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1.Patterns and Consequences of Urbanization in Poor Countries

Urbanization has been a worldwide phenomenon during much of this century.' Between
1920 and 1970, the proportion of the world population living in towns and cities increased
from 19 to 37 percent, and by the year 2000 over half the world's population is likely to be
living in urban areas. This shift in the balance between rural and urban sectors is closely
linked to indeserialization and changing patterns of employment, and to rapid changes in
cultural, social and political conditions throughout the world. The features of contemporary
urbanization in developing countries differ markedly from those of historical experience.
Whereas urbanization in the industrialized countries took many decades, permitting a
gradual emergence of economic, social and political institutions to deal with the problems
of transformation, the process in developing countries is occurring far more rapidly,
against a background of higher population growth, lower incomes, and fewer opportunities
for international migration.
❖ The Risks of Rapid Urbanization in Developing Countries
It is estimated that by 2050 more than two thirds of the world’s population will live in
cities, up from about 54 percent today. While the many benefits of organized and efficient
cities are well understood, we need to recognize that this rapid, often unplanned
urbanization brings risks of profound social instability, risks to critical infrastructure,
potential water crises and the potential for devastating spread of disease. These risks can
only be further exacerbated as this unprecedented transition from rural to urban areas
continues.
The Global Risks 2015 Report looks at four areas that face particularly daunting challenges
in the face of rapid and unplanned urbanization: infrastructure, health, climate change, and
social instability. In each of these areas we find new risks that can best be managed or, in
some cases, transferred through the mechanism of insurance.
• Infrastructure
The quality of a city’s infrastructure is central to the residents’ quality of life, social
inclusion and economic opportunities. It also determines the city’s resilience to a number
of global risks, in particular environmental, social and health-related risks, but also
economic risks such as unemployment. The availability and quality of infrastructure are at
the core of many of the challenges faced by rapidly urbanizing cities in developing
countries, while underinvestment is posing similar challenges in most developed
economies.
As cities expand rapidly, there is a risk that infrastructure will not keep pace with their
growth or the increased expectations of their populations. Action is urgently needed to
close the infrastructure gap and reduce the potential for risks to have catastrophic
cascading effects.
• Health

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Throughout the 20th century, the health of city dwellers increasingly benefited from better
access to education and healthcare, better living conditions, and targeted public-health
interventions. In advanced economics, emergency medical care can be accessed within
hours and advanced facilities for longer term treatments are readily accessible. However,
when urbanization is rapid and unplanned, a combination of high population density,
poverty and lack of infrastructure can have the opposite effect, fostering conditions for
communicable diseases to flourish.
• Climate Change
Rapid, inadequate and poorly planned expansion of cities can also leave urban populations
highly exposed to the effects of climate change. The migration from rural areas to cities is at
least partially driven by the increasing prevalence of extreme weather; however cities tend
to be located near the sea or natural waterways, where they are at more risk of flooding.
Fifteen of the world’s twenty megacities – those with over 10 million inhabitants – are
located in coastal zones threatened by sea-level rise and storm surges. Making cities more
resilient to extreme weather events should be a priority for both local governments and the
private sector.
• Social Instability
Rapid and unplanned urbanization can also quickly lead to urban violence and social
unrest. Widening inequalities also tend to be more starkly visible in urban than rural areas.
The combination of inequality, competition for scarce resources such as land, impunity
from the law and weak city governance increases the risk of violence and potential
breakdowns in law and order. Some cities in developing countries are already extremely
dangerous.
Urbanization can also create connected and cascading effects. For example, high population
density fuels property bubbles while a shortage of affordable housing contributes to social
exclusion, with this combination threatening to destabilize the wider economy and
increase social instability.

