Lesson video

Hello, my name is Chloe and I'm a geography field studies tutor.

This lesson is called Global Trends in Urbanisation.

It forms part of the AQA unit of work, patterns of global urbanisation and the Edexcel B unit of work called Urban Change.

We're going to be looking at how the world is becoming more urbanised and what that means for some of the world's biggest cities.

Let's get started.

By the end of today's lesson, you will be able to analyse global patterns in urbanisation.

There are three key words to think about first of all.

Urbanisation is an increase in the proportion of people that live in an urban area.

A mega city is a city with a population of 10 million people or more.

And urban primacy is when one city politically and or economically dominates a country or region.

There are two parts to this lesson.

We're first going to be looking at urbanisation rates across the world and then move on to look at the size and importance of cities.

So let's look at that first one.

When considering global urbanisation and cities, we could think about how the urban population has changed over time, and equally how it will change in the future, how urbanisation is globally different, where the world's mega cities are found and how important some cities have become.

But let's start here thinking about how the urban population has changed over time and what it's going to be like in the future.

Since 1980, there's been a rapid increase in the number of people living in urban areas.

The term that we've just learnt, known as urbanisation.

For the first time in 2006, more of the world's population lived in urban areas than rural ones.

It was like a pivotal point where the majority of people changed from being rural dwellers to urban ones, and you can see it in the graph there.

This trend is expected to continue in the future.

The UN predicts that 60% of the world's population will be urban inhabitants by 2030, and 70% by 2050.

You can see that's predicted there by the dotted lines in our graph.

Let's check our understanding so far.

Why was 2006 a significant year in terms of global population? Was it when urbanisation began? Was it when urbanisation started to slow down? Was it when the majority of the world's inhabitants became urban? Or was it when the UN predicted an increase in urbanisation? Have a think about what you've just learned and take a look at the graph as well 'cause there's a big clue there and then come back to me.

Well, well done if you noticed that in the graph 2006 is when we went from a majority rural population in the world to a majority urban population.

So well done if you've got c as your answer.

Now let's look at how urbanisation is different in different parts of the world.

All regions of the world are experiencing urbanisation, but it's happening at different rates.

So different countries are experiencing urbanisation in different ways.

Let's start by looking at our HICs, our high income countries, or you might know them as developed countries.

Urbanisation in these countries happened before others, but the rate has now slowed down.

If we're looking instead at our LICs, our developing countries, these still have a very large rural population, but they're now starting to experience faster rates of urbanisation.

Our NEEs, middle income countries, or you might know them as emerging countries, this is where the picture's a little bit more mixed.

The older NEEs are rapidly urbanising while others are just beginning to urbanise.

Now, let's look at some data about particular countries.

We've got four of them here, Rwanda, Nigeria, China, and Japan, and you can see the variety of different urban populations that these countries have.

In 2023, Rwanda had 18% of its population living in urban areas compared to Japan that had 92%.

Though some countries like Rwanda are experiencing rapid urbanisation, they still have very small urban populations compared to other countries like Japan.

Now, let's check our understanding of that so far.

True or false, newly emerging economies are experiencing the slowest rates of urbanisation.

Is that true or false? Have a think, pause the video and then come back to me.

Well done if you could see that that was false, but why is it false? Yes, so some older, more established newly emerging economies have experienced very rapid rates urbanisation already, while others are only just beginning to urbanise.

There's quite a lot of variety in that particular economic group.

Our first practise task, use the graph to compare the rate of urbanisation for the three groups of countries.

So have a look at each of the three lines, see how they are similar, see how they are different, maybe even quote some data.

Pause the video and then come back to me.

Okay, let's look at the kind of answers that you could have spoken of.

<v ->You could have mentioned that all three lines in the graph</v> are rising up, showing that all three groups of countries are experiencing urbanisation.

So quite a simple observation to begin with.

But there's a really important point here, let's look back at the question.

It says, use the graph.

So you do actually have to talk about what you are seeing in the graph before you start talking about what that means in terms of urbanisation.

So in my first point here, I said all three lines on the graph are rising up, or they have an upward trend.

You need to have language, something like that.

So talking about what is in the graph, then saying what that means.

So then I've said showing that all three groups of countries are experiencing urbanisation.

I've then said the line for high income countries is much less steep than for middle and low income countries.

Again, I'm using the graph.

I'm quoting exactly what I'm seeing in the graph before I'm saying what it means.

This shows that the rate of urbanisation is much slower in high income countries.

The line for middle income countries, the pink one is mostly straight compared to low income countries.

Again, quoting directly from the graph.

This shows that there is more variation in the rate of urbanisation in low income countries.

Well done if you've got some of those ideas.

Let's now look at the second part of this lesson, talking about the size and importance of cities.

So we're going to be thinking about where in the world there are these things called mega cities, cities that have a population of 10 million people or more.

In 1950, New York and the USA was the world's only mega city.

You can see it marked on the map there with the green dot.

By 1975, so that's 25 years later, there were three more.

We've got Tokyo in Japan, Mexico City in Mexico, and Sao Paulo in Brazil.

