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Course - Master
Dolor
in Urban Planning

Infrastructure and Lecture conducted by

Prof. Devashree Roychowdhury

Transport Planning Associate Professor

Architecture & Planning, PPSU
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Urbanization
Global urbanization is the outcome of 3
main demographic trends
1. Natural Increase
2. Rural to Urban Migrations
3. International Migration
Between 1950 and 2015, the global urban population tripled to 3.9 billion. While urbanization has
considerably slowed down in developed economies, the developing world is where cities are
growing the most. This process was accompanied by significant surges in urban mobility
demands.
Urban areas, as economic units, are influenced by globalization in the scale and scope of their
development. Since globalization was relying on different technological and economic drivers
through time, this temporal evolution was associated with a different urban context, from the small
city-states of the mercantilism era (from the 16th to 19th century), to the industrial city (from the
19th to the mid 20th century), to the megalopolis of the early 21st century.
A large share of the world’s population lives in large urban agglomerations. There were 83 metropolitan
areas with populations of more than 1 million in 1950, a figure that increased to 160 by 1975, and a
surge to 514 in 2015. Of the agglomerations of more than 12 million inhabitants in 2015, the largest was
Tokyo, with a population of 37.3 million. In the span of half a century several cities have more than
tripled their population, underlining that urbanization has been the world’s leading socioeconomic
change.
Urbanization involves a much higher level of concentration of the global population, which used to be
more dispersed. Higher levels of concentration are easier to service from a market perspective, but are
also prone to congestion and diseconomies. Several mega-cities (8 to 10 million inhabitants) have
emerged. These cities command a large share of global wealth creation and dominate their respective
national economies. Many act as global cities.
Urban mobility problems have increased proportionally with urbanization, which is associated with
two outcomes. First is the emergence of a network of megacities that account for the most salient
urban mobility challenges. Second, mobility demands tend to be concentrated over specific urban
areas, such as central business districts and main circulation corridors.
Elements of the urban transport system, namely modes, infrastructures, and users, have a spatial
footprint. Transportation infrastructures consume space and their organisation shapes urban form.
The modes being used, by their technical and operational characteristics, also shape urban form as
they underline what can be connected and what can be carried, and in which quantity. It is
ultimately users generating passengers and freight movements that define the urban form that can
A city performs different but interdependent functions related to its connectivity. Although a city
can have several forms of connectivity, there is usually a dominance of a particular form based upon
the main economic functions and specialisation. This involves a range of activities, each having its
own connectivity:
Production and Distribution
Mobility and Accessibility
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