2. How Institutions Affect the Form of the City, or Vice Versa

Institutions strongly affect the economic development of countries and act in society at all
levels by determining the frameworks in which economic exchange occurs. They determine
the volume of interactions available, the benefits from economic exchange and the form
which they can take.
Social institutions have been created by man from social relationships in society to meet
such basic needs as stability, law and order and clearly defined roles of authority and
decision making. Every organization is dependent upon certain recognized and established
set of rules, traditions and usages. These usages and rules may be given the name of

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institutions. These are the forms of procedure which are recognized and accepted by
society and govern the relations between individuals and groups.
i. Institutions are the means of controlling individuals.
ii. Institutions depend upon the collective activities of men.
iii. The institution has some definite procedures which are formed on the basis of customs
and dogmas.
iv. Institution is more stable than other means of social control.
v. Every institution has some rules which must be compulsorily obeyed by the individual.
Five major institutions in rural sociology are political, educational, economic, family and religion.
1. Political: Government as political institution, administers the regulatory functions of Law and
order, and maintains security in society. Form of government and its method of working depends
on the accepted patterns of behavior in a society. Development work is now-a-days a major
responsibility of the government. For effective implementation of programmers, government may
decentralize its functioning by creating local self-government like panchayats at different level.
2. Education: is the process of socialization, which begins informally at home and then formally in
educational institutions. Education as an institution helps develop knowledge, skill, attitude and
understanding of the people and strive to make them competent members of the society. Education
widens the mental horizon of the people and make them receptive to new ideas. .
3. Economic: Economy provides basic physical sustenance of the society by meeting the needs for
food, shelter, clothing, and other necessary supply and services. Economic institutions include
agriculture, industry, marketing, credit and banking system, co-operatives etc.
4. Family: is the most basic social institution in a society, and is a system of organized relationship
involving workable and dependable ways of meeting basic social needs.
5. Religion: -is belief in supernatural. Religion constitutes a set of beliefs regarding the ultimate
power in the universe, the ideal and proper pattern of behavior, and ceremonial ways to expressing
these beliefs. Religion also provides a foundation for the mores of the society. Taboos in various
cultures have religious sanction. Religion provides a means by which individuals can face crises and
ups and downs in life with strength and fortitude.

3. Social structure
social structure, in sociology, the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions whereby
human beings in a society interact and live together. Social structure is often treated
together with the concept of social change, which deals with the forces that change the
social structure and the organization of society.
The social structure of society is made up of a code of conduct and social order that serves
as the framework of that society. Discover its definition and its theory, explaining elements,
roles, and status concerning building a social structure.
Overview of Social Structure

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Have you ever visited a large city and stopped at an outdoor cart to order a hot dog? If so,
the person who sold you that hot dog was a vendor. Vendors live day to day based on the
location of where they move their product each day. Most vendors are viewed as being
poor immigrants who can't make it in society. This is not the case. Although it's easy to look
at vendors as just people selling products on the street, in actuality they are pursuing the
same life goals as you and I.
This example of social structure demonstrates how people in society develop a code of
conduct in regards to living in society. There are specific elements and frameworks that we
use to fit into mainstream society and to develop the concept of social structure.
Types of Social Structure
To best help us understand the social structure and elements of society, sociologist Talcott
Parsons produced one of the best-known theoretical foundations for studying society.
Parsons believed that society best functions in four ways, and these four elements are
necessary in forming the social structure of society.
1. Adaptation: The way we adapt to our environments is one of the ways we function
through survival in society. For example, jobs, economy, family.
2. Goal attainment: The need to set goals and achieve them in society.
3. Integration: The need to relate to other human beings who share similar interests.
4. Latency: The need to have people motivate us toward our goals of achievement.

Spatial structures
Spatial structures are formally defined as a structural system within three dimensions such
that the configuration, external loads, internal loads, and displacements of the structure all
extend beyond a single plane.
Spatial structures, such as site, building, storey, or spaces, may contain physical elements,
including building elements, distribution elements, and furnishing elements.
The socio spatial perspective (SSP), which is a framework for studying urban social life that
integrates sociological and political economy dimensions into the analysis of urban space
and social life.

