Benefits and Problems Associated With Urbanisation

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What are the Benefits and Problems Associated with Urbanisation?
In the years following the Industrial Revolution, the practice of urbanisation became much more prevalent. Urbanisation has lead to an increase in the population of cities while leading to a decline in rural population. The effects of Urbanisation can be both positive and negative, whether it is on the peoples, the society or the environment. The practice of urbanisation has brought with it, many arguments as to whether it is a positive or negative phenomena. Throughout the course of this discussion we will look deeper in to what urbanisation really is. We will also analyse the arguments, and we will begin to unpack how urbanisation positively effects the environment as well as its people, but also the problems that it inevitably brings about. From the discussion we will then be able to make some conclusions about the nature of urbanisation and its effects on the surrounding environments.

What is Urbanisation?
Long describes urbanisation as: “the process by which large numbers of people become permanently concentrated in relatively small areas, forming cities. A country is considered to urbanised when over 50 per cent of its population live in the urban areas” (Long 1998). He continues to state that Urban generally means non-agricultural and also that an urban area can be defined by many criteria including: population size, space, density, and economic organization. Usually, however, urban is simply defined by some base line size, like 20 000 people (Long, 1998).
Peter Hall states that urbanisation can be looked at from a few different angles, firstly in a physical sense it refers to the use of land for urban purposes and secondly from a functional sense which ...

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