New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Urbanization

Urbanization refers to the increasing number of people that live in urban areas. It predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas, be it horizontal or vertical. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008. By 2050 it is predicted that 64.1% and 85.9% of the developing and developed world respectively will be urbanized.

Urbanization is closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can describe a specific condition at a set time, i.e. the proportion of total population or area in cities or towns, or the term can describe the increase of this proportion over time. So the term urbanization can represent the level of urban development relative to overall population, or it can represent the rate at which the urban proportion is increasing.

Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. The last major change in settlement patterns was the accumulation of hunter-gatherers into villages many thousand years ago. Village culture is characterized by common bloodlines, intimate relationships, and communal behavior whereas urban culture is characterized by distant bloodlines, unfamiliar relations, and competitive behavior.

This unprecedented movement of people is forecast to continue and intensify in the next few decades, mushrooming cities to sizes incomprehensible only a century ago. Indeed, today, in Asia the urban agglomerations of Dhaka, Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi, Manila, Seoul and Beijing are each already home to over 20 million people, while the Pearl River Delta, Shanghai-Suzhou and Tokyo are forecast to approach or exceed 40 million people each within the coming decade. Outside Asia, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, New York City, Lagos and Cairo are fast approaching being, or are already, home to over 20 million people.

Related Stories
 


Science & Society News

August 1, 2025

Women who drank heavily, even though they strongly wished to avoid pregnancy, were 50% more likely to become pregnant than those who drank little or not at all, according to new research. Surprisingly, cannabis use didn t show the same ...
Between 2020 and 2024, COVID-19 vaccines saved 2.5 million lives globally, preventing one death for every 5,400 doses. A groundbreaking worldwide study led by researchers from Università Cattolica and Stanford University reveals that most lives ...
Scientists at the University of Toronto have developed a new non-stick material that rivals the performance of traditional PFAS-based coatings while using only minimal amounts of these controversial ...
AI-generated videos are becoming dangerously convincing and UC Riverside researchers have teamed up with Google to fight back. Their new system, UNITE, can detect deepfakes even when faces aren't ...
Even people who never caught Covid-19 may have aged mentally faster during the pandemic, according to new brain scan research. This large UK study shows how the stress, isolation, and upheaval of lockdowns may have aged our brains, especially in ...
A surprising discovery from Emory University shows that psilocin, the active metabolite of psychedelic mushrooms, can delay cellular aging and extend lifespan. Human cells lived over 50% longer, and mice treated with psilocybin not only lived 30% ...
In a groundbreaking UK first, eight healthy babies have been born using an IVF technique that includes DNA from three people—two parents and a female donor. The process, known as pronuclear ...
President Trump s diagnosis of Chronic Venous Insufficiency (CVI) has brought renewed attention to a frequently overlooked yet dangerous condition. CVI affects the ability of veins especially in the legs to return blood to the heart, often leading ...
Medieval medicine is undergoing a reputation makeover. New research reveals that far from being stuck in superstition, early Europeans actively explored healing practices based on nature, observation, and practical experience—some of which ...
A massive spike in young children accidentally ingesting nicotine pouches has alarmed poison control researchers, with a 763% rise reported between 2020 and 2023. Unlike other nicotine products, ...
Movement helps your mood, but it's not one-size-fits-all. Exercising for fun, with friends, or in enjoyable settings brings greater mental health benefits than simply moving for chores or obligations. Researchers emphasize that context — who ...
Less than a quarter of us hit WHO activity targets, but a new UCL study suggests the trick may be matching workouts to our personalities: extroverts thrive in high-energy group sports, neurotics ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:56 pm ET