4. Design with nature

We consider nature to be an all-inclusive, evolving system of which humans have
substantial yet incomplete scientific and cultural knowledge. We believe terrestrial nature,
i.e. ‘the landscape’ is best understood as simultaneously an ecosystem and a cultural
system—a recognition that urban agglomeration economies and rural processes of
extraction and transport now form a planetary network.
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Carefully reading the landscape in this way is the prerequisite for consciously designing
our future; using artistic creativity and scientific intelligence to shape the landscape in the
best long-term interest of all living things.
After centuries of mistakenly believing we could exploit the landscape without
consequence (design without nature) we have now entered an age of extreme climate
change marked by rising seas, resource depletion, desertification, ecosystem migration, and
unprecedented rates of species extinction. Set against the global phenomena of accelerating
consumption, ubiquitous urbanization and rising inequity, these environmental changes
are impacting everyone, everywhere. Adapting our cities and their infrastructure to these
conditions of rapid environmental change is the central design and planning challenge of
the 21st century.
our purpose is to meet this challenge by providing a platform for environmental and social
scientists, planners, designers, policy makers, developers and communities to unite and to
research and design new ways of improving the ecological performance and quality of life
in cities and towns worldwide.
As we begin to understand the true complexity and holistic nature of the earth system, and
begin to appreciate humanity’s impact within it, we can build a new identity for society as a
constructive part of nature. This is ethical. This is optimistic. This is a necessity. This is
what it means to “design with nature”.

Designing with Nature also implies considering the mosaic of microclimates that exist
throughout a city. The effect of city design on microclimates can make air quality worse and
buildings more expensive to operate - or it can help clean the air and help buildings to be
more energy efficient. Thus, considering topography, landscape, street pattern and design,
building volumes, shapes and orientation, and choice of materials can help to avoid heat
islands, change locally summer peak temperatures, and reduce the energy load of buildings
while improving external thermal comfort.
To create a sustainable urban fabric means replacing engineered infrastructure by
solutions that work with nature, in which water recycles and supports life at local scale.
Many cities have already experienced severe water shortages due to rapid urbanization
and climate change. Hence, the challenge is to harvest and reuse water as much as possible
before returning it to the natural systems and to resort to traditional forms of water
storage for reuse, such as rainwater harvesting.
Planning and designing in accordance with nature enhances the resilience of a city.
Originally, resilience is associated with an ecosystem’s ability to recover from or adjust
easily to disturbances or change. On a city level, the concept of “resilient socio-ecological
systems” represents the idea that man and nature coexist and co-evolve.

5. The Re- Emerging concept of neighborhood

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The term neighborhood is often used to describe the sub-divisions of urban or rural
locations such as cities, villages, and towns. In its purest definition, a neighborhood is the
vicinity in which people live. People live next to or near one another in sections of an area
and form communities. Those sections have some particular physical or social
characteristics that distinguish them from the rest of the settlements.
At that sense the concept of neighborhood is used also to describe the social environment
formed by communities at distinguished urban sections. The social composition of the
residential environment is constituted by a set of physical spaces integrated with each
other through a hierarchical order.
Kallus and Law-Yone go on denote that the concept of neighbourhoods as a planning idea
has emerged and remerged, from the 19th Century onwards, in sync with the continued
development of urban growth management methodologies in cities. They go on to argue
that an approach to neighbourhoods within this context has subsequently emerged as its
own distinct theory; identifying that “beyond the physical neighborhood and its use as an
urban unit (its size, structure, form, organization, specific with the city, and so on), lies
always a theoretical hypothesis of the neighborhood as an idea – a vision of an ideal
neighborhood”.
This review found that research in to neighbourhoods generally fell in to three categories;
studies which define neighbourhoods as spatial units, studies that consider
neighbourhoods to be a social construct, or studies which consider the concept of
neighbourhoods to be a combined socio-spatial response to our evolving understanding of
the urban condition.
Concepts of neighbourhood have followed a trend from theoretical to empirical studies.
Theorists throughout the 1980s and 1990s attempted to create workable theories that
defined neighbourhood. They found the term escaped definition. Empirical researchers,
from the 1990s to the present day, explored particular places to find phenomena that could
be applied generally.
What methodologies are used to research concepts of neighborhood?
1.1 Observational and theoretical studies to define neighborhood
1.2 Surveys and interviews considering revealed preferences and neighborhood
satisfaction
1.3 Mapping and GIS studies to spatially understand neighborhoods.

6. Urbanism as a way of life

In modern industrialized societies, urbanism has become the predominant way of life.
What constitutes this particular mode of living? It is difficult to give a precise answer.
According to Some writers, urbanism indicates a wide acquaintance with things and
people. Such acquaintance imbues the city dwellers with the spirits of tolerance.

