The New Urbanization.

Abstract

Some years ago when the first post-war population censuses began to trickle in from all over the world, it became evi dent that the fastest rates of urbanization were appearing in the developing and new nations. While many of these coun tries as a whole were experiencing a rapid population growth, their cities were growing at an even more rapid pace. Urban populations in many instances were more than doubling and tripling within a single decade, largely as a consequence of mass migration to cities. The next round of censuses, taken in i960, whose findings are now being an alyzed, reveal with even greater accuracy that this pattern of rapid urbanization of underdeveloped and often crowded nations is continuing. This is dramatic new urbanization; and it is affecting the lives of millions of people and the economics and the politics of nations. In both America and Europe a new kind of urbanization is taking place as well. In these nations of mature cities, books such as The Emerging City, Megalopolis, and The Exploding Metropolis have appeared in recent years. The city did not settle down in middle age. Indeed, it had grown fast and sprawled, and spawned new metropolitan centers from small cities in the desert.