Urbanization

Definitions

One way to define the process of urbanization is the movement of population from rural to urban areas. Based on this definition, urbanization can be expressed as the proportion of a given population that dwells in urban localities (whatever that definition) at a specific time or the increase in this proportion over time.

Sociologists and geographers also define urbanization as the transformation of geographical areas from rural to urban in nature. According to this conceptualization, urbanization refers to the increase of urban characteristics in a particular space or locality and the distribution of towns and cities over a region.

In addition, sociologists use urbanization to explain the changes in social and economic organization, both within the city and in the social system outside it. In this sense, urbanization describes the cultural, social, and technological changes that one considers characteristic of the process of economic development or modernization.

Measurement Problems

Urbanization often refers to change in both urban areas and in people who occupy cities. Some empirical work uses the proportion of a nation's population residing in cities or towns over time as a common indicator of urban population change that may affect other variables of interest, including elements of the legal system. Others measure the current level of urbanization, the share of a country's total population that lives in urban areas, as an indicator to compare one country with another.

When considering cities in various periods, from the prehistorical era to the current phase of global capitalism, there is no consistent way of defining or measuring urbanization. Some early attempts included the measurement of the scale of urbanization and the scale of population concentrations by using minimum urban size limits. For the purpose of measurement, researchers draw data on urban population or space in various countries in accordance with political delimitation, administrative boundaries, or other territorial units. These conventional measures of urbanization fail to provide accurate information about the specific reasons for the rate and growth of urban change. First, these measures are not uniform, as cities and countries might differ from each other in terms of the cutoffs or criteria they use for delimiting political or territorial units. Second, some countries, such as China, have used measures of urban growth that change over time. In still other countries, for example, in the United States, scholars have described the process of urbanization in a variety of ways, including changes in population size, occupational specialization, and cultural values.

According to the United Nations, most countries use administrative units in their census, but other countries use size, density of locales, or the main economic activity to differentiate urban from rural populations. In addition, countries such as Singapore do not distinguish between urban and rural populations, and still others offer no administrative definition or ecological delimitation of what constitutes urban, in terms of the nature of the population or area. As a result, comparative studies of urbanization are limited by the accuracy of data obtained. Furthermore, no single statistic can account for all the changes and diversity in the processes of urbanization.

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