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“Urbanism as a way of life” article by Louis Wirth. Louis Wirth (August 28, 1897 – May 3,
1952) was an American sociologist and member of the Chicago School of sociology. Louis
Wirth was inspired by the work of Simmel. Wirth writes that urbanism is a form of social
organization that is harmful to culture, Wirth details the city as a “Substitution of
secondary for primary contacts, the weakening of bonds of kinship, the declining social
significance of the family, the disappearance of the neighbourhood and the undermining of
traditional basis of social solidarity”. Wirth was concerned with the effects of the city upon
family unity, and he believed urbanization leads to a ‘low and declining urban reproduction
rates’. Families are smaller and more frequently without children than in the country.
Wirth continues, marriage tends to be postponed, and the proportion of single people is
growing leading to isolation and less interaction. But Wirth also stressed the positive
effects of city life. The city everywhere has been the center of freedom and toleration, the
home of progress, of invention, of science, of rationality.
Thus, urbanism as a way of life, following Louis Wirth, is characteristics by extensive
conflict of norms and values, by rapid social change, by increased social differentiation,
greater social mobility, by higher levels of education and income, by emphasis on materials
possessions and individuals, by impersonality of relationships and decline in intimate
communication and by increasing informal social contracts. This means that “urbanism” is
not synonymous with the city. City refers to an area distinguished principally by size,
population, density, and social diversity, whereas urbanism refers to a complex of social
relations.
1.Norms and social role conflicts: The diversity of social life is the most important
characteristic of urbanism. It springs from the size, density and heterogeneity of
population, extreme specialization of various occupations, and the class structure existing
in the larger community.
2.Rapid social and cultural change: “Rapid social and cultural change, disregard for the
importance of stability of generations, and untempered loyalties also generally characterize
urban life.” The result is the decline in the importance of the elements which are
“traditional” or “sacred”.
3.Impersonalness and lack of intimate communication: Being heterogeneous in
compositions and highly specialized, urbanities know each other only in superficial and
impersonal ways. A large proportion of urban social relations take place between nameless
strangers, and they last only for a limited period of time.
4.Materialism: In an urban society external appearances and material possessions are of
primary importance. Urban dwellers are more often known for their status symbols.
5.Individualism: The urban dwellers in their social relations give primary emphasis on
their own interests and personal happiness. As individualism increases, competition also
intensifies.

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6.Mobility: One of the distinctive features of urban life is greater mobility. The fact that
most urban social relations are impermanent means that, unless the urbanite becomes
either a recluse or an extreme interest, he continuously makes new social contacts.
7.Increase informal social control: Whereas social control in a rural community is exercised
with a minimum of formality, social control in urban society is more formal. The rural
community feels little need of formal secondary controls becomes family and kinship ties,
customs and mores are themselves effective as social pressures.
In Louis Wirth’s theory, three concepts are given.
The effects of size, density and heterogeneity.
The effect of size:
1.The larger the population, the greater the chances for diversity and individualization
2.Competition and formal mechanisms of social control would replace primary relations of
kinship as a means of organizing society.
3.The larger the population, the greater the specialization and functional diversity of social
roles.
4.Anonymity and fragmentation of social interactions increase with size.
The effect of density:
1.Greater density intensifies the effects of large population size.
2.Greater density produces greater tolerance for living closely with strangers, but also
greater stress.
3.Escape from density produces the development of the fringe and greater land value in
suburbia.
4.Density increase competition, compounding the effects of size.
The effect of heterogeneity:
1.The greater the heterogeneity more tolerance among groups.
2.Heterogeneity allows ethnic and class barriers to be broken down.
3.Individual roles and contacts become compartmentalized according to different circles of
contacts. Anonymity and depersonalization in public life increase.

7. History of Urbanization in Ethiopia

Ethiopia was under-urbanized, even by African standards. In the late 1980s, only about 11
percent of the population lived in urban areas of at least 2,000 residents. There were
hundreds of communities with 2,000 to 5,000 people, but these were primarily extensions

