URBANIZATION
STUDY GUIDE: CRITICAL TERMS

Deliberate urbanization - the notion of creating urban places in particular areas or regions in order to stimulate growth and serve as nodes to service a surrounding hinterland.

Desakota-(Kotadesa) - regions of an intense mixture of agricultural and nonagricultural activities that often stretch along corridors between large city cores. Literally in Indonesian desa (village) and kota (city). These regions were previously characterized by dense population settlement engaged in agriculture, generally but not exclusively dominated by wet rice.

Disguised unemployment - situation in which available work tasks are split among resources (typically labor) such that they all seem fully employed, but in reality much of their time is spent in unproductive activities.

False or pseudo or over urbanization - basically larger proportions of a country’s population live in urban places than the degree of economic development justifies; while the number of people living in urban areas continues to increase there are few of the characteristics of true urbanization (development of a full set of institutions, appropriate jobs and a deep economic base). The behaviors, habits and perceptions of people remain largely influenced by their rural backgrounds and they have not made the social-cultural transition to the urban mode.

Growth poles - Two meanings are applicable. In a spatial sense this refers to a geographical node or clustering of economic activity. The implication is that spatial concentration is m ore efficient and induces growth. In an aspatial sense, it refers to a set of industries generating growth in an economy around a leading industry.

Informal sector - that part of urban economy of LDCs characterized by small competitive individual or family firms, petty retail trade and services, labor intensive method of doing things, free entry and market determined factor and product prices. It often provides a major source of urban employment and economic activity. Characterized by small scale enterprises, easy entry, adapted technology, flexible hours, no set wage and family or local organization.

Primate city - a very large city which dominates the country and far exceeds the size of the next largest. Such a city also dominates the social, cultural, economic and political life of a country. Example : Bangkok, Thailand

Underemployment - a situation in which persons are working less, either daily, weekly, monthly or seasonally, than they would like to work.

Urbanization - process which leads to a higher proportion of the total population of an area to live in cities and towns or growth in the proportion of a population living in urban areas.

Urban growth - simple absolute increase in the number of urban dwellers

Urban involution - capacity of the informal (service) sector of a city to absorb more and more labor. Thus jobs are created but such jobs are often simple and do not allow real income accumulation but rather are ‘survival’ occupations. The city’s services thus may be characterized by an internal ornateness and the job holders exhibit an unending virtuosity of special skills –all of which are under remunerated.