Urban Growth & Urbanization
This term describes the increasing proportion of a country's population living in towns and cities.
What is urbanization?
These are factors that drive people away from rural areas, such as lack of jobs or services.
What are push factors?
This zone is the commercial center of a city with the highest land values and tallest buildings.
What is the CBD?
This term describes an unplanned settlement built by migrants, often lacking legal land ownership.
What is a squatter settlement?
This common urban problem refers to heavy traffic and overcrowded roads.
What is traffic congestion?
This term describes a city of over 10 million people.
What is a megacity?
These are factors that attract people to cities, such as better jobs, healthcare, and education.
What are pull factors?
This zone, located close to the CBD, often has old, high-density housing and may include factories — typical of older industrial cities.
What is the inner city?
These are basic services often lacking in squatter settlements, including clean water and sewage disposal.
What are sanitation/water/electricity services?
This term describes air, water, and noise contamination, common in rapidly growing cities.
What is pollution?
Urbanization rates are generally higher and growing faster in these types of countries compared to more economically developed countries.
What are Less Economically Developed Countries?
This term describes farming that does not provide enough work for everyone in a rural area, pushing people to migrate.
What is rural unemployment / underemployment?
This zone is found on the edge of the built-up area and may include new housing estates, business parks, and golf courses.
What is the rural-urban fringe?
This is the name for squatter settlements in Brazil.
What are favelas?
This strategy involves redeveloping old, run-down inner-city areas with new housing, shops, and infrastructure.
What is urban regeneration?
This is the term for natural increase plus migration combining to make cities grow rapidly in less economically developed countries?
What is rapid urban growth?
This term describes the gap in income, services, and opportunities between rural and urban areas, a key driver of migration.
What is the rural-urban gap?
This zone typically has lower-density housing, larger gardens, and developed later than the inner city.
What are the suburbs?
This term describes the gradual improvement of a squatter settlement by residents themselves, adding better materials and services over time.
What is self-help improvement?
This strategy involves building new towns or growth points away from a city to reduce pressure on it.
What is decentralization / new town development?
This term describes movement of people and businesses out of cities into surrounding rural areas, common in more economically developled countries.
What is counter-urbanization?
This term describes the effect on a rural area when mostly young, economically active people leave, leaving behind an ageing population.
What is depopulation / population decline?
This term describes the decrease in land value as distance from the CBD increases.
What is bid-rent theory (distance decay theory)?
This is a government strategy of providing squatters with basic infrastructure (water, electricity, roads) and legal land titles, letting residents build their own homes.
What is a site-and-service scheme?
This named scheme or city is commonly cited in IGCSE as an example of successful urban management/regeneration.
What is Curitiba, Brazil?