essay on effects of urbanization

What is Urbanization and What are the Positive and Negative Effects?

• April 30, 2018
• ConservationInstitute Team

Urbanization is something that eventually happens in any developing country, as the population condenses into smaller cities and towns. Agriculture begins to decline, and industrialization fuels the move from rural areas to urban ones.

There are some positives and negatives to urbanization. When done correctly, urbanization means a greater variety of opportunity for residents. If it gets out of hand, though, crime and poverty start to rise uncontrollably.

Ahead, we’ll answer the questions: what is urbanization? And: How does it affect us?

What is Urbanization?

Urbanization is when people move from rural farmland to cities and towns. Rural areas are more densely packed and offer greater opportunities to their residents in the form of higher paying jobs and a larger variety of job opportunities.

Most developing countries experience the process of urbanization, especially once they start becoming industrialized. Cities and towns become hubs of trade and culture, and more people start moving out of the country to gain access to some of these social and financial benefits.

Urbanization is a natural part of developing society, but it has its downside as well. As populations in cities and towns rise, they expand and eventually invade rural areas. We need to strike a balance with urbanization if we want to flourish as a society.

What Causes Urbanization?

Urbanization is inevitable as a country’s production moves away from agriculture and towards industry. People begin to move to the cities for better access to employment and resources.

Multiple factors contribute to urbanization, and many of them are positive. People seek the best opportunity to provide for themselves and their families, and urban environments are often the answer.

An Increase in Employment Possibilities

Urban areas have more jobs to offer and can lure people out of rural areas with the promise of a better life and a higher-paying salary. People find more jobs in virtually every industry while looking in cities and towns than they do searching rural locations.

There are more people in urban areas, which means there is more demand. The increased demand opens the door to employment opportunities for a lot of people who can’t find a job in their rural hometown.

In developing countries, employment opportunities often open rapidly through the process of industrialization. Every developing country goes through a period of industrialization, where jobs move from agriculture to production. People begin to move to cities and towns more frequently, adding to the urbanization of that country.

Another reason people flock to cities and towns is the access they present. In urban areas, people have access to better schools, healthcare facilities, better living standards, and increased trade opportunities.

There is a long list of social benefits associated with moving to urban environments. A lot of the time, people move to these areas to start a family and offer their kids access to better schooling and health care possibilities.

Trade is another form of access that is enhanced in urban areas. Cities are especially home to greater trade opportunities, and some people move to have access to more commercial options.

Modernization

There’s something inherently romantic about moving to the city. Cities are more modern than rural environments, and people are attracted to the fashion, food, and ideas flowing in the city.

People often move to cities for a fresh start. They want to learn more about culture and experience the hustle and bustle of daily city life. Some people dream of moving to the “big city” for most of their lives. They might be disappointed when they get there, but a lot of cities have a modern, romantic draw to them.

How Does Urbanization Affect Us?

Urbanization has several positive effects on our society, but too much of it is detrimental. As more people move to the city, the promised opportunities begin to dwindle. Traffic will become nearly unbearable, and poverty rises as jobs fill-up.

At some point, the cities and towns become worse than the rural areas from which people moved. Urbanization might be a natural societal process, but too much urbanization can lead to catastrophe.

Increased Employment and Access

As we stated above, urbanization isn’t all bad. It opens the door for people to move to a place that gives them more employment choices and access to better schools and health care. Cities and towns give people more upward mobility, and they’re no longer stuck in the social class in which they were born.

As people move towards cities and towns, jobs open up to attend to the influx of people. Demand rises, and supply must match, so companies hire more people to work for them. The surrounding area profits as property value rises, and people can move up the social ladder.

Overcrowding

If too many people start moving from rural areas to urban areas, the cities and towns begin to experience overcrowding. It’s at this point that the benefits of urbanization start to dwindle and the negatives rear their heads.

Since cities and towns offer the promise of greater opportunities, more rural residents move to them. Eventually, urban areas experience a tipping point where the possibilities begin to dry-up. Too many people pack themselves in a small space, and we start to see unemployment and crime rise.

Housing becomes an issue when cities and towns experience overcrowding. The housing prices rise, which is fantastic for people who own property but can be devastating for everyone else. Since everyone is looking for a job to pay rent, competition becomes nearly unmanageable. The net result is people moving to the city and can’t afford a place to live.

Unemployment and Poverty

Another effect of overcrowding of urban areas is a sharp uptick in unemployment. Jobs become scarce as people struggle to make enough money to keep up with the rising cost-of-living. It might be easy to find a position at first, but when the city or town becomes overcrowded, the competition is too stiff.

As a result, more people become unemployed or underemployed. The might be qualified to work in an office, but need to take a job working at a convenience store to afford housing.

Since rent becomes so expensive as people move to urban locations, slums and ghettos begin to develop. Area for housing dries up, and people must live in small spaces to save some money.

Where opportunities used to be plentiful, they start to become scarce. Education and social services become strained, and poverty rises. As people struggle to feed themselves, crime and drug use starts to spike. Crime isn’t isolated to urban environments, but it’s certainly more common.

What Can We Do About Urbanization?

Since urbanization has some significant disadvantages, we need to start changing the way we tackle cities and towns. Ahead are some steps our societies can use to prevent some of the negatives of urbanization.

Preventing Overpopulation

Overpopulation is one of the back-breakers for urban environments. Populations rise in cities, and the overcrowding starts to exacerbate the already existing problems.

