Urbanisation
ICSE Class 8 · Geography · Chapter 4
What this chapter covers
- Urbanisation: meaning
- Causes of urbanisation
- Positive impacts of urbanisation
- Negative impacts of urbanisation
- Reducing the negative impacts of urbanisation
- Satellite cities
- Smart cities
Key points
- Urbanisation is the rise in the share of a country's people who live in towns and cities.
- Urban areas have dense populations and mostly non-farm work; rural areas depend more on farming.
- About 31 per cent of India's people lived in urban areas at the 2011 Census.
- Industrialisation, jobs, education, health care, transport and problems in villages cause urbanisation.
- Urbanisation brings jobs, services, trade, new ideas and benefits to nearby villages.
- Unplanned urbanisation causes overcrowding, slums, water shortage, traffic jams, pollution, waste and loss of green cover.
- Local bodies and citizens keep cities clean through waste collection, segregation, composting and clean drains.
- Satellite cities share the population and work of a large city, but long commutes remain a problem.
- Smart cities use technology, data and planning to give people efficient services and a better life.
- Singapore, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Songdo are world examples; India's Smart Cities Mission began in 2015 with 100 cities.
Questions answered
What is urbanisation? Why is a rise in the number of town dwellers not always urbanisation?
Urbanisation is the process by which a growing share of a country's people come to live in towns and cities instead of villages. If villages grow just as fast as towns, the number of town dwellers rises, but their share of the population does not, so the country does not become more urban.
State two tests used by India's Census to decide whether a settlement is a town.
Any two: a population of at least 5,000; at least three out of four working men in non-farm work; a density of at least 400 persons per square kilometre.
Explain how industrialisation leads to urbanisation.
Factories create many non-farm jobs. Workers come to the factory, and they need houses, shops, schools and transport. A settlement grows around the factory and becomes a town.
Give two push factors in villages and two pull factors in cities that cause urbanisation.
Push: small farm plots and debt after crop failure; fewer farm jobs because of machines. Pull: more jobs with higher and regular wages; better schools, colleges and hospitals.
List three positive impacts of urbanisation.
Any three: more jobs and higher incomes; better services such as hospitals, colleges and public transport; growth of trade and industry; mixing of people and weakening of old social barriers; benefits to nearby villages through markets and remittances.
What is a slum? Why do slums grow in big cities?
A slum is a crowded part of a city where people live in poorly built houses that lack clean water, toilets, drainage and proper roads. Slums grow because many workers cannot afford the high rents of the city and build shelters on empty land.
Describe three steps that can be taken at the local level to keep a city clean.
Any three: daily door-to-door collection of waste; separating wet and dry waste at home; composting wet waste and recycling dry waste; cleaning drains before the monsoon; fines for littering and open burning; building and maintaining public toilets.
A fictional town of 50,000 people had 18,000 people living in its slums. What percentage of the town's people lived in slums?
(18000)/(50000) × 100 = 36 per cent.