8-9
Book page 19
Demography → study of human populations
Urban = stedelijk
Davis concludes that, historically, urbanization is primarily caused by rural-urban migration,
not because of other possible factors such as differential birth and mortality rates.
Davis argues that urbanization follows an attenuated S-curve in which pre-industrial cities
urbanize very slowly at the long bottom of the S, shoot up at the middle of the S as they
industrialize, and then level off at the top of the S.
Overall, world urbanization is expected to increase to 72 percent by the year 2050.
A common mistake is to think of urbanization as simply the growth of cities. Since the total
population is composed of both the urban population and the rural, however, the “propotion
urban” is a function of both of them. Accordingly, cities can grow without any urbanization,
provided that the rural population grows at an equal or a greater rate.
In general, the later each country became industrialized, the faster was its urbanization.
Clearly, modern urbanization is best understood in terms of its connection with economic
growth, and its implications are best perceived in its latest manifestations in advanced
countries.
The fact that urbanization will end, however, does not mean that either economic
development or the growth of cities will necessarily end.
Where do urbanites come from?
The proportion of people in cities can rise because rural settlements grow larger and
are reclassified as towns or cities; because the excess of births over deaths is greater in the
city than in the country, or because people move from the country to the city.
With mortality in the cities higher and birth rates lower, and with reclassification a minor
factor, the only real source for the growth in the proportion of people in urban areas during
the industrial transition was rural-urban migration.
The point to be kept in mind is that once urbanization ceases (=stopt), city growth becomes
a function of general population growth.
The first thing to note is that today’s underdeveloped countries are urbanizing not only more
rapidly than the industrial nations are now but also more rapidly than the industrial nations
did in the heyday of their urban growth.
Throughout the nonindustrial world people in cities are multiplying as never before, and
rural-urban migration is paying a much lesser role in the population growth.
The rapid growth of cities in the advanced countries, painful though it was, had the effect of
solving a problem - the problem of the rural population. The growth of cities enabled
agricultural holdings to be consolidated, allowed increased capitalization and in general
resulted in greater efficiency.
Most of the growth of cities in Venezuela is attributable to overall population growth. If the
general population had not grown at all, and internal migration had been large enough to
produce the actual shift in the proportion in cities, the increase in urban population would
have been only 28 percent of what is was and the rural population would have been reduced
by 57 percent.
Book page 19
Demography → study of human populations
Urban = stedelijk
Davis concludes that, historically, urbanization is primarily caused by rural-urban migration,
not because of other possible factors such as differential birth and mortality rates.
Davis argues that urbanization follows an attenuated S-curve in which pre-industrial cities
urbanize very slowly at the long bottom of the S, shoot up at the middle of the S as they
industrialize, and then level off at the top of the S.
Overall, world urbanization is expected to increase to 72 percent by the year 2050.
A common mistake is to think of urbanization as simply the growth of cities. Since the total
population is composed of both the urban population and the rural, however, the “propotion
urban” is a function of both of them. Accordingly, cities can grow without any urbanization,
provided that the rural population grows at an equal or a greater rate.
In general, the later each country became industrialized, the faster was its urbanization.
Clearly, modern urbanization is best understood in terms of its connection with economic
growth, and its implications are best perceived in its latest manifestations in advanced
countries.
The fact that urbanization will end, however, does not mean that either economic
development or the growth of cities will necessarily end.
Where do urbanites come from?
The proportion of people in cities can rise because rural settlements grow larger and
are reclassified as towns or cities; because the excess of births over deaths is greater in the
city than in the country, or because people move from the country to the city.
With mortality in the cities higher and birth rates lower, and with reclassification a minor
factor, the only real source for the growth in the proportion of people in urban areas during
the industrial transition was rural-urban migration.
The point to be kept in mind is that once urbanization ceases (=stopt), city growth becomes
a function of general population growth.
The first thing to note is that today’s underdeveloped countries are urbanizing not only more
rapidly than the industrial nations are now but also more rapidly than the industrial nations
did in the heyday of their urban growth.
Throughout the nonindustrial world people in cities are multiplying as never before, and
rural-urban migration is paying a much lesser role in the population growth.
The rapid growth of cities in the advanced countries, painful though it was, had the effect of
solving a problem - the problem of the rural population. The growth of cities enabled
agricultural holdings to be consolidated, allowed increased capitalization and in general
resulted in greater efficiency.
Most of the growth of cities in Venezuela is attributable to overall population growth. If the
general population had not grown at all, and internal migration had been large enough to
produce the actual shift in the proportion in cities, the increase in urban population would
have been only 28 percent of what is was and the rural population would have been reduced
by 57 percent.
