What Does Urban Mean In Geography

What Does Service Mean In Geography

4.4/5Definitionservicesservicesareservicesareanswered comprehensively

The number of services that a settlement provides increases with settlement size. Small settlements will only provide low-order services such as a post offices, doctors and newsagents. Large towns, cities and conurbations will provide low and high-order services such as leisure centres, chain stores and hospitals.

Secondly, what is service and example? A SERVICE is an action that a person does for someone else. Examples: Goods are items you buy, such as food, clothing, toys, furniture, and toothpaste. Services are actions such as haircuts, medical check-ups, mail delivery, car repair, and teaching. Goods are tangible objects that satisfy people’s wants.

Subsequently, question is, what do we mean by service?

Definition and meaning. Services are the non-physical, intangible parts of our economy, as opposed to goods, which we can touch or handle. Ad. Services, such as banking, education, medical treatment, and transportation make up the majority of the economies of the rich nations.

What types of services are there?

Service types

• Business functions
• Cleaning, patronage, repair and maintenance services.
• Construction.
• Dispute resolution and prevention services.
• Education

What Is The Difference Between Rural And Urban

The difference between rural and urban can be summarized in the following manner:

As words, both rural and urban are adjectives.

Rural is an adjective that describes things that have a connection to the countryside.

In the same time, urban is an adjective that describes things that have a connection to the town.

Rural areas comprise of villages and hamlets, whereas urban areas comprise of cities and towns.

Rural areas depend totally on natural resources whereas urban areas rely on human findings in the areas of science and technology for development.

Rural areas are free from problems such as pollution and traffic, unlike urban areas.

While people in rural areas find ways to provide their needs by themselves people in urban areas depend on the government and other agencies to find and fulfil those needs for them.

Images Courtesy: Landscape via Pixabay

How Do You Describe Place In Geography

Geographers describe a place by two kinds of characteristics: physical and human. The physical characteristics of a place make up its natural environment and include landforms, bodies of water, climate, soils, natural vegetation, and animal life. The human characteristics of a place come from human ideas and actions.

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Number Of People Living In Urban Areas

More than 4 billion people more than half of the world live in urban areas

For most of human history, most people across the world lived in small communities. Over the past few centuries and particularly in recent decades this has shifted dramatically. There has been a mass migration of populations from rural to urban areas.

How many people live in urban areas today?

In the visualization we see estimates from the UN World Urbanization Prospects on the number of people globally who live in urban and rural areas. In 2017, 4.1 billion people were living in urban areas.

This means over half of the world live in urban settings. The UN estimates this milestone event when the number of people in urban areas overtook the number in rural settings occurred in 2007.

You can explore the data on urban and rural populations for any country or region using the change country toggle on the interactive chart.

What Is Urbanisation

Urbanisation is the increase in the proportion of people living in towns and cities. As you can see from the graph below there has been a significant increase between 1950 and 2014, from 0.8 billion to 3.85 billion people.

The worlds urban and rural populations 1950-2050 source UN

Urbanisation first occurred in high-income countries during the industrial revolution. People were attracted to urban areas from rural areas to work in factories. They were also pushed as developments in technology led to mechanisation on farms.

Nowadays, the rate of urbanisation in low-income countries is greater than in HICs. As LICs are developing more people are migrating to urban areas. The choropleth maps below clearly show how many LICs are becoming more urbanised.

Percentage of the population residing in urban areas, 1950, 2014 and 2050 source: UN https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2014-Report.pdf

Although urbanisation is greater in richer areas of the world compared to poor areas rates of urban growth are higher in poorer areas of the world. As you can see from the graph above the rates of urbanisation in poorer parts of the world are very high. This is due to rural-urban migration. Current rates are projected to increase due to industrialisation and economic development in some poorer countries. Urban growth rates are lower in more developed countries because it has already taken place hence the high levels .

Rates of Urbanisation Source AQA Geography Paper 2 2014

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What Does Rural Mean

According to the Oxford English dictionary, rural means in, relating to, or characteristic of the countryside rather than the town. Here is an example.

She comes from a rural area in the Northern part of the country.

Here, word rural gives us the idea that her village is situated in the countryside.

The number of residents is less in a rural area. The density of human-established structures is low in the case of a rural area. Villages and hamlets constitute rural areas. It is interesting to note that natural resources develop rapidly in rural areas or, in other words, it can be said that the areas characterized by natural growth of resources flourish into rural areas. Urban areas are subjected to a process called urbanization. Vegetation and fauna available in the areas are made full use of It is important to note that rural areas are totally dependent on natural resources. The big advantage of a rural area is that it is not characterized by environmental perils such as pollution and traffic.