Fighting overpopulation starts with education, so providing more educational resources is one of the best ways to combat excessive urbanization. We need to teach citizens about the overpopulation problem, as well as provide access to contraception and prevent unplanned pregnancy.

Building Better Cities

Overcrowded cities quickly become unhealthy for their residents. Pollution skyrockets when a large number of people live in a small space. The only way to limit these effects is to build cities with the environment in mind.

Sustainability is the keyword when considering “what is urbanization?” A lot of cities across the globe are unsustainable. Instead of resigning to building expensive housing and low-cost slums, we should focus on creating cities that work for everyone.

City planners should use renewable energy, water recycling, and green travel to their benefit. Local governments need to be more mindful of their city planning so their populations can thrive for the foreseeable future.

Creating Opportunity

Opportunity is one of the reasons people move to cities and towns in the first place, but they dry up quickly. One of the ways to make urban environments more sustainable is to create more jobs and opportunities as the population rises.

Companies can use the surrounding environment to their advantage to create more jobs. Promoting tourism and enhancing living spaces gives people more variety in employment. Supporting schools increases access to education, which makes for a more qualified workforce.

Keeping city residents comfortable is essential. Once they become restless, crime starts to creep in.

Keeping Urbanization Sustainable

People will eventually start moving away from rural areas and towards cities and towns. There’s nothing we can do to prevent this natural societal mobility, but we can take steps to make it more sustainable.

Creating jobs and opportunities will allow people who move to urban areas ways to make a living. There will always be a bit of poverty in cities, but we can provide education and resources to help pull people out of the cycle of poverty.

If urbanization is to continue, we need to start planning for the future. Building sustainable cities is a start, but businesses need to find ways to create more jobs for people living in the area. Urbanization is inevitable, but it doesn’t always have to be a bad thing.

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How to Write an Essay on The Effects of Urbanization on Rural Areas: 3 Best Examples

Urbanization has been a critical force shaping our global landscape, transforming traditional rural areas into bustling urban centers. But what happens to those untouched rural areas? This question is both timely and complex, making for a compelling essay topic. In this guide, we'll delve into how to write an essay on the effects of urbanization on rural areas, complete with tips and three comprehensive examples. Ready to get started? Let's dive in!

• What is Urbanization?

Before we jump into the essay examples, it's crucial to understand what urbanization really is. Urbanization refers to the increasing population in cities and towns versus rural areas. It often involves the migration of people from rural to urban settings in search of better opportunities, education, and healthcare. The phenomenon is linked to economic growth and modernization but also comes with its set of challenges.

• Why Discuss the Effects on Rural Areas?

The focus on the rural impact is essential because urbanization doesn’t just shape cities—it leaves an indelible mark on the countryside too. Issues such as population decline, loss of farmland, and disruption of local economies can significantly alter rural life. By exploring these effects, you offer a holistic view of urbanization’s overall impact.

• Writing Tips for Your Essay

Start with a Compelling Hook

Your introduction should grab the reader's attention right away. You might start with a shocking statistic, a poignant question, or a vivid description of a rural area in decline due to urbanization.

Use Clear and Relevant Examples

Concrete examples make your arguments more compelling and realistic. For instance, discussing how a specific rural town transformed over the years can be very impactful.

Be Balanced and Objective

While it’s tempting to take sides, the most compelling essays present a balanced view. Highlight both the benefits and drawbacks of urbanization on rural areas.

Structure Logically

Make sure your essay flows well. Use subheadings to break the content into digestible sections. Incorporating H2 and H3 sections can make your essay more organized and easier to read.

• Example 1: Economic Impact on Rural Areas

Introduction

Imagine a once-thriving countryside now dotted with abandoned houses and fallow fields. This is the harsh reality for many rural areas facing the brunt of urbanization. This essay will explore the economic impacts of urbanization on rural areas.

Positive Economic Effects

Firstly, urbanization can lead to job creation in rural areas. How? Through the establishment of agro-based industries and improved infrastructure, which attract investment and stimulate economic activities.

Negative Economic Effects

However, the flip side includes the depletion of local resources and the decline of traditional jobs. Many farmers find it challenging to sustain their livelihoods, leading to an exodus to urban centers.

In conclusion, while urbanization can bring economic opportunities, the adverse effects on local economies must not be ignored. A balanced approach is essential for sustainable growth.

• Example 2: Social Impact on Rural Areas

The essence of community bonds and traditions often dissipates as rural areas undergo transformation. This essay delves into the social impacts of urbanization on rural communities.

Positive Social Changes

One notable benefit is improved access to education and healthcare. Urbanization often brings better infrastructure, which can significantly elevate the quality of life in rural areas.

Negative Social Changes

Conversely, the erosion of community ties and cultural heritage poses significant challenges. Traditional rites and collective activities often give way to more individualistic pursuits, weakening social cohesion.

While urbanization can modernize rural societies, it also risks the loss of invaluable cultural and social fabrics. Striking a balance is pivotal for holistic community development.

• Example 3: Environmental Impact on Rural Areas

From lush fields to industrial landscapes, the environmental toll of urbanization is hard to overlook. This essay will examine the environmental impacts of urbanization on rural regions.

Positive Environmental Effects

Interestingly, some rural areas benefit from environmental initiatives sparked by urbanization. These include reforestation projects and the introduction of sustainable farming practices.

Negative Environmental Effects

On the downside, urbanization often leads to deforestation and pollution. As cities encroach into the countryside, the natural