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of rural villages without urban or administrative functions. Thus, the level of urbanization
would be even lower if one used strict urban structural criteria. Ethiopia's relative lack of
urbanization is the result of the country's history of agricultural self-sufficiency, which has
reinforced rural peasant life. The slow pace of urban development continued until the 1935
Italian invasion. Urban growth was fairly rapid during and after the Italian occupation of
1936-41. Urbanization accelerated during the 1960s, when the average annual growth rate
was about 6.3 percent. Urban growth was especially evident in the northern half of
Ethiopia, where most of the major towns are located.
Addis Ababa was home to about 35 percent of the country's urban population in 1987.
Another 7 percent resided in Asmera, the second largest city. Major industrial, commercial,
governmental, educational, health, and cultural institutions were located in these two
cities, which together were home to about 2 million people, or one out of twenty-five
Ethiopians. Nevertheless, many small towns had emerged as well. In 1970 there were 171
towns with populations of 2,000 to 20,000; this total had grown to 229 by 1980.
The period 1967-75 saw rapid growth of relatively new urban centers. The population of
six towns--Akaki, Arba Minch, Awasa, Bahir Dar, Jijiga, and Shashemene--more than tripled,
and that of eight others more than doubled. Awasa, Arba Minch, Metu, and Goba were
newly designated capitals of administrative regions and important agricultural centers.
Awasa, capital of Sidamo, had a lakeshore site and convenient location on the Addis Ababa-
Nairobi highway. Bahir Dar was a newly planned city on Lake Tana and the site of several
industries and a polytechnic institute. Akaki and Aseb were growing into important
industrial towns, while Jijiga and Shashemene had become communications and service
centers.
Urban centers that experienced moderate growth tended to be more established towns,
such as Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa, and Debre Zeyit. A few old provincial capitals, such as
Gonder, also experienced moderate growth, but others, such as Harer, Dese, Debre Markos,
and Jima, had slow growth rates because of competition from larger cities. By the 1990s,
Harer was being overshadowed by Dire Dawa, Dese by Kembolcha, and Debre Markos by
Bahir Dar.
Overall, the rate of urban growth declined from 1975 to 1987. With the exception of Aseb,
Arba Minch, and Awasa, urban centers grew an average of about 40 percent over that
twelve-year period. This slow growth is explained by several factors. Rural-to-urban
migration had been largely responsible for the rapid expansion during the 1967-75 period,
whereas natural population growth may have been mostly responsible for urban expansion
during the 1975-84 period. The 1975 land reform program provided incentives and
opportunities for peasants and other potential migrants to stay in rural areas. Restrictions
on travel, lack of employment, housing shortages, and social unrest in some towns during
the 1975-80 period also contributed to a decline in rural-to-urban migration.

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Although the male and female populations were about equal, men outnumbered women in
rural areas. More women migrated to the urban centers for a variety of reasons, including
increased job opportunities.
As a result of intensified warfare in the period 1988-91, all urban centers received a large
influx of population, resulting in severe overcrowding, shortages of housing and water,
overtaxed social services, and unemployment. In addition to beggars and maimed persons,
the new arrivals comprised large numbers of young people. These included not only
primary and secondary school students but also an alarming number of orphans and street
children, estimated at well over 100,000. Although all large towns shared in this influx,
Addis Ababa, as the national capital, was most affected. This situation underscored the
huge social problems that the Mengistu regime had neglected for far too long.
The urban population in Ethiopia is increasing rapidly. Estimated at only 17.3 percent in
2012, Ethiopia’s urban population share is one of the lowest in the world, well below the
Sub-Saharan Africa average of 37 percent.1 But this is set to change dramatically.
According to official figures from the Ethiopian Central Statistics Agency, the urban
population is projected to nearly triple from 15.2 million in 2012 to 42.3 million in 2037,
growing at 3.8 percent a year. Analysis for this report indicates that the rate of
urbanization will be even faster, at about 5.4 percent a year. That would mean a tripling of
the urban population even earlier—by 2034, with 30 percent of the country’s people in
urban areas by 2028. If managed proactively, urban population growth presents a huge
opportunity to shift the structure and location of economic activity from rural agriculture
to the larger and more diversified urban industrial and service sectors. In parallel with
rapid urbanization, Ethiopia is going through a demographic transition.
The labor force has doubled in the past 20 years and is projected to rise to 82 million by
2030, from 33 million in 2005. Creating job opportunities in urban areas will be essential if
Ethiopia is to exploit its demographic dividend. Cities already play an important role in the
economy, contributing to 38 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) though employing
only 15 percent of the total workforce, due primarily to the high productivity associated
with sectors located mostly in urban areas. The Ethiopian Government’s vision is to reach
middle-income status with an estimated gross national income per capita of US$1,560 by
2025. 2 If well managed, urbanization could be an important catalyst to promote economic
growth, create jobs, and connect Ethiopians to prosperity. If not managed proactively, rapid
urban population growth may pose a demographic challenge as cities struggle to provide
jobs, infrastructure and services, and housing. Infrastructure and service delivery are
already undermined in many cities by growing urban extents and by stretched municipal
budgets, while formal labor markets are failing to keep up with demand for jobs. Ethiopian
cities run the risk of becoming less attractive places for people and economic activity.
Moreover, constraints on rural–urban migration—including the loss of land rights for those
who leave rural areas—reduce incentives to move to cities, which in the long run could
slow agglomeration, reducing productivity and economic growth.