She comes from a rural area in the Northern part of the country.

Definitions Of Rural And Urban And Understandings Of Economic Transformation: Evidence From Tanzania

The choice of rural definition can affect our understanding of economic change.

We use administrative, remotely sensed, and survey-based data in Tanzania.

Some indicators of economic development shift with different rural definitions.

Different definitions tend to paint a consistent picture of rural farms.

Periodic rural/urban recategorization affects the pace of rural poverty decline.

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Soft Factors: Architecture Urban Design Social Issues

Beyond the quantitative factors listed above, there are many subjective issues particularly regarding appearance that affect how urban a place feels.

Things that make a place feel urban, depending on who you talk to, include:

• Skyscrapers
• Public housing, especially if its in a group of large buildings
• Large train stations and bus terminals
• Blighted buildings and abandoned property
• Street crime and gangs
• Concentrated poverty

As noted in the FiveThirtyEight/Trulia study, Residents of lower-income neighborhoods with older housing stock often said they lived in an urban area, even if it was lower-density.

The list of attributes that make a place seem suburban isnt as long or salient as the urban list, but a prominent example might be vinyl siding and more generally, cheap building materials. Of course, this can also be found in plenty of big cities. For example, the Philadelphia Housing Authority has created a number of developments that include cookie-cutter suburban-style houses:

Ive never been a fan.

Lets have a look at Las Vegas Strip :

Theres a high density , its part of a large urbanized area, and we see plenty of large buildings that might be considered small skyscrapers. Yet some urbanists might still feel theres an anti-urban element. Meanwhile, recall that Los Angeles has a fairly high density not to mention being a major urbanized area and having most of the urban soft factors listed above yet many people perceive it to be suburban. Why?

History Of The Discipline

Urban geography arrived as a critical sub-discipline with the 1973 publication of David Harvey’s Social Justice and the City, which was heavily influenced by previous work by Anne Buttimer. Prior to its emergence as its own discipline, urban geography served as the academic extension of what was otherwise a professional development and planning practice. At the turn of the 19th century, urban planning began as a profession charged with mitigating the negative consequences of industrialization as documented by Friedrich Engels in his geographic analysis of the condition of the working class in England, 1844.

In a 1924 study of urban geography, observed that urban geography cannot be considered a subdivision of geography because it plays such an important part. However, urban geography did emerge as a specialized discipline after World War II, amidst increasing urban planning and a shift away from the primacy of physical terrain in the study of geography. Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman were among its earliest exponents.

Urban geography arose by the 1930s in the Soviet Union as an academic complement to active urbanization and communist urban planning, focusing on cities’ economic roles and potential.

Spatial analysis, behavioral analysis, , humanism, social theory, feminism, and postmodernism have arisen as overlapping lenses used within the field of urban geography in the West.

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City Push And Pull Factors

Cities began to form many thousands of years ago, but there is little agreement regarding why cities form. The chances are that many different factors are responsible for the rise of cities, with some cities owing to their existence to multiple factors and cities that arose as a result of more specific conditions.

Two underlying causal forces contribute to the rise of cities. Site location factors are those elements that favor the growth of a city that is found at that location. Site factors include things like the availability of water, food, good soils, a quality harbor, and characteristics that make a location easy to defend from attack. Situation factors are external elements that favor the growth of a city, such as distance to other cities, or a central location. For example, the exceptional distance invading armies have had to travel to reach Moscow, Russia has helped the city survive many wars. Most large cities have good site and situation factors.

Indeed, the earliest incarnation of cities offered residents a measure of protection against violence from outside groups for thousands of years. Living in a rural area, farming or ranching, made any family living in such isolation vulnerable to attack. Small villages could offer limited protection, but larger cities, especially those with moats, high walls, professional soldiers, and advanced weaponry, were safer.

Glossary: Degree Of Urbanisation

Common term: Degree of urbanisation, Abbreviation: DEGURBA

Short definition: the degree of urbanisation classifies local administrative units as cities, towns and suburbs or rural areas based on a combination of geographical contiguity and population density, measured by minimum population thresholds applied to 1 km² population grid cells each LAU belongs exclusively to one of these three classes.

The categories are defined as follows:

• cities, otherwise referred to as densely populated areas code 1
• towns and suburbs, otherwise referred to as intermediate density areas code 2
• rural areas, otherwise referred to as thinly populated areas code 3.

Urban areas refers to an aggregate composed of information covering cities as well as towns and suburbs .

