The science called Urban Anthropology is a very young branch of anthropology. Its birth is dated by the 1960 – 1970ss when the problem of urbanization became especially burning in the western societies. Urban Anthropology deals with the problem of immense urban expansion which troubles the majority of the countries in the world. Especially vividly this issue is observed in the developing countries like Mexico, China, India and some others where the standard of living does not match the growth of population and its migration to large cities from rural areas. Highly-developed countries like Great Britain, USA, France and some other also face the problem of urban areas expansion but in these regions this issue is conditioned by different reasons. We are going to explore the reasons and the ways the urbanization process develops and try to see the whole picture of the problem we are dealing with in the current research paper. We are going to examine the issue of urbanization using specific examples and data from the topic-oriented literature in order to make the essay more specific and informative.
So, to start with it would be not out of place to clarify the definitions we are going to operate with in this paper. The problem of urbanization started bothering people from the moment different tribes began to unite in larger entities and form densely-populated settlements. Urbanization is the process of migration of rural population into urban areas. It is determined by various factors, among which the most significant are the gap of income level between the urban and rural population, the desire for better life of rural inhabitants and greater access to education and other development opportunities. The above mentioned urbanization process, in its turn, causes considerable environmental, demographic and economic problems details of which will be revealed below (Sandlers, 2002).
The main reasons causing urbanization were the Industrial Revolution and technological progress following the phenomenon. Increased technological potential demanded more labor force for less money so the rural population was at first encouraged to move to large cities but with the time spent the issue became undeniable. The rural areas lost the majority of their population and there were no people left to take up the agriculture, besides the urban population started to constantly grow causing great problems with the living space in the cities. Since 1950s the population of urban areas of the world doubled, and by the new Millennium it doubled one more time. Nowadays, according to the statistic data almost 50% of the population of Earth are living in cities (Sandlers, 2002).
Another important issue connected with the urbanization process is the appearance of the so-called “Primate Cities” – large urban areas that dominate sufficiently the rest of the country’s cities in the amount of population and in their economic and strategic importance for this or that state. There are a plenty of examples of such cities around the world: Mexico, the Mexican capital is almost twenty times more populated than the second city of this country – Guadalajara; Delhi in India is at the same position; Moscow in Russia has long ago become the only centre of economy and social life of this country. Among developed countries we can single out the peculiar significance of London for Great Britain and Paris for France. These immense gaps between the development level of Primate cities and the rest of the country is an important problem which slows down the development of a country as a whole (Sandlers, 2002).
The above analyzed processes have serious consequences for the cities they take place in. This results in the growth of prices for flats, increase of building amounts and growth of land prices. All these factors influence negatively the Urban morphology – physical form of the city which consists of street patterns, building sizes and shapes, architecture, and density. Due to these phenomena, cities change drastically causing thus serious demographic, environmental and health problems for the urban citizens (Sandlers, 2002). What is not less important is that people from rural areas who mover to cities looking for jobs to feed their families, as a rule, do not find regular employment that causes a great rate of unemployment in the Primate cities (Sandlers, 2002).
It is evident from the information given above in this research paper, that the urbanization phenomenon is an important of the modern world. The population of Earth increases dramatically every year and the share of urban citizens grows in the respective proportion thus serving the reasons of worsening the ecological conditions of living, which is especially evident in the developing countries with the low living standards and pure level of environmental protection. The us of place for living is another issue closely connected with the environmental one, because the increase of the population leads to more expensive lands and, as a result to attempts to place more people within a smaller space thus creating crowded areas (Sandlers, 2002).
All the above mentioned information leads us to the logical conclusion of this research paper. The urbanization process is a modern issue that touches all continents and all countries irrespective of their industrial and economic development levels. To fight the problem of the urban population growth the author of the book cited above offers to create convenient working and trading conditions for the enterprises and people of the rural areas, and giving some preferences for rural inhabitants concerning educational and career development opportunities (Sandlers, 2002).
Works cited
Sandlers, R. The City in Space and Time: Human Mosaic. University of Texas at Austin, 2002.