Understanding urbanization

According to the most scholars, the process of urbanization – meaning the growing size of the cities and the increasing proportion of people living in towns – is triggered, even caused by industrial modernization. In more precise terms, according to Timothy McGee, the process of urbanization is not one solitary process but instead three parallel processes of demographic, economic and social urbanization.

Urbanization presented such as according to the neo-Marxist theory by David Harvey, the creation of surplus in industrial production made possible the acceleration of urbanization. When the industrial modernization, applying the Fordist production principles, was about supplying the goods, the post-industrial city is characterized by consumption these goods, being a demand-side update of the industrial city.

Urbanization can not be properly understood if towns and cities are treated as isolated entities. Instead they have to be in a wider context in order to make sense for the processes that have lead to urbanization. Therefore, studying the urban-rural relationship and the industrial as well as economical development and global market dependancies is essential in order to understand the urbanization process or processes.

However, the urbanization is not occurring as a causal process. The development can be circular; migration between cities and the countryside can go back and forth. Examples of this in the developing world are readily found, resulting from political interventions, social or economical reasons.

While China was still largely a rural country in the early 1960s, the urbanization process was still gathering pace rather slowly. The direction of the wave was then reversed by the communist regime led by Mao by the introduction of the so called cultural revolution in the mid-60s. As one implementation of this, a large number of educated youth were transferred to the countryside.

In Africa, Zambia was considered as one of the relative success stories of the post-colonial continent. When keeping in mind that there had already been cities in Africa even in pre-colonial era, the colonial merchantilism treated the colonies as inexhaustible sources of raw material for industrial production. In Zambia, there were large supplies of copper available, this making possible the launching of new industrial cities around these mines.

However, the direction of industry driven urbanization have taken some steps backwards since the 1970s. The state of global economy alongside with demographic transition, lack of social integration of urban newcomers and the recent idealization of rural culture as the most suitable way of life for Africans has paved the way for de-urbanization in the Zambian copper mining region.