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.
According to the UN State of the World Population 2007 report, sometime in the middle of 2007, the majority of people worldwide will be living in towns or cities, for the first time in history; this is referred to as the arrival of the "Urban Millennium" or the 'tipping point'. In regard to future trends, it is estimated 93% of urban growth will occur in developing nations, with 80% of urban growth occurring in Asia and Africa.
Urbanization rates vary between countries. The United States and United Kingdom have a far higher urbanization level than China, India, Swaziland or Niger, but a far slower annual urbanization rate, since much less of the population is living in a rural area.
Urbanization occurs naturally from individual and corporate efforts to reduce time and expense in commuting and transportation while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to take advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition.
People move into cities to seek economic opportunities. A major contributing factor is known as "rural flight". In rural areas, often on small family farms, it is difficult to improve one's standard of living beyond basic sustenance. Farm living is dependent on unpredictable environmental conditions, and in times of drought, flood or pestilence, survival becomes extremely problematic. In modern times, industrialization of agriculture has negatively affected the economy of small and middle-sized farms and strongly reduced the size of the rural labour market.
Cities, in contrast, are known to be places where money, services and wealth are centralized. Cities are where fortunes are made and where social mobility is possible. Businesses, which generate jobs and capital, are usually located in urban areas. Whether the source is trade or tourism, it is also through the cities that foreign money flows into a country. It is easy to see why someone living on a farm might wish to take their chance moving to the city and trying to make enough money to send back home to their struggling family.
There are better basic services as well as other specialist services that aren't found in rural areas. There are more job opportunities and a greater variety of jobs. Health is another major factor. People, especially the elderly are often forced to move to cities where there are doctors and hospitals that can cater for their health needs. Other factors include a greater variety of entertainment (restaurants, movie theaters, theme parks, etc.) and a better quality of education, namely universities. Due to their high populations, urban areas can also have much more diverse social communities allowing others to find people like them when they might not be able to in rural areas.
These conditions are heightened during times of change from a pre-industrial society to an industrial one. It is at this time that many new commercial enterprises are made possible, thus creating new jobs in cities. It is also a result of industrialization that farms become more mechanized, putting many labourers out of work. This is currently occurring fastest in India.
Research in urban ecology finds that larger cities provide more specialized goods and services to the local market and surrounding areas, function as a transportation and wholesale hub for smaller places, and accumulate more capital, financial service provision, and an educated labor force, as well as often concentrating administrative functions for the area in which they lie. This relation among places of different sizes is called the urban hierarchy.
As cities develop, effects can include a dramatic increase in costs, often pricing the local working class out of the market, including such functionaries as employees of the local municipalities. For example, Eric Hobsbawm's book ''The age of the revolution: 1789–1848'' (published 1962 and 2005) chapter 11, stated "Urban development in our period [1789–1848] was a gigantic process of class segregation, which pushed the new labouring poor into great morasses of misery outside the centres of government and business and the newly specialised residential areas of the bourgeoisie. The almost universal European division into a 'good' west end and a 'poor' east end of large cities developed in this period." This is likely due the prevailing south-west wind which carries coal smoke and other airborne pollutants downwind, making the western edges of towns preferable to the eastern ones. Similar problems now affect the developing world, rising inequality resulting from rapid urbanisation trends. The drive for rapid urban growth and often efficiency can lead to less equitable urban development, think tanks such as the Overseas Development Institute have even proposed policies that encourage labour intensive growth as a means of absorbing the influx of low skilled and unskilled labour.
Urbanization is often viewed as a negative trend, but can in fact, be perceived simply as a natural occurrence from individual and corporate efforts to reduce expense in commuting and transportation while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to take advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition.
In his book ''Whole Earth Discipline'', Stewart Brand argues that the effects of urbanization are on the overall positive for the environment. Firstly, the birth rate of new urban dwellers falls immediately to replacement rate, and keeps falling. This can prevent overpopulation in the future. Secondly, it puts a stop to destructive subsistence farming techniques, like slash and burn agriculture. Finally, it minimizes land use by humans, leaving more for nature.
In cities of the developed world urbanization traditionally exhibited a concentration of human activities and settlements around the downtown area, the so-called ''in-migration''. In-migration refers to migration from former colonies and similar places. The fact that many immigrants settle in impoverished city centres led to the notion of the "peripheralization of the core", which simply describes that people who used to be at the periphery of the former empires now live right in the centre.
Recent developments, such as inner-city redevelopment schemes, mean that new arrivals in cities no longer necessarily settle in the centre. In some developed regions, the reverse effect, originally called counter urbanisation has occurred, with cities losing population to rural areas, and is particularly common for richer families. This has been possible because of improved communications, and has been caused by factors such as the fear of crime and poor urban environments. It has contributed to the phenomenon of shrinking cities experienced by some parts of the industrialized world.
When the residential area shifts outward, this is called suburbanization. A number of researchers and writers suggest that suburbanization has gone so far to form new points of concentration outside the downtown both in developed and developing countries such as India. This networked, poly-centric form of concentration is considered by some an emerging pattern of urbanization. It is called variously exurbia, edge city (Garreau, 1991), network city (Batten, 1995), or postmodern city (Dear, 2000). Los Angeles is the best-known example of this type of urbanization.