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The central challenge for the Ethiopian Government is to make sure that cities are
attractive places in which to work and live, while fostering “smart urbanization.” Smart
urbanization means putting in place the right policies, institutions, and investments now,
when incomes and urbanization levels are fairly low. City systems have to be well-equipped
to provide for growing populations, so that new residents can propel higher productivity
and faster national growth. Making urbanization a national priority will accelerate
Ethiopia’s progress towards reaching middle-income status. Ethiopia already benefits from
high economic growth. Compared with other countries at similar levels of urbanization,
however, Ethiopia has the lowest gross national income. Moreover, growth has been driven
mainly by public investment and private consumption on the demand side, and by services
and agriculture on the supply side, rather than sectors like manufacturing and industry that
are associated with higher levels of productivity and employment, as well as structural
transformation. Agriculture, while showing decline, remains a very large sector in the
economy, while the shares of manufacturing and services employment, in relation to the
urbanization rate, have been stagnant or declining. Of more concern is that urban industrial
activity is primarily in micro and small firms, whereas in Ethiopia, sustained job growth
takes place mostly in the medium and large firms. Jobs in the first group are unlikely to
move into the second, given the current constraints to doing business, thus failing to
contribute to net job creation. For Ethiopia to reach middle income status, an economically
productive urban transformation will be necessary, but even that on its own will be
insufficient.
Ethiopia has to get its urbanization “right,” because decisions today will have far-reaching
implications for its cities of tomorrow. Given that national and local resources are limited
for urban development, the opportunity cost of each dollar spent is high. Policymakers
must weigh the long-term costs and benefits when making decisions, as the policies,
institutions, and investments put in place now will influence urban systems for years to
come. Coordination between land use and infrastructure investment is especially key
because these systems have long lifespans and shape economic and social geography in a
fundamental and path-dependent way. All this speaks to the need for data-driven policy so
government plans address the reality on the ground and avoid getting locked-in to growth
trajectories that are environmentally, socially, or financially unsustainable. The
Government has already taken steps to make evidence-based, informed decisions for well-
managed urban growth, and this report aims to contribute to those efforts.

8. Theories in urban
Auguste Comte(1798-1857)
•Comte considers Sociology into two Theoretical Aspects; Social Statics andSocial
Dynamics.
•In view of that I associate Comte’s work with urbanization as a social change undoubtedly
synchronizes with dynamics aspects of society.

