Urbanization, the spatial facet of the industrial and scientific revolution of the past two hundred years, has attracted the attention of scholars, social reformers, and politicians since about the middle of the 19th century. Urbanization, on the one hand, deals with the study of cities and city systems, on the other hand, the conceptual distinction between the studies of urbanization.
In simple words, urbanization can be described as a process of change as it occurs when there is a change in the different conditions and relations within the society. In the field of demography, the level of urbanization is measured by the percentage of the population living in urban areas. To understand this process, one needs to examine the factors that initiate and sustain this process, as well as its implication in broad general terms.
Concepts of Urbanization and Urban Areas
Since the inclusion of the notion of “modernization” into the concept of development, cultural anthropologists, psychologists, and other behavioural scientists have expanded the interdisciplinary search for an improved understanding of urbanization and its impact on society. Urbanization is the field studied by all social scientists, there are four interpretations of urbanization:
- Behavioural
- Structural
- Demographic
- Geographical
1) Behavioural Concept of Urbanization
The first one to start the study of urbanization was in 1938 when Louis Wirth published a paper called “Urbanization – a way of life”. He said (that all the urban studies were denoted to city level studies and it was very quantifiable work where they were measuring certain dimensions of the cities), that “ of cities is not enough there should exist a theory of cities which should be based on the behaviour of social groups”. There are three things within the city which affect the social groups:
a) Size (relations between the different members of the city): The city has big and people are segregated from each other. Due to this the relationship between two persons becomes impersonal and is characterized by competition rather than complementary or friendly. Because city life leads to anomie i.e. one is lost in a crowd.
b) Density: Cities have very high densities and this leads to great contrasts where wealth and property live side by side. And, this ultimately leads to mutual exploitation.
c) Diversification: There are too many different types of people who come and live in the cities thus, breaking the caste and creed rightly/boundaries because the ability to earn is less rigid. But, it also leads to a lot of role confusion and conflict.
2) Structural Concept of Urbanization
Urbanization is the process when agricultural communities are transformed into industrial communities and because all the industrial communities live in urban areas, it is also a process of urbanization. This is a result of industrialization and economic development. So they are trying to see how occupational structure takes place (agricultural- non-agricultural).
3) Demographic Concept of Urbanization
The rural settlement is being transformed into urban settlements. So they try to understand this from the point of view of migration and thus, deal with population mobility. Urbanization is a process which takes place because of-
- Growth of individual towns
- Multiplications of towns
4) Geographical Concept of Urbanization
The spatial analysis is to understand all the different phenomena in space and their distribution.
In simpler words, urbanization can be defined as “as a process which reveals itself through temporal, spatial and sectoral changes in the demographic, social, economic, technological and environmental aspects of life in a given society. Urbanization is a progressive concentration of population in urban units (Kingsley Davis- 1965).
To have a better understanding of the urbanization process in India, it would be appropriate to examine which settlements are treated as urban by the Census of India. There is no standard definition of urban; it varies from country to country (United Nations 2009).
India’s urban areas are defined based on two criteria:
First, the state government grants municipal status – corporation, municipal council, notified town area committee or Nagar panchayat, etc – to a settlement. Such settlements are known as statutory or municipal towns in the census definition of urban areas.
Second, if a settlement does not have an urban civic status, but satisfies demographic and economic criteria, like a population of more than 5,000, a density of 400 persons per square kilometre and a 75% male workforce in the non-agricultural sector, it can be declared urban.