Page 152 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

urbanization 1929

No honest historian can take part with—or against—the forces
he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human
race should be merely a fact to be grouped with other vital
statistics. • Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)

there as rural-to-urban migration accelerated in countries twentieth century had the effect of counteracting the
beginning their process of modernization. More than eight constraints of geographic space, making it possible for
hundred cities had populations in excess of 500,000. Of each generation to live farther apart and for information
these, some four hundred exceeded 1 million, of the “mil- users to rely upon information sources that are spatially
lionaire” cities forty exceeded 5 million, and sixteen of distant. As a result decentralization moved to the fore as
these had populations of 10 million or more. the dominant spatial process restructuring urban regions,
The leveling off of urbanization in the economically producing far-flung metropolitan areas and the emptying
advanced world did not mean stasis. New technologies out of the higher-density cores: commuting radii ex-
transformed the spatial pattern of urban growth and cre- tended more than 160 kilometers from traditional urban
ated new types of transnational urban networks.The con- centers and in the most densely settled areas, overlapping
centrated industrial metropolis had developed in the urban systems combined to create polycentric “mega-
nineteenth century because centrality meant lower costs lopolitan areas.” Globally the interdependencies made
for specialists who had to interact under horse-and- possible by revolutionary new information technologies
buggy conditions. But shortened distances meant higher enabled increasingly specialized urban areas to link up in
densities, increased costs of congestion, high rents, loss networks dominated by “world cities” such as New York,
of privacy, and mounting social problems.Virtually all the London, and Tokyo—centers of finance and corporate
transportation and communication developments of the control.

A street scene in Marthura, India, where Islam and Hinduism mix.