Urbanization:Concepts and Definitions

Urbanization refers to a process in which an increasing proportion of an entire population lives in cities and the suburbs of cities. Urbanization is closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can describe a specific condition at a set time, i.e. the proportion of total population or area in cities or towns, or the term can describe the increase of this proportion over time. So the term urbanization can represent the level of urban relative to overall population, or it can represent the rate at which the urban proportion is increasing.

Definition of Urbanization

Urbanization, simply defined, is the shift from a rural to an urban society, and involves an increase in the number of people in urban areas during a particular year. Urbanization is the outcome of social, economic and political developments that lead to urban concentration and growth of large cities, changes in land use and transformation from rural to metropolitan pattern of organization and governance.

• Urbanization is a process of “becoming urban” or the condition of being urbanized.
• It is the process in which the number of people living in cities increases compared with the number of people living in rural areas.
• Urbanization is the process by which large numbers of people become permanently concentrated in relatively small areas, forming cities. Internal rural to urban migration means that people move from rural areas to urban areas. In this process the number of people living in cities increases compared with the number of people living in rural areas. Natural increase of urbanization can occur if the natural population growth in the cities is higher than in the rural areas. This scenario, however, rarely occurs. A country is considered to be urbanized when over 50 per cent of it’s population live in the urban areas (Long 1998).
• Urbanization is the process of by which a growing section of the country’s population comes to live in relatively densely populated, relatively large towns and urban-type communities(Hope Tisdale)
• Urbanization, indeed, is the process of becoming urban, moving to cities, changing from agriculture to other pursuits common to cities, such as trade, manufacturing, industry and management, and corresponding changes of behavior patterns. It is the process of expansion in the entire system of interrelationships by which a population maintains itself in its habitat (Hawley, 1981)