Urbanization is the process of movement of citizens from once rural to urban areas in pursuit of better habitability conditions. The main result of urbanization is the growth of cities and transforming rural zones into urban ones. Human beings move to cities in order to find economic stability, which is why urbanization is the most widespread realia nowadays.
Urban primacy demonstrates statistical data about economic development of a specific area, including information about its population, services, economic activities, etc. It provides us with all the necessary information about urban primacy to size up the situation and make some conclusions. So what are the consequences of urban primacy?
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Let’s explore this problem via examples of urban situations in the cities of Tokyo, Lagos and Jakarta . Tokyo is an example of ultimateness in urbanization, as it is close to be one-half bigger than any other urban area. With more than 36 million people, Tokyo is almost 30 percent share of Japan’s overall population is centralized on 4 percent of the land area of the country. Moreover, Tokyo has overproportionate share of workers, financial services, factories, headquarters of major corporations, institutions of higher education etc. Despite the slow growth of Tokyo nowadays in comparison with the situation between 1955 and 2000, this city is likely to stay number one for 20 or more years.
Just as Tokyo, Lagos is the most populous and the most prosperous city of Africa. The population of Lagos is nearly 20 million people. Here much of the nation’s economic activity and wealth are concentrated. Besides it, urbanization process in Lagos was also rapid and effective, as in Tokyo between 1955 and 2000. This process transformed Lagos in a city with the busiest international seaport and airport, numerous infrastructural facilities and the widest range of telecommunication and road systems in Nigeria.
Now let’s move to Jakarta, the primate city of Indonesia. The population of Jakarta is nearly 10 million people. Similar to Tokyo and Lagos, Jakarta had a period of urban sprawl between 1950 and 2005. This process caused the Jakarta’s dominance as an urban area in the Indonesia. That’s why Jakarta plays the leading role as an economic, political and transportation center of Indonesia.
So is everything clear about prosperity and success of these three giants? Paradoxically, it isn’t, as urbanization has also some negative consequences, the most important of them are:
- decimating economic vitality of rural areas because of a rural-urban migration;
- creating a gap between villages and cities;
- pollution from industries;
- “the jungle of business”;
- disproportional sharing of working places and living areas.
The concept of urban primacy isn’t that easy to think about. It’s paradoxical and has both positive and negative consequences. Nevertheless, humanity should adjust to the new ways of removal the rural-urban borders and preventing the urban sprawl. We can do that by developing rural areas and equalization of level of economic development. Everything is under control if we just care about it. So let’s do our best and make everything possible for bringing our ideas into a reality.
