Urbanisation of the world

Authors:

• Jerzy Jan Parysek,
• Z. Adamczak,
• Ryszard Grobelny

Abstract

One of the method of determining the degree of urbanisation of the world may be assigning every country to separated phases of urbanisation process. In the article, five such phases were separated (according to J. Gibbs' model): initial phase of urbanisation, progressive urbanisation, advanced urbanisation, suburbanisation, and disurbanisation. Among 126 countries of the world being the subject of the studies, 84 are in the phase of urbanisation, 15 in the phase of suburbanisatioin and 27 in the phase of disurbanisation. In the urbanisation phase are all African countries, 81% Asian countries, 58.3% American and two European countries: Portugal and Albania. The initial period of urbanisation is characteristic of African countries, progressive for Asian and remaining African advanced for the countries of the Latin America. The countries of Middle, Eastern and Southern Europe as well as the countries of Caribbean Sea Basin are in suburbanisation. The phase of disurbanisation (although regionally differentiated) represent countries of Western Europe, US, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Israel and also Lebanon, Uruguay and Argentina. Among the factors differentiating character and level of urbanisation of the countries of the world are: percentage of urban population, level of industrialisation, level of development of services, and national income per inhabitant. Dynamics of demographic development, high of the initial and low for advanced phases of the urbanisation process is also important. -from English summary