World Geography / Unit 3: Human Geography
3.6 Urbanization
Notes
Urbanization is the growth in the share of a country's population living in cities.
- More than half the world's people now live in urban areas, and the share keeps rising.
- Causes: jobs and services in cities (pull) and lack of farmland or rural poverty (push). Industrialization draws workers.
- A megacity has more than 10 million people. Many are in Asia (Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai), as well as in Latin America and Africa.
- Urban sprawl is the outward spread of low-density development on a city's edge. Suburbs are residential areas near a city.
- Rapid growth causes housing shortages, informal settlements (slums), traffic, pollution and strained services.
- A city's site is its physical setting (a harbor or river crossing); its situation is its location relative to other places and routes.
Practice
Which condition best defines a megacity?
Megacities are usually defined as urban areas of over 10 million.
Rapid migration to a city outpaces new housing. What problem commonly results?
Newcomers who cannot find housing often build informal settlements.
A city is built on a defensible hill beside a river. This description of its physical setting is its
Site is the physical characteristics of the city's exact location.
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