Sociological Perspectives: Urbanization in the Third World Vs. Urbanization in the First World

“Urbanization: A process through which the urban population of a country or of the world is growing more rapidly than the population living in rural areas.” (Sociology in Global Perspective, Ch. 5, pg. 23)

Arguably, it was the plow that brought urbanization into being. The invention of the plow enabled people who had, at one time, only been able to farm small gardens to work whole fields. People were now able to thwart weeds more efficiently and churn the soil so that seeds would grow more readily. With these enhanced means of production, people were able to create a surplus for the first time and the creation of a surplus paved the way for centralized population growth and, eventually, the urban areas we are familiar with today.

The cities we consider to be First World cities came from these meager population growths. Granted, cities have risen and fallen over and over again since the invention of the plow. The process of urbanization, however, tends to remain the same. Technology and enhanced methods create a surplus in production. Production surplus creates population growth in the area. Eventually, between the population growth in that area and the relocation of the population from rural areas, what was once a handful of people became a city or even a metropolis. The process, though seeming to happen in the blink of an eye, was fairly gradual because, until recently, technology came gradually.