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Themes Of Urban Geography

Although urban geography has several different focuses and viewpoints, there are two major themes that dominate its study today. The first of these is the study of problems relating to the spatial distribution of cities and the patterns of movement and links that connect them across space. This approach focuses on the city system. The second theme in urban geography today is the study of patterns of distribution and interaction of people and businesses within cities. This theme mainly looks at a city’s inner structure and therefore focuses on the city as a system.

In order to follow these themes and study cities, urban geographers often break down their research into different levels of analysis. In focusing on the city system, urban geographers must look at the city on the neighborhood and citywide level, as well as how it relates to other cities on a regional, national and global level. To study the city as a system and its inner structure as in the second approach, urban geographers are mainly concerned with the neighborhood and city level.

How Urban Is The World

What we know about urban populations and why it matters

Before looking in more detail at the differences in estimates of urban populations, we should first clarify what we do know:

• globally more people live in urbanized settings than not
• the broad distribution and density of where people live across the world
• although it can seem like our expanding cities take up a lot of land, only around 1% of global land is defined as built-up area 1
• rates of urbanization have been increasing rapidly across all regions
• urbanization is expected to continue to increase with rising incomes and shifts away from employment in agriculture 2
• disagreements in urban population numbers arise from definition or boundary differences in what makes a population urban.

Whilst disagreement on the numbers can seem irrelevant, understanding cities, urbanization rates, the distribution and density of people matters. The allocation and distribution of resources ranging from housing and transport access to healthcare, education, and employment opportunities should all be dependent on where people live. Understanding the distribution of people in a given country is essential to make sure the appropriate resources and services are available where theyre needed.

Lets therefore look at the conflicting estimates of how urban our world is, and where these differences come from.

UN estimates: 55% of people live in urban areas

How is an urban area defined?

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What Is Meant By Site Of A Settlement

The site of a settlement is the land upon which it was built. There is a range of human and physical factors that determine the site of a settlement. The factors that affect the site of a settlement include: relief the shape of the land affects where buildings are constructed and flat land is preferable for building.

History Of Urban Geography

The earliest studies of urban geography in the United States focused on site and situation. This developed out of the man-land tradition of geography which focused on the impact of nature on humans and vice versa. In the 1920s, Carl Sauer became influential in urban geography as he motivated geographers to study a city’s population and economic aspects with regard to its physical location. In addition, central place theory and regional studies focused on the hinterland and trade areas were also important to early urban geography.

Throughout the 1950s and 1970s, geography itself became focused on spatial analysis, quantitative measurements and the use of the scientific method. At the same time, urban geographers began quantitative information like census data to compare different urban areas. Using this data allowed them to do comparative studies of different cities and develop computer-based analysis out of those studies. By the 1970s, urban studies were the leading form of geographic research.

Shortly thereafter, behavioral studies began to grow within geography and in urban geography. Proponents of behavioral studies believed that location and spatial characteristics could not be held solely responsible for changes in a city. Instead, changes in a city arise from decisions made by individuals and organizations within the city.

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Jobs In Urban Geography

Since urban geography is a varied branch of geography that requires a wealth of outside knowledge and expertise on the city, it forms the theoretical basis for a growing number of jobs. According to the Association of American Geographers, a background in urban geography can prepare one for a career in such fields as urban and transportation planning, site selection in business development and real estate development.

What Is Human Geography And Its Branches

Human geography consists of a number of sub-disciplinary fields that focus on different elements of human activity and organization, for example, cultural geography, economic geography, health geography, historical geography, political geography, population geography, rural geography, social geography, transport

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What Is An Example Of Situation

Situation is the way something is positioned as compared to its surroundings, or the status of the circumstances, or the combination of circumstances at a specific point in time. An example of situation is a house down the street from a big tree. An example of situation is having to decide between two jobs.

Cities As Centers Of Manufacturing And Services

Cities differ in their economic makeup, their social and demographic characteristics, and the roles they play within the city system. One can trace these differences back to regional variations in the local resources on which growth was based during the early development of the urban pattern and in part to the subsequent shifts in the competitive advantage of regions brought about by changing locational forces affecting regional specialization within the framework of a . The recognition of different city types is critical for the classification of cities in urban geography. For such classification, emphasis given in particular to functional town classification and the basic underlying dimensions of the city system.

The simplest way to classify cities is to identify the distinctive role they play in the city system. There are three distinct roles:

• the nature of and demand for the product
• transportation costs

Urbanization, the transformation of population from rural to urban, is a major phenomenon of the modern era and a central topic of study.

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