Understanding urbanism

This is a question that has been asked for a very long time, a question that is hard to
answer. In his meditations on government, democracy and the ancient Athenian
city-state the philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E) said;

The amalgamation of numerous villages creates a unified city-state, large enough to be self-
sufficient or nearly so, starting from the need to survive, and continuing its existence for the
sake of a comfortable lifestyle.

As hinted at here by Aristotle, at its most foundational, urbanisation ‘is the
increase in the proportion of a population that is urban as opposed to rural’ (Gate
and Stout 2011: 15 citing Davis 2011: Davis 1965). Historically, urbanisation was
underwritten by immigration from the countryside into the city. This rural to urban
migration driver of urbanisation is still largely true today. At the turn of the twenty-
first century more than 50 per cent of the world’s people lived in cities. In 2020 that
figure had reached 55 per cent, and by 2050 almost 70 per cent of the world’s people
are predicted to live in cities (United Nations 2018). Countries with populations
over 1 billion people, such as China (1.38 billion) and India (1.34 billion), will be
key to global urbanisation. Consider this: when the Peoples’ Republic of China was
established in 1949 only 10 per cent of the national population lived in cities (Ren
2013). By 1978, a time of major market reforms, that figure had only reached 20 per
cent. But 55 per cent of the national population was urban in 2015 and that figure is
predicted to reach 60 per cent by 2030. This ‘demographic’ or ‘population mobility’
definition of urbanisation is a useful starting point for our discussion because it sug-
gests that urbanisation and urbanism are not the same thing.

source:

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