Understanding Urbanization: Processes, Stages, and Historical Context

Posted on Mar 18, 2025 in Geography

City Definition and Criteria

CITY:

a) Quantitative or statistical criteria are based on national statistical figures. It considers urban municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants.

b) Qualitative criteria define the city based on sociological, functional, and morphological space.

  • The impact on morphological criteria and formal aspect of the city is given by the high building density and population, and the type of buildings.
  • The functional criterion is based on urban economic activities (industry and services) other than those that are mainly farming.
  • The sociological approach has defined the city by an urban culture, but this culture has spread to the countryside through the media and the expansion of the city from the rural area, so that differences of this kind between the two spaces are increasingly smaller.
  • The spatial approach is based on the ability of the city to organize the space around it, i.e., to influence other towns and interact with other cities.

The Urbanization Process

Urbanization process: We call the process of urbanization the progressive concentration of population in the city, the current alerts, and more outstanding innovations, and the dissemination of these processes to the environment. We can differentiate several stages:

Pre-Industrial Urbanization

The preindustrial urbanization, ranging from the origins of cities at the beginning of industrialization in the 19th century. During this century, urbanization was modest, and the rate of urbanization did not exceed 10% of the urban population parallel to that of the rural population. Factors favoring urbanization were strategic military (the city controlled the country), political and administrative (it was the seat of political power and the organizational basis of the territory), economic (controlled environment resources and development of commercial and artisanal activities), and religious (religious seat of power).

Historical Sources in Spain

a) With respect to the sources, in Spain, we can speak of cities from the Phoenician and Greek colonization. Mediterranean coastal peoples created these commercial factories on the coast, exploiting mineral, agricultural, and craft resources. The Romanization led to the founding of many cities, which explains why some Spanish populations of some importance have a Roman origin, such as Barcelona. The decline of Roman power and the Germanic invasions led to a phase of de-urbanization from the 3rd century. Many cities disappeared or were converted into rural settlements or religious sites.

Middle Ages and Modern Age Urbanization

b) During the Middle Ages, there was a new phase of urban planning in two distinct spaces: Muslim and Christian.

c) Urbanization in the modern age experimented with the vagaries of the demographic, economic, and political situations of every moment.

  • In the 16th century, there was continued urban growth due to the increase in population and economic expansion.
  • In the 17th century, it stagnated due to demographic and economic crises.
  • In the 18th century, with the new dynasty of the Bourbons, the urbanization process revived by strengthening the royal power.

Industrial Urbanization

INDUSTRIAL URBANIZATION extends from the onset of industrialization in the mid-19th century until the economic crisis of 1975. During this stage, the rate of urbanization experienced large growth. The factors that intervened in this administrative and economic growth were in 4 stages:

  1. To mid-19th century, the concentration of population in cities was small, and the weakness of industrialization meant that urban growth did affect the cities chosen as capital.
  2. Since the mid-19th century to the Civil War, the growth of cities was clear, so the urbanization rate nearly doubled, and now the industry was provoking the biggest increases.
  3. The Civil War and postwar growth slowed down due to problems of deterioration and affecting the supply of cities. Also, the Franco regime favored urban growth.
  4. The stage of development was the most economical and urban growth of the 20th century. The main cause was the expansion of the industry that attracted labor from rural to industrialized cities.