Rural migrants are attracted by the possibilities that cities can offer, but often settle in shanty towns and experience extreme poverty. In the 1980s, this was attempted to be tackled with the urban bias theory which was promoted by Michael Lipton who wrote: "...the most important class conflict in the poor countries of the world today is not between labour and capital. Nor is it between foreign and national interests. It is between rural classes and urban classes. The rural sector contains most of the poverty and most of the low-cost sources of potential advance; but the urban sector contains most of the articulateness, organization and power. So the urban classes have been able to win most of the rounds of the struggle with the countryside...". Most of the urban poor in developing countries able to find work can spend their lives in insecure, poorly paid jobs. According to research by the Overseas Development Institute pro-poor urbanisation will require labour intensive growth, supported by labour protection, flexible land use regulation and investments in basic services.'
Urbanization can be planned urbanization or organic. Planned urbanization, i.e.: planned community or the garden city movement, is based on an advance plan, which can be prepared for military, aesthetic, economic or urban design reasons. Examples can be seen in many ancient cities; although with exploration came the collision of nations, which meant that many invaded cities took on the desired planned characteristics of their occupiers. Many ancient organic cities experienced redevelopment for military and economic purposes, new roads carved through the cities, and new parcels of land were cordoned off serving various planned purposes giving cities distinctive geometric designs. UN agencies prefer to see urban infrastructure installed before urbanization occurs. Landscape planners are responsible for landscape infrastructure (public parks, sustainable urban drainage systems, greenways etc.) which can be planned before urbanization takes place, or afterward to revitalize an area and create greater livability within a region. Concepts of control of the urban expansion are considered in the American Institute of Planners.
Contributors to urbanization:
Regional:
Category:Urban studies and planning Category:Urban geography Category:Sociocultural evolution Category:Development Category:Human migration Category:Demography Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:Urban development
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show name | Keep It in the Family |
---|---|
genre | Sitcom |
creator | Brian Cooke |
starring | Robert GillespiePauline YatesStacy DorningJenny QuayleSabina FranklynGlyn Houston |
country | |
num seasons | 5 |
num episodes | 31 |
runtime | 30 minutes |
producer | Mark StuartRobert ReedMichael Mills |
network | Thames TelevisionITV |
first aired | 7 January 1980 |
last aired | 19 October 1983 }} |
''Keep It in the Family'' is a British comedy television series that aired for five seasons between 1980 and 1983. It was about a likable and mischievous British cartoonist, Dudley Rush. Also featured were Dudley's wife, Muriel and their two daughters, Jacqui and Susan. Dudley's literary agent, Duncan Thomas, was also featured.
It was made by Thames Television for the ITV network.
Dudley and Muriel have two daughters, Jacqui (in her early twenties) and Susan (in her late teens). Jacqui and Susan want to have the vacant downstairs flat for themselves, so they can escape from the parental home and from Dudley's obsessive gaze. Dudley wants to rent out to the flat to somebody else but his daughters' pleas win the day and the two girls move into the flat. Dudley's obsessive and possessive gaze, though, is still on them and he objects to the young men who, he notices, visit his daughters.
Dudley is a talented illustrator and he earns his living from drawing his cartoon strip "Barney – the Bionic Bulldog" which he does while holding a pencil in the paw of his ventriloquist lion glove puppet. Dudley draws the cartoon strip under protest for his literary agent Duncan Thomas, who sells Dudley's cartoon to newspapers. Dudley would rather do anything than draw the cartoon strip and he keeps procrastinating to such an extent that he keeps missing the deadline for his illustrations, much to the frustration of the long-suffering Duncan.
As well as objecting to Ducan trying to keep him to publishing deadlines, Dudley also jealously objects to Duncan's obvious approval of Dudley's wife, Muriel and he also objects to Duncan's eager consumption of Muriel's delicious cakes.
Dudley is also a compulsive practical joker, with his long-suffering agent, Duncan Thomas, usually being on the receiving end of such jokes.
DVD !! Year(s) !! Release date | ||
The Complete Series 1 | 1980 | 18 October 2010 |
The Complete Series 2 | 1980 | |
The Complete Series 3 | 1981 | |
The Complete Series 4 | 1982 | |
The Complete Series 5 | 1983 | |
The Complete Series 1 to 5 Box Set | 1980-1983 | |
Category:1980 in British television Category:1980 television series debuts Category:1983 television series endings Category:1980s British television series Category:ITV sitcoms
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
He was nominated for the 2008 Independent Spirit "Truer Than Fiction" Award for ''Helvetica''.
+ Filmography | |||
Title | Year | Role | Notes |
! scope="row" | Producer | ||
! scope="row" | Producer | directed by Hans Fjellestad | |
! scope="row" | Producer | directed by Justin Mitchell | |
! scope="row" | Director | ||
''Objectified'' | Director | ||
! scope="row" | Director | in production | |
Category:Living people Category:Documentary film producers Category:Documentary film directors
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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