Answer to Question #188544 in Economics for Nisha Chaudhary

Question

Critically evaluate that urbanization is closely associated with economic growth”

Answer 1

The city did not immediately become the dominant form of settlement. For many centuries, urban forms of life were the exception rather than the rule due to the dominance of such forms of production, the basis of which was a subsistence economy and individual labor. So, in the era of classical slavery, the city was closely associated with land ownership, with agricultural labor. In the feudal era, urban life still bore within itself the features of its antipode - agriculture, therefore urban settlements were scattered over a vast area and were weakly connected with each other. The predominance of the countryside as a form of settlement in this era was ultimately determined by a weak level of development of the productive forces, which did not allow a person to get off the land in any economic respect.

The relationship between town and country begins to change under the influence of the development of the productive forces. The objective basis of these processes was the transformation of urban production on the basis of a manufactory, and then a factory. Thanks to the expanding urban production, the relative size of the urban population increased quite rapidly. Industrial revolution in Europe at the end of the XVIII-first half of the XIX century. radically transformed the appearance of cities. Factory towns are becoming the most typical form of urban settlement. It was then that the road was opened to the rapid growth of the "settlement" environment, artificially created by man in the process of his industrial life. These shifts in production caused a new historical phase in the development of settlement, characterized by the triumph of urbanization, which means an increase in the proportion of the country's population living in cities and associated mainly with industrialization. Especially high rates of urbanization were observed in the 19th century. due to the migration of the population from rural areas.

In the modern world, an intensive process of formation of agglomerations, conurbations, megalopolises, urbanized regions continues.

The conurbation includes several intertwining or closely developing agglomerations (usually 3-5) with highly developed major cities. In Japan, 13 conurbations have been identified, including Tokyo, consisting of 7 agglomerations (27.6 million people), Nagoya - of 5 agglomerations (7.3 million people), Osaka, etc. The term “standard consolidated area”, introduced in the USA in 1963, is similar.

Megalopolis is a hierarchical system of settlements in terms of complexity and scale, consisting of a large number of conurbations and agglomerations. Megalopolises appeared in the middle of the 20th century. In UN terminology, a megalopolis is an education with a population of at least 5 million inhabitants. At the same time, 2/3 of the territory of the megalopolis may not be built up. Thus, the Tokaido megalopolis consists of Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka conurbations about 800 km long along the coast. 

An urbanized region, which is formed by a network of megalopolises, is considered a more complex, large-scale, and territorially extensive settlement system. The emerging urbanized regions include London-Paris-Ruhr, the Atlantic coast of North America, etc.

The basis for identifying such systems are cities with a population of over 100 thousand people and more. A special place among them is occupied by the cities-"millionaires". In 1900 there were only 10 of them, and now there are more than 400. It is the cities with a million population that develop into agglomerations and contribute to the creation of more complex settlement and urban planning systems - conurbations, megalopolises, and super-large formations - urbanized regions.

Currently, urbanization is due to the scientific and technological revolution, changes in the structure of productive forces and the nature of labor, deepening connections between activities, as well as information links.

Common features of urbanization in the world are:

- preservation of interclass social structures and groups of the population, division of labor, securing the population at the place of residence;

- the intensification of social and spatial ties that determine the formation of complex settlement systems and their structures;

- integration of the countryside (as the settlement sphere of the village) with the urban and narrowing of the functions of the village as a socio-economic subsystem;

- a high concentration of such activities as science, culture, information, management, and an increase in their role in the country's economy;

- increased regional polarization of economic urban planning and, as a consequence, social development within countries.

The features of urbanization in developed countries are manifested in the following:

- a slowdown in growth rates and stabilization of the share of the urban population in the total population of the country. A slowdown is observed when the share of the urban population exceeds 75%, and stabilization - 80%. This level of urbanization is found in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany;

- stabilization and population inflow to certain regions of rural areas;

- cessation of the demographic growth of metropolitan agglomerations, concentrating the population, capital, socio-cultural and administrative functions. Moreover, in recent years in the metropolitan areas of the United States, Great Britain, Australia, France, Germany, and Japan, there has been a process of deconcentration of production and population, which manifests itself in the outflow of the population from the cores of agglomerations to their outer zones and even outside the agglomerations;

- the change in the ethnic composition of cities due to the incessant mi facies from developing countries. The high birth rate in migrant families significantly affects the decrease in the share of the “titular” population of cities;

- placement of new jobs in the outer zones of the agglomeration and even outside them.

Modern urbanization has led to a deepening of socio-territorial differences. A kind of payment for the concentration and economic efficiency of production in the conditions of urbanization has become the territorial and social polarization constantly reproduced in the most developed countries between the backward and advanced regions, between the central regions of cities and the suburbs; the emergence of unfavorable environmental conditions and, as a result, the deterioration of the health of the urban population, especially the poor.

Suburbanization (the rapid growth of the suburban area around large cities), the first signs of which appeared even before the Second World War, affected primarily the wealthy strata and became a form of their escape from the social ills of the big city.

Urbanization is a factor in the economic and territorial organization of society. At the beginning of the twentieth century. urbanization has become a major factor in economic development and changes in the territorial organization of society in most countries of the world. During the twentieth century. the number of townspeople has grown sharply, the number of cities, especially large ones, has increased; urbanization has spread to less developed regions of the world. The consequence of these processes was the concentration of world economic power in a small number of cities in developed countries, the formation of a global network of interacting major urban centers, changes in the world models of accumulation and consumption.