- Define and explain Causes of Urbanisation in your own words
- Use key terms such as counter-urbanisation accurately
- Apply what you have learned to new examples and questions
- Avoid the common mistakes learners make with this topic
More than half of humanity now lives in cities, and the urban share keeps rising. In this chapter you will explain why cities grow, use classic land-use models to decode their structure, confront the challenges of rapid growth, and evaluate what makes a city sustainable.
This lesson focuses on Causes of Urbanisation: analyse rural–urban migration and natural increase as drivers of city growth.
Analyse rural–urban migration and natural increase as drivers of city growth.
Key ideas
Cities grow through migration and natural increase
Rural–urban migration brings job-seekers to the city, while high birth rates and falling death rates add natural increase — in many poorer countries both operate together, producing explosive growth. Pull factors such as industrial jobs and better services combine with rural push factors like the mechanisation of farming, which needs fewer workers.
Models simplify, but they still teach
Burgess's concentric zone model describes rings around the CBD — transition zone, inner suburbs, outer suburbs — based on 1920s Chicago. Hoyt's sector model adds wedges of land use following transport routes. Neither fits every city: they predate cars, edge-of-town shopping and deindustrialisation, yet they remain useful starting points for analysing land use and land values, which fall with distance from the centre.
Key term — counter-urbanisation: The movement of people from cities to smaller settlements and rural areas, often enabled by remote working and commuting.
Define urbanisation.
The increasing proportion of a population living in towns and cities.
Answer: The increasing proportion of a population living in towns and cities.
- Confusing suburbanisation with counter-urbanisation Suburbanisation is growth at the city's edge, still tied to the city. Counter-urbanisation is movement to smaller towns and rural areas, a step further down the settlement hierarchy.
- Treating urbanisation and urban growth as the same thing Urban growth is the absolute increase in urban population; urbanisation is the rising proportion living in urban areas. They often happen together but measure different things.
Practice
Any one: traffic congestion and air pollution, inadequate waste disposal, loss of green space, water pollution.
The zone in transition (inner city), with old industry and run-down terraces.
Any two: employment opportunities, higher wages, better schools, better healthcare, entertainment.
Hoyt describes sectors — wedges of land use radiating along transport routes — rather than Burgess's concentric rings.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "counter-urbanisation"?
Why is upgrading a shanty town often better than demolishing it?
- Causes of Urbanisation: analyse rural–urban migration and natural increase as drivers of city growth.
- Cities grow through migration and natural increase: Rural–urban migration brings job-seekers to the city, while high birth rates and falling death rates add natural increase — in many poorer countries both operate together, producing explosive growth.
- urban sprawl: The uncontrolled outward spread of a city into the surrounding countryside.
- Watch out for: confusing suburbanisation with counter-urbanisation