The increase in the proportion of the population residing in towns, brought about by migration of rural populations into towns and cities, and/or the higher urban levels of natural increase resulting from the greater proportion of people of childbearing age in cities. R. Bilsborrow (1997) discusses the problems in the definition of urbanization, and the difficulties of making international comparisons. Start with Solecki and Leichenko (2006) Environment 48, who give an excellent overview, while also discussing urbanization and sustainability. See also T. Hall (2006).

Urbanization indicates a change of employment structure from agriculture and cottage industries to mass production and service industries. This backs up the view that urbanization results from, rather than causes, social change. This is most notable in the development of capitalism and its attendant industrialization (see Fields (1999) Berkeley Plan. J. 13; try E. Soja 1989). Others argue that urbanization is the inevitable result of economic growth, with the rise of specialized craftsmen, merchants, and administrators (Fafchamps and Shilpi (2001) U. Oxford Econ. Series W. Papers 139). A further view stresses the importance of agglomeration economies; cities offer markets, labour, and capital with a well-developed infrastructure, all of which increase their comparative advantage. J. Jacobs (1969) argues that urbanization economies have been the primary driving force for the geohistorical development of human societies over the past 12 000 years.

N. Brenner and R. Keil, eds (2006) state that globalizing cities in the ‘south’, as with those in the ‘north’, although being distinctly different have a number of common traits, in particular: a colonial legacy; imposed neoliberalism and an associated socio-spatial polarization often driven by international organizations such as the World Bank and United Nations, and mass urban migration, creating extreme pressure on infrastructure and service provision.

T. Champion and G. Hugo (2003) argue that there is no longer any difference between the urban and the rural; instead, there are new forms of urbanization. Gandy (2005) Int. J. Urb. & Reg. Res. 29, 1 argues that an emphasis on cyborg urbanization (a ‘dialectically conceived version of urban metabolism relating technical developments to a broader political and cultural terrain’) ‘extends our analysis of flows, structures and relations beyond so-called “global cities” to a diversity of ordinary or neglected urban spaces’.