Thursday, 25 June 2015

Into the city, out of the city

Urbanisation is the process by which an increasing percentage of a country's population comes to live in towns and cities. The growth of towns and cities leading to an increasing proportion of a country’s population living there. Rapid urbanisation is a feature of most LEDCs. It as a gradual process common in LEDCs where 1 million people move from the countryside to the cities every three days.

Suburbanisation is the process by which people, factories, offices and shops move out from the central areas of cities and into the suburbs. The commuter towns with a residential population who sleep in the town but who travel to work in the nearby large urban area. The suburbanised village has increasingly adopted some of the characteristics (new housing estates, more services) of urban areas.

Central city
A central city is the large city in the middle of a number of villages and small towns. These small towns and villages have grown larger because of suburbanisation.

Suburbs is an area of housing around the edge of a city. A suburb is an area of a town or city, a little away from the main part, where there are fewer big buildings and mainly houses, schools and shops. These are called suburbs or 'the suburbs'.

New towns
When suburbanisation started around 1965 in the Netherlands, the Dutch government allowed some villages near a city to become a suburb. Those placed are called “New towns”.

Compact city

The land use policy of building more inside and close to the cities is called the compact city policy. The central cities had to be occupied again. More houses had to be built in the central cities to fill the space.

Housing shortage
If the demand for housing is greater than the supply, we call this a housing shortage.
There are three causes for a housing shortage:
  1. Commercialisation of the city centre: houses in the old city centre make room for shops and offices.
  2. Family size reduction: The families nowadays are smaller and there are more single people.
  3. Residential thinning: there are fewer houses than before. Small houses are often converted into one large house. This is called residential thinning.

Cities are constantly growing. Sometimes the city expands and absorps neighbouring towns, suburbs and villages linked to it.

Migration is the movement of people within or between areas. The movement of people from one place to another to live or to work. Such an area may be a town, a province, a country or even a continent. Therefore, migration occurs at all scale levels.

Natural increase
An increase in human population, due to a high birth rate and a low mortality rate, is known is natural increase.