Changes and Developments in Urbanization - Essay Example

Part A

Question 1

Changes and Developments in Urbanization

Notably, urbanization refers to the degree to which urban nature or character extends. It is usually specified in terms of geographical area by combining both the urban and rural areas and comparing them in relation to each other. Alternatively, urbanization can be described in terms of the transformation of a place or an individual locality from a rural area to a more urban area. In more geographical terms, urbanization simply refers to the increase in spatial scale, or the density of settlement, businesses, or other activities in a given location over a given period of time. Urbanization has revolutionized the world in almost aspects. Starting from politics, international trade, international relations, world population, population demographics, infrastructure, technology, agriculture, economy, and government policy, among others, urbanization has simply ‘brought the world together’.

However, in a bid to be able to describe and discuss the changes and the developments in urbanization over time, we need to define a few terms. The first one is the urban system. The urban system simply refers to the area around a specific city. These are the areas from which majority of the people who work in that city commute from. Therefore, an urban system describes to an urban region by including all the surrounding regions from which individuals commute from. The urban system is a very important aspect when trying to study and analyze the concept of urbanization. There are various in which we can explain and expound on this topic. This includes discussing ways in which we can categorize urban system. These two categories include urban hierarchy and the geographical-function categorization.

Generally, the urban hierarchy is the organization of cities in a hierarchical form in terms of importance and economic revenue generation. With the ever-increasing globalization happening in the world, there is a constant shift in the rate of urbanization across all cities in the world. Activities such as goods production and information handling are ever becoming important factors in the indexing of the urban cities. These processes increase the importance of cities as we now know them. Such cities are then accorded the importance of hosting multiple roles such as government headquarters, centers of political power, trading centers and ports, commercial centers for activities such as banking and telecommunication services, and even serve as hubs for neighboring countries among other professional activities such as law, medicine, and engineering. Precisely, the globalization process is affecting the urban hierarchy by presenting a new one. Cities such as New York, London, and Tokyo are termed as ‘global financial cities’ whereas on the other hand, cities such as Miami, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, are termed as ‘multinational articulations’. The urban system is an important concept in that it helps with the grouping of cities in terms of ecological sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability.

Spatial pattern on the other hand refers to the arrangement, structure, and the organization of blocks or object on earth. Normally, spatial patterns in geography are evidence in forms of the clustering of points around a specific geographical region. The size of cities is usually highlight in the form of spatial patterns. Big cities such as London and New York have a larger spatial pattern distribution when compared to other cities across the world. City size distributions have changed over time depending on the urban system in that region. The simple growth process and patterns of cities have simply explained the city size distributions. Notably, space is the most important and potent factor that determines the spatial distribution and pattern of cities. Trade plays a key role in determining the size of cities. International trade controls the trade friction and therefore, economic developments span from such frictions. Economic sectors such as housing and the land markets grow as a result of trade. The space allocated is thereafter occupied by individuals as they seek to dwell there and conduct their trading activities there.

Essentially, spatial patterns and distributions determine the size of cities through the spacing-out of property. Large cities are widely and evenly spread apart whereas on the contrary, smaller cities are situated around these large cities. More so, government policies also dictate the spatial patterns. Over time, land use has changed as a result of various reasons including government policies, management planning and activities. With the ever increasing world population, arable land has been sacrificed in order to get more land more economic use as well as for cultivation and residential purposes (Brakman, et al., 2001). There is a substantial difference in this trend. Whereas in most regions arable and farming land is being sacrificed for more commercial purposes, there are other regions that are instead using this space for forestation purposes.

The internal spatial patterns of cities generally differ from place to place in terms of size and location. We take an example of a city such as London. This is the nation’s capital and also at the same time, a major commercial center. London and other big cities such as Paris are known as central high-level service cities. These cities have a strong and rich interconnection of transport infrastructure with other cities. Such cities have the best infrastructure when it comes to infrastructure. Basically, cities such as London are major commercial cities and are large in size. Furthermore, these cities generally have a high population, typically having 5 million or more people. They also effectively serve very large global territories. Now, let us compare that to a city such as Barcelona. Basically, Barcelona is a huge city having roughly 1 to 5 million people with an addition of 10 million in the urbanized regions. Such cities include Glasgow, Manchester, Milan, among others and are known as sub-continental cities. They serve specialized functions such as tourism, banking, processing, culture, and media. Lastly, we compare the aforementioned two cities to a city such as Dublin. This commands a less population and economic production. They command a population of between 250,000 to 1 million.

Urbanization has both positive and negative effects. To begin with, economic effects are the most severe ones. Urbanization is caused by a great deal of economic activity taking place within a specified region (Soundarapandian, 2011). Local industries such as agriculture and other small scale industries are abandoned in order to pave way for more lucrative and modern, urban and related commerce. Furthermore, the growth and expansion of an urban city spells progress for the surrounding towns. Infrastructure such as rural electrification and transport are improved. Agriculture is also improved due to the huge demand of foodstuff in the city.

One of the key factors that city dwellers have to face is the financial constraint pressed upon them. In a system where everyone fends for himself, there is bound to be some disadvantages. Shops and other local businesses may be forced to shut down due to the increasing rent, and competition from bigger companies. Growth of slums is also an issue. Most of the minimum wage individuals are left to plan for their meagre incomes. Slums then emerge due to such reasons, and with that comes the increase in crime rates.