Urbanisation

What is Urbanisation?

Within Geography, which covers maps, landforms, weather, climate, population and settlements: understand how our planet and people connect, this topic explains Urbanisation. Geography explains how places, people and natural processes connect, so each topic here combines a clear definition with a visual model.

Check that you can explain Urbanisation in your own words and give one example from everyday life. If you can do that, you have understood the core idea.

Understanding Urbanisation helps you explain patterns on maps and in the news, and make reasoned decisions about places and environments.

Urbanisation in detail

Urbanisation is the increase in the proportion of people living in towns and cities. It is caused by rural-urban migration, driven by push factors, such as poverty and lack of services in rural areas, and pull factors, such as jobs and education in the city, and by natural increase in cities.

More than half the world's people now live in cities, and the fastest growth is in low-income countries in Africa and Asia. In high-income countries, urbanisation happened earlier during industrialisation, and some now have counter-urbanisation. Rapid growth creates challenges such as informal settlements, pollution and traffic, but cities also provide opportunities.

How the interactive helps you understand Urbanisation

Watch the growth curve in the interactive. Use any sliders or buttons it offers to change the values and see how the growth curve responds.

Before you change anything, predict the result. Then change one value at a time and check whether your prediction was right. This is a quick way to build a correct mental model of Urbanisation.

Real-life uses and examples

• Explain how Urbanisation affects people, jobs and land use in a region.
• Support an answer about Urbanisation with a named case study and specific evidence.
• Interpret a graph or map that shows Urbanisation and say what it suggests.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Mixing up cause, effect and consequence when you explain Urbanisation.
• Writing general statements without a named place or example.
• Learning the definition without testing it. Use the quiz and the interactive to check that you can apply the idea.