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Urbanisation means an increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas compared to rural areas.

The world's population is growing rapidly and reached 79 million people in 2022. The highest rates of population growth are occurring in middle and low income countries (LICs), such as Niger, Bahrain and Equatorial Guinea. Some countries are experiencing population decline, for example Japan, Russia and Romania.

Today more than 55% of the world's population live in urban areas. The number of cities with over 10 million people is increasing. These are called megacities. There are now at least 33 megacities in the world. The table shows the top 10 megacities.

^{World Population Review 2022}

Causes of urban growth

The population of cities usually changes in one of two ways:

1. Natural increase (or decrease) - this is the difference between the number of births and the number of deaths.
2. Migration - this is the movement of people into or out of the city.

More and more people are leaving rural areas and moving to cities. This is called rural to urban migration. People move because of push and pull factors. Push factors are things that make people want to leave rural areas and pull factors are the things that attract people to the city.

Push factors

• unemployment
• lower wages
• crop failure
• poor living conditions
• poor health and education services
• few facilities
• natural disasters
• civil war

Pull factors

• more jobs
• higher wages
• better living conditions
• better education and health services
• better facilities
• less chance of natural disasters