The Urban Life

The Urban Life

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to expand the boundaries of our knowledge by exploring some relevant facts and figures relating to the benefits of urban life. City living has many advantages as opposed to country living. If you enjoy the excitement, the people, and are always on the lookout for something new to do, then city living is definitely for you. In a big city, there are plenty of job opportunities since there are so many more places in which you can work. Smaller towns sometimes only have a few major businesses, and many of the smaller businesses are family owned.

The employment choices in a big city can be endless. If you love to shop, big cities are the place to be. You can find almost anything you seek for while shopping. From clothing, to household items and electronics there are many different establishments available to choose from. You have many more choices, whereas in a small town you may only have one store in which to browse items. The convenience of having so many more stores also cuts down on your driving time. In many cities you can easily walk from store to store, and have items shipped to your home. In the country you may have to drive many miles just to get to the store of your choice. Town residing offers several benefits instead of nation residing. Should you benefit from the exhilaration, the folks, and therefore, are usually looking for something a new comer to perform, after that town residing is certainly for you personally. In the next section, we will examine the reason i.e. why do people choose to live in the city (Vasishth, 2002).

Discussion & Analysis

The urban world at the dawn of the 21st century has assumed special importance for two principal reasons. First, the world's population has recently crossed the threshold from being more rural to being more urban. In absolute terms and according to UN estimates, this means that of the world's population of approximately 6.8 billion, approximately 3.5 billion people (or 51%) are living in urban settings. To put this notion in historical context, consider that 58 yrs. (years) earlier only 29% of the world population lived in cities. The projection for 2050 is 70%. Second, a dramatic change in the urban hierarchy is taking place as the large cities—variously termed global cities, world cities, megacities, and so on—are beginning to dominate the urban landscape. This entry first reviews the historical development of the urban world, from the earliest settlements in Mesopotamia to the present, and the types of explanations researchers have used to describe this process. Problems in measuring the degree of urbanization are then discussed, including the concept of urban degree (the level of a country's urban concentration, expressed in percentage at a point of time). Although urbanization is occurring around the globe, there are significant differences in this process; some of the global trends are noted here. The entry concludes with a look ...