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•Social statics focuses on how order is maintained in the society whereas social dynamics
focuses on how society changes over time.
•He saw social dynamics as a process of progressive evolution in which people become
cumulatively more intelligent and in which altruism eventually triumphs over egoism.
Ferdinand Toennies (1855-1936)
•Toennies is pessimistic about futurity of urban growth and city life.
•In 1887, Toennies wrote on Community and society.
•He said that a traditional sense of community, or Gemeinschaft, characterizes
raditionaltraditional societies.
•As societies grew and industrialized and as people moved to cities, he wrote, social
ties weakened and became more impersonal.
•Tönnies called this type of society a Gesellschaft, and he was quite critical of this
development.
•Ferdinand Tonnies worried about the loss of community.
•Tonnies observed a direct tension between community (Gemeinschaft) and the city
(Gesselschaft).
•He sees city as the center of science and culture, which always go hand in hand with
commerce and industry.
•The urban society is characterized by fragility or artificiality which formed based on
legal arrangement or contract but rural society has strong status based attachment by
giving extended family honor.
•But, he did not show us the way out.
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
•Emile Durkheim indicated urbanization in his book of division of labor in which
he attempted to describe organic solidarity or urban society’s characteristics.
•Durkheim stated urbanization created a new form of social cohesion based on
mutual interdependence that signifies liberating.
•According to Durkheim such interdependence is typical feature of organic
solidarity or cooperative society.
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• Durkheim was more positive than Tönnies about the nature of cities and
urbanized societies.
•He is optimistic about futurity of city.
•He certainly appreciated the social bonds and community feeling, which he
called mechanical solidarity, characteristic of small, rural societies.
•However, he also thought that these societies stifled individual freedom and that
social ties still exist in larger, urban societies.
•He called these latter ties organic solidarity, which he said stems from the
division of labor.
George Simmel (1858-1918)
•George Simmel is pessimistic about urban growth and considered importance of
urban experience, i.e. chose to focus on urbanism (life within the city) rather than
urbanization (development of urban areas).
• "The Metropolis and Mental Life" is an essay detailing his views on life in the city,
focusing more on social psychological aspects.
•Individual develops a blasé attitude that is a social reserve, a detachment, respond
with head rather than heart, don’t care and don’t get involved.
•Philosophy of Money: Money promotes rational calculation in human affairs,
furthering rationalization characteristic of modern societies.
•Money replaces personal ties by impersonal relations that limited to a specific
purpose.
•Above economic functions, it symbolizes and embodies modern spirit of
rationalism, calculability and impersonality.
• Simmel indicated that monetary interaction has negative impact on social
relationship that manifested in prostitution.
• Prostitution is another form of interaction that entertains monetary values as
central element in the sociation
The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the

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individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of
overwhelming social forces, of historical
heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.
•He talked about the detached and capricious urban cosmopolitan.
•The urban modernist is now embedded in the iron cage of a world
of work and bureaucracy as well as the consumer’s dilemma of a
search for identity in a soulless mass society.

9. The evolution of city life

The first cities appeared thousands of years ago in areas where the land was fertile, such as
the cities founded in the historic region known as Mesopotamia around 7500 B.C.E., which
included Eridu, Uruk, and Ur. These cities were among the many communities between the
Euphrates and Tigris rivers (the so-called Fertile Crescent). Cities also formed along the
Nile River in Egypt, the Indus River Valley on the Indian subcontinent, and the Yellow (or
Huang) River in China, as people began to cultivate crops and settle in communities.
Agricultural production in these fertile areas meant that people could give up a nomadic
lifestyle as hunters and gatherers to take advantage of food surpluses. Settling along
waterways also provided a much-needed transportation system that facilitated trade.
For the next several millennia, cities continued to grow in number, size, and stature. Some
of the world’s largest cities have grown steadily for hundreds of years, while others appear
to blossom overnight. Some of the cities that were once among the most populous in the
world, like the largest cities of Mesopotamia, no longer exist, and others have experienced a
decline in population. For instance, in the first century B.C.E., Rome, Italy, topped one
million people, making it the largest city in Europe; its population declined to just 20,000
during the Middle Ages. These are exceptions, however; most of the world’s cities continue
to grow, and some are experiencing growth at unprecedented rates. (In fact, the population
of Rome stood at nearly three million in 2017.)
Throughout history, people have been drawn to cities as centers of trade, culture,
education, and economic opportunity, but the resulting urban population growth has not
always been steady. Indeed, urbanization is a relatively recent phenomenon; until recent
years, the vast majority of people lived in rural areas. For instance, more than 90 percent of
the global population lived in rural areas in 1800 C.E. The United States Census Bureau
indicates that more than 94 percent of the U.S. population lived in rural areas in 1800; by
1900, this number had dropped to 60 percent.
One of the main reasons for the growth of cities was the Industrial Revolution, which began
in England toward the middle of the eighteenth century and then spread to the United
States and other parts of Europe. The Industrial Revolution contributed to the rise of
factories, creating a demand for workers in urban areas. Over the next century, millions of

