- Define and explain Urban Growth in your own words
- Use key terms such as urbanisation accurately
- Apply what you have learned to new examples and questions
- Avoid the common mistakes learners make with this topic
This lesson focuses on Urban Growth: investigate how towns and cities expand through migration and natural increase.
Investigate how towns and cities expand through migration and natural increase.
Key ideas
Cities grow in two ways
Urban growth comes from rural–urban migration and from natural increase, when birth rates exceed death rates. In many poorer countries both are happening at once, so cities are expanding rapidly. Urbanisation is different from urban growth: it measures the rising share of people living in urban areas, not just bigger cities.
Migration is driven by push and pull factors
Push factors drive people away — unemployment, low wages, poor services, conflict or natural disasters. Pull factors attract them — jobs, higher wages, better schools and healthcare, or family already there. Most migration is economic, and most migrants move from rural areas to cities within their own country.
Key term — urbanisation: The increasing proportion of a country's population living in towns and cities.
Name the two main causes of urban growth.
Rural–urban migration and natural increase.
Answer: Rural–urban migration and natural increase.
- Mixing up urbanisation and urban growth Urban growth is cities getting bigger in absolute terms; urbanisation is the rising proportion of people living in urban areas. A country's cities can grow without it urbanising if the rural population grows too.
- Calling every move 'migration' Moving house within the same town is mobility, not migration. Geographers usually mean a longer-distance, longer-term move, and distinguish internal migration from international migration.
Practice
Positive: fewer people competing for jobs; remittances sent home. Negative: loss of young, able workers — a 'brain drain' from rural areas.
Internal migration is within one country; international migration is between countries.
The average number of people per square kilometre.
Any two: mountainous relief, desert climate, extreme cold, dense forest, poor soils.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "urbanisation"?
Is fleeing a flood a push or a pull factor?
- Urban Growth: investigate how towns and cities expand through migration and natural increase.
- Cities grow in two ways: Urban growth comes from rural–urban migration and from natural increase, when birth rates exceed death rates.
- migration: The movement of people from one place to another to live, either within a country or between countries.
- Watch out for: mixing up urbanisation and urban growth