy, Nora Scott-Kinzer, Richard P. Schaedel, Jorge E. Hardoy, Nora Scott-Kinzer(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Introduction: Urbanization in the Americas 3 A D I G E S T OF S Y M P O S I A I, II, III, AND IV Mar del Plata (1966) The first symposium on urbanization was permeated by an atmosphere of inquiry into what the different disciplines focusing on the urban-ization process might have in common and what techniques and information might be profitably exchanged. The large component of archaeologists within the symposium tended to shift the thrust of the papers and discussions in the direction of defining, if possible, the general characteristics and variations in the urbanization process. A certain consensus emerged that autogenous urbanization (the specific domain of the archaeologists) represented a relatively rare constel-lation of three simultaneous subprocesses (nucleation, population growth, differentiation cum specialization), whereas derived urbani-zation (whether imposed or indirect, via stimulus diffusion) was by far the more common process. In the first case ecological factors seem to represent the crucial determinants, while in the second the significant variable would be the mix of sociopolitical and economic functions performed in established urban hierarchies. Viewed in this light, the examples of colonial urbanization repre-sent studies of derived - and specifically of imposed - urbanization. Several foci for research emerged. Most important and general, perhaps, was the focus on identifying different patterns in colonial America, particularly in Brazil and Hispanic America but also regard-ing French, Dutch, and Anglo-American urbanization. Of almost equal importance was the identification of stages within the colonial period which might in a general way serve to operationalize certain overall trends hypothesized by Morse, from centrifugality in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to centripetality in the late eighteenth and much more markedly in the late nineteenth century.

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  Urban People and Places

  The Sociology of Cities, Suburbs, and Towns

  • Daniel Joseph Monti, Michael Ian Borer, Lyn C. Macgregor(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  The requirements of urban life changed how families were organized and what services they provided for their members. In general, families would become less important as economic units and more important as sources of social support, which in turn shaped the way cities operated.

  After 1500, the share of the total population that lived in urban settlements began to grow more consistently than it had in the past. Urban dwellers became anywhere from 9% to 12% of the society’s population, more than doubling what it had been during the preindustrial period. The growth in urban populations was a response to improved agricultural production and more trade (Light, 1983, pp. 50–62). Newcomers accounted for much of the population increase. They constituted between one third and one half of the population in some cities. Many of the new urban residents had migrated from rural areas; but people increasingly also moved between cities. This large and floating mass of workers was needed to do menial work, and their marginal status was assured by frequent moves.

  Although much manufacturing was still done in rural areas, a lot of the finer work that went into finishing and assembling luxury items was completed in cities. This kind of regional integration allowed employers to adjust their workforce during periods of economic fluctuation and for the city to remain a center of market activity, credit, and consumption. This change also spoke to the growing diversification that was taking place in the city’s occupational and economic base during this period.

  Increases in trade and manufacturing produced more wealth and property income. But these increases still benefited only a comparatively small portion of the population. Families that had a great deal of wealth displayed it through ostentatious consumption and by creating large public monuments in their own honor. These projects provided menial jobs for some urban workers and served as a kind of public welfare.

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  Routledge Library Editions: Urban History

  • Various Authors(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The special character of the book leads it to be something between a research study and a general survey of the problem. Furthermore, since there are virtually no available general histories of urbanisation, this was also incorporated. When I had to decide on contribution to this congress, I was faced with a dilenuna: either to present a specific aspect of the above-mentioned book which would have been too narrow, or to discuss a broader issue, which, in many views, should be considered as provisory, I chose the latter. So this paper presents the conclusion of part three of the book which is de- voted to the relationship between urbanisation and economic development of the Western world. The other parts of the study deal with the origins of the urbanisation processes; the evo- lution of Europe between the 5th and !8th century, and the Third World before, during and after colonisation, But even limited to the Western world and the period from 1700 to 1980, this text has to tackle a very broad range of subjects. This also means that I will not be able to provide here all the underlying arguments which were presented in the 8 chapters that make up the part whose conclusions are here presented. Furthermore, some aspects of the research are still to be completed, To simplify, I have chosen chronological or- der. I will begin with the role of urbanisation in the industrial revolution, then on to the relation between development and urbanisation, and, finally, to the more delicate problem of the impact of urbanisation on development. 63 2,2, Levels of urbanisation and the beginning of the industrial revolution Two key questions can be asked here.

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