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SYD 3020
Quiz 7
Key terms and concepts: Urban Transition
As I noted in my introduction to this module, the demographic transition and urbanization are closely related: as populations move through their demographic transitions, they tend to become increasingly urbanized. Chapter 7 of the Weeks text looks at what Weeks terms the urban transition, the transition from an agricultural economy and rural living to an economy in which agriculture plays a small (but vital) part and urban living predominates. You’ll find the definitions for the key concepts listed below and answers to most
of the questions in Chapter 7 of the Weeks text. The answers to some of the questions, however, are in Lecture 1 (the only lecture for the module) and the short PBS feature on mega-cities. Basic definitions
Urban transition: The shift over time from a largely rural population to a largely urban population
Urbanization: The process whereby the proportion of people in a population who live in urban places increases.
Urban gradient
Urban place
o
What two factors are used to define urban places in the United States?
What is rural (U.S.)? Rural means any place that is not urban
What is urban (U.S.)? A spatial concentration of people whose lives are organized around nonagricultural activities. Urban means high density and nonagricultural
o
What is the third “essential ingredient” of urban-ness that is not captured by these two factors? Economic and social characteristics of a place.
Urbanization without growth
Urban fragility
Historical and contemporary patterns of urbanization
What does Weeks mean when he says that early cities were not “demographically self-
sustaining”? How did they continue to exist? They were not “demographically self-
sustaining” because they had higher death rates and lower birth rates than the countryside did, which usually resulted in an annual excess of deaths over births so they had to be constantly replenished by migrants from the hinterlands.
Although cities have existed for thousands of years, in what century did urbanization “take off”? The nineteenth century
o
What two factors were responsible? Industrialization and mortality decline
o
About what percentage of the human population lived in cities in 1800? At the start of the 20th century? Today? 1800=18% 20
th
century= today=56%
o
In what country did urbanization occur earliest? England (UK)
In what parts of the world are many countries not yet urban-majority? o
What world region was the least urbanized in 2020?
o
What world region was the most urbanized in 2020?
Urbanization today:
o
In what global regions are cities growing most rapidly? Asia and Africa
o
What is the world’s fastest growing city? Delhi
o
What city does the UN expect to be the world’s largest by 2030? Tokyo (google) Delhi (lecture)
Proximate Determinants of the Urban Transition Weeks relies on both historical records and data from contemporary low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to describe the role of each of the proximate determinants (a.k.a., drivers) of the urban transition.
Internal rural-to-urban migration
o
Importance of rural-to-urban migration in today’s high-income (a.k.a., developed) countries? What happened to population of agricultural areas?
o
Is rural-to-urban migration playing a similar role in LMICs?
Natural increase (difference between rates of births and deaths)
o
Historically, were death rates in cities higher or lower than in rural areas? Is this the same for today’s LMICs?
o
Do urban areas have higher or lower fertility than rural areas? Lower
o
Weeks uses data from the DHS to describe urban-rural fertility differences in LMIC. In which world region is this difference smallest? Largest?
International migration: does it increase or decrease urbanization
o
In LMICs?
o
In high-income countries like the U.S.?
Reclassification
: The absolute size of a place grows so large that it reaches or exceeds the minimum size criterion used to distinguish urban from rural places; Reclassification is more of an administrative phenomenon and is based on a unidimensional (size-only) definition of urban places, rather than also incorporating any concept of economic and social activity.
What does the case of Tzintzuntzan in Mexico tell us about the relationships between urbanization, natural increase, and migration?
Quiz 7: Urban transition
Page 2
Urban Hierarchy
Definitions: o
Urban agglomerations and mega-cities: Urban agglomerations according to the UN, refers to the population contained within the contours of contiguous territory inhabited at urban levels of residential density without regard to administrative boundaries . According to Urban agglomerations Mexico city with 21.8 million people is more populous than the New York-Newark Urban agglomerations (18.8 million). Mega-city is a term used by the UN to denote any urban agglomerations with more than 10 million people.
o
Metropolitan versus non-metropolitan areas
: A metropolitan area is an urban place extending beyond a core city; in the US this refers to a core-based statistical area with at least 50,000 people. A non-metropolitan area means an area no part of which is within an area designated as a standard metropolitan statistical area by the Office of Management and Budget and which does not contain a city whose population exceeds
fifty thousand individuals.
Metropolitan Statistical Area or MSA (United States): a county with a core city of at least 50,000 people and a population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile. An area containing a recognized population nucleus and adjacent communities that have a high degree of integration with that nucleus.
o
Primate city: A disproportionately large leading city
How is the development of a primate city explained by the core-periphery model? Prior to economic development, a series of independent cities may have existed in a region, but development tends to begin in, and will be concentrated in, one major site (primate city). The primate city (the core) controls the resources, and the smaller cities (the periphery) are dependent on the larger city.
According to world system’s theory, why are the economies of core countries and periphery countries so different? Because countries tend to be dominated by cities, the theory predicts that cities of core countries will control global resources, operating especially through multinational corporations headquartered in core cities; and cities in peripheral countries will be dependent on the core cities for their own growth and development (which will filter down from the primate city to other cities in a nations own city system). Core cities are networked globally and emphasize services over manufacturing, whereas peripheral cities tend to be linked to more local markets emphasizing manufacturing over services.
Urban evolution Quiz 7: Urban transition
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As Weeks points out, what cities look like and what urban life “feels” like is constantly evolving in response to technological, economic, and demographic change.
Urban crowding: o
How is it measured? As more and more people occupy a given area, the density increases and it therefore becomes relatively more crowded. Density refers to the ratio
of people to physical space.
o
What are the consequences of increasing population density for humans? Limited resources, increased levels of pollution, social problems, and pressure on the natural environment.
Slums:
o
What are their defining features, according to the United Nations? A place that lack one or more of the following: 1.) access to potable water, 2.) access to piped sewerage,
3.) housing of adequate space, 4.) housing of adequate durability, 5.) security of tenure.
o
Where are most slums located today? Developing countries; sub-Saharan Africa
o
Roughly how many people are estimated by the UN to live in slums? Nearly one billion people (1 in 8 human beings)
Suburbanization:
o
When did the process of suburbanization take place in the U.S
.? In the 1920s suburbanization really took off. 1920s-1960s
o
What technology helped drive U.S. suburbanization? The availability of transportation especially automobiles.
Urban sprawl:
o
What is it? The straggling expansion of an urban area into the adjoining country side
o
What two aspects of American public policy have contributed to urban sprawl? Massive public spending on highways and local government authority over land use and taxation. Desire of people to live in a low density area yet be part of the urban scene.
Racial differences in the urban transition in the United States
What is the relationship between the Great Northern Migration and the urbanization of the African American population? During the period 1910-1930 there was a substantial movement of African Americans out of the south headed for the cities of North and West. The urban population of blacks grew by more than 3 percent per year during that 20 year period. The reasons for migration were primarily economic.
How did the share of the Black population living in cities change between 1910 and the start
of World War II? By the beginning of world war II half of the nations black lived in cities, reaching that level 30 years later than whites had.
Quiz 7: Urban transition
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What share of the Black population living outside the Southern region of the U.S. was urban by 1960? What share living in the South was urban? The south was 58% and outside was 95%
What was happening to the White population as the Black population urbanized? Whites were suburbanizing. Also a segregation of black and white populations within metropolitan areas.
How is the trend toward desegregation linked to INA and the changing nature of immigration?
Which racial group was, until the 1970s, the primary driver in suburbanizing the U.S.? Whites
Quiz 7: Urban transition
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