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people in the United States and England moved from farms to cities. As other parts of the
world industrialized, they, too, became more urban. Thanks in part to the Industrial
Revolution, London, England, grew from a population of one million in 1800 to over six
million a decade later. Within a few decades, the so-called Second Industrial Revolution
boosted urbanization in the United States, spurring New York City metropolitan area, New
York, to become the largest city in the world by 1950, with a population of 12.5 million.
Urban population growth has also been fueled by new technologies, most notably
technologies that enabled cities to build upward. Innovations in steel enabled the
development of skyscrapers, which allowed for greater population densities. And, of
course, the invention of the elevator made it possible for skyscrapers to take people
upward to their suites and offices in the sky.
Experts say that over half the world’s population today lives in urban areas and that
around two-thirds of people will be living in cities by 2050. Much of this growth is due to
natural increase—that is, births to people already living in cities—as well as the continued
migration of people from rural to urban areas in search of new opportunities.
Urbanization in recent years has fueled the growth of ever-larger cities and to a new type of
city: the megacity, which is defined as having a population of 10 million or more. The
metropolitan areas of New York City and Tokyo, Japan, became the world’s first megacities
in the 1950s; by 2018, there were 37 megacities across the globe. While the largest cities of
the Industrial Revolution existed in North America and Europe, nowadays it is Asia and
Africa that are experiencing the greatest urban growth due to industrialization. As of 2019,
Tokyo, with more than 37 million residents, is the world’s largest urban area; Delhi, India,
has almost 30 million. Shanghai, China; Mexico, City, Mexico; and São Paulo, Brazil all have
metropolitan area populations well over 20 million.
Looking to the future means looking at the growth of today’s cities. The United Nations
(UN) has predicted that there will be 41 megacities by the year 2030. India, which already
has five cities with metropolitan areas with over 10 million residents, is expected to
increase to seven by 2030. Some of the megacities may be in places that surprise you, such
as Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Already a megacity with a
population of 11.6 million, Kinshasa’s demographics and growth trends suggest that it may
quickly surpass some of the world’s largest cities.
Just as rapidly growing cities in England and North America struggled to keep up with the
population growth in the industrial era, cities in Africa and Asia are also struggling to
provide services to rapidly growing populations. Lagos, Nigeria, the largest city in Africa, is
home to 12.6 million people, some two-thirds of whom live in slums. The population
continues to grow, not through migration to the city, but because of high birth rates.
Although there are a number of downsides to growing too fast—from traffic congestion to
the rise of slums—the population in the world’s megacities continues to grow.

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Urbanization represents a dominant and growing form of disturbance to Earth's natural
ecosystems, affecting biodiversity and ecosystem services on a global scale. While decades
of research have illuminated the effects of urban environmental change on the structure
and function of ecological communities in cities, only recently have researchers begun
exploring the effects of urbanization on the evolution of urban populations. The 15 articles
in this special feature represent the leading edge of urban evolutionary biology and address
existing gaps in our knowledge. These gaps include: (i) the absence of theoretical models
examining how multiple evolutionary mechanisms interact to affect evolution in urban
environments; (ii) a lack of data on how urbanization affects natural selection and local
adaptation; (iii) poor understanding of whether urban areas consistently affect non-
adaptive and adaptive evolution in similar ways across multiple cities; (iv) insufficient data
on the genetic and especially genomic signatures of urban evolutionary change; and (v)
limited understanding of the evolutionary processes underlying the origin of new human
commensals. Using theory, observations from natural populations, common gardens,
genomic data and cutting-edge population genomic and landscape genetic tools, the papers
in this special feature address these gaps and highlight the power of urban evolutionary
biology as a globally replicated 'experiment' that provides a powerful approach for
understanding how human altered environments affect evolution.
Our planet is an increasingly urbanized landscape, with over half of the human population
residing in cities. Despite advances in urban ecology, we do not adequately understand how
urbanization affects the evolution of organisms, nor how this evolution may affect
ecosystems and human health. Here, we review evidence for the effects of urbanization on
the evolution of microbes, plants, and animals that inhabit cities. Urbanization affects
adaptive and nonadaptive evolutionary processes that shape the genetic diversity within
and between populations. Rapid adaptation has facilitated the success of some native
species in urban areas, but it has also allowed human pests and disease to spread more
rapidly. The nascent field of urban evolution brings together efforts to understand
evolution in response to environmental change while developing new hypotheses
concerning adaptation to urban infrastructure and human socioeconomic activity. The next
generation of research on urban evolution will provide critical insight into the importance
of evolution for sustainable interactions between humans and our city environments.

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