Definition: Urbanization is a phenomenon where people transition themselves from rural spaces to cities and towns. In other words, the term explains a population shift towards more developed places.
What Does Urbanization Mean?
Urbanization is a social trend. The more accommodated conditions that built-up cities and town offer are attractive for both families and individuals that are looking for a higher life quality. Some reasons why urbanization occurs are: slow or decreasing economic development of rural places, lower wages compared to the ones offered at developed places, health care services availability is much better at cities, same with education and public services.
This urbanization processes tends to be focused on the big cities but the government commonly develops strategies to make small town and low-populated cities attractive by offering incentives such as low-rate mortgages and job placement services.
On the other hand, urbanization poses a threat for some economic activities that are mostly carried on in rural places, since most of the labor is moving and there’s no one to work the land. The government must develop the proper infrastructure and potentiate these rural places to make them more attractive so locals can decide to stay and produce.
Let’s have a look at the following example,
Example
Mr. Galio is a 38 years old individual that lives in a rural place in the state of Nevada. He has a wife and 2 kids and he currently owns a small farm that produces food for the family and a small portion of that is sold in a local marketplace to pay for the rest of their expenses.
Mr. Galio has been going through a rough economic situation since the last harvest was not enough to provide him and his family with enough money to sustain their regular expenses, apart from food.
Along with his wife, he’s considering to move to a nearby city to ensure a better life style for his family. The government, in order to keep Mr. Galio working the land and avoid over-crowded cities due to the urbanization phenomena, must develop some incentives and programs to make the idea of staying more attractive to Mr. Galio.
