Urbanization and the Growth of Cities

Urbanization is the process by which a rising share of a country's population comes to live in towns and cities rather than in rural areas. It is measured most simply as the percentage of the total population that is urban. In 2007 the world crossed a historic threshold: for the first time, more than half of humanity lived in urban places, and by the mid-2020s that figure had climbed past 56 percent. Urbanization is driven by two forces working together. The first is rural-to-urban migration, in which people move to cities seeking work, education, health care, and a wider range of services. This migration reflects "push" factors in the countryside, such as poverty, land fragmentation, drought, and mechanization of agriculture, and "pull" factors in the city, such as higher wages and percei