In 2020 there were 39 mega cities.

Now, of course, I'm not going to name them all here for you, but you can see they really are covering an awful lot of the globe now.

Where though are most mega cities found? Is there a particular continent where you see more mega cities than any other? Sam has recognised that most mega cities seem to be in Asia and she's right.

Laura said, "Countries like India and China have very large populations so it's more likely that they will also have large cities." Of course, that makes sense, doesn't it? Though New York was the first mega city.

In 2024, it had a population of 20 million compared to Delhi in India which had 33 million.

So don't think that just because a mega city is one of the oldest, it necessarily means it's the largest.

The faster rate of urbanisation in newly emerging economies and lower income countries means that the number of mega cities in these countries cities are likely to grow.

The size of the existing mega cities in these countries are likely to grow too.

So there's gonna be new mega cities, and the ones that are already there are going to get even bigger.

Examples of cities that are slowly growing would be things like Los Angeles in the USA, Moscow in Russia, and Tokyo in Japan.

Cities that are steadily growing are things like Mexico City and Mexico, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and Beijing in China.

And cities that are growing rapidly, places like Lagos in Nigeria, Mumbai in India, and Manila in the Philippines.

You might also recognise here that the green, blue and pink dots also quite neatly represent the high income countries, your newly emerging economies and then your lower income countries.

True or false, the first cities to be classed as mega cities are now the largest.

Have a think about what we've already spoken of, pause the video and then come back to me.

Yeah, well done if you recognise that statement's not true, why is it not true though? Yes, most of the world's largest mega cities are now growing faster than those that were first classed as mega cities, and they've been overtaken in terms of size.

So cities like New York, although it was the first mega city, is now been dwarfed in size when you compare it to some of the Asian mega cities.

Now, let's look about the importance of some cities.

There is urban primacy if a city dominates a country or a region.

The city is known as an urban primate.

Now, the dominance could be economic, and this means that the primate city is far wealthier than any other city, or it could be political, and that means that the primate city is far more powerful than any other city.

So London is an example of an economic urban primate.

It contributes 562 billion pounds to the UK economy in a year, a huge amount of money.

The next largest contributor is Manchester and that's at a hundred billion pounds.

So you can see that London is five times stronger than Manchester in terms of its economy.

Istanbul is an example of a political urban primate.

Istanbul is Turkey's largest city by population and therefore tends to be favoured by political decisions, even though Ankara, the capital, has the Turkish parliament.

So urban primates tend to attract transport hubs like airports.

They might have government departments based there.

They will certainly attract more investment both from within the country and from outside it.

This means that new businesses will be drawn to those cities.

They might have the regional headquarters of some of those businesses or some of those government departments, and we'll also have greater amounts of employment, and that means that more workers will also be attracted to those cities.

So once a city becomes an urban primate, it's pretty unstoppable.

It keeps being fed by more investment and more workers.

Let's check our understanding of those points.

Complete the sentences with the missing words.

Do pause the video so that you can have a think about those three missing words and then come back to me when you're ready.

Right, let's see what you got.

So an urban primate is a city that dominates economically and politically.

This means they are likely to attract more workers, new businesses and government departments compared to any other city.

Well done if you've got those.

Let's now look at our final task of this lesson.

Study this map of China's 12 largest cities.

You can see here we've got actually a proportional shape map.

This means that the size of the circles is proportional to the number of people that live in particular cities, and you can use the key in order to work out how large those cities are.

Your first task, what is the population of Jieyang? You can see it's marked on the map there and so you should be able to work out how large it is.

Based on the evidence you can see in the map, why might Jieyang not be an economic urban primate? Think about what it means to be an urban primate and how those come about.

Why would Jieyang not be an urban primate? Pause the video and have a think about that particular question.

Work out how large Jieyang is as well and then come back to me with some answers.

Okay, let's look at your answers now.

First of all thinking about what the population of Jieyang is, we can see it marked on the map there, and therefore we can also see how large it is compared to the numbers in the key, 12.

5 to 20 million people is the correct answer.

I then asked you to think about why Jieyang might not be an economic urban primate? Here's my ideas that I had.

Jieyang is not the largest city in China by population.

It is also very close geographically to another city.

This means it may not be able to dominate economically because the largest cities are likely to attract new businesses and employment opportunities and investment.

Basically, Jieyang is too close to other cities and it's just not big enough in terms of population, particularly when you consider that Beijing, right at the north of the map and Shanghai, the largest city that you can see marked there really dominate China.

Let's now summarise our learning.

The world's population is increasingly becoming more urban.

This is a trend that is likely to continue in the future.

Not all regions of the world experience urbanisation in the same way.

Lower income countries and newly emerging economies have faster rates of urbanisation than higher income countries.

This rapid urbanisation has created new mega cities in those countries and especially in Asia.

Some cities exhibit urban primacy and dominate their countries or regions.

Well done.

That was a great introduction to what cities are and how they're growing really rapidly.

Maybe you've been to some of those mega cities that were mentioned.

I wonder how different they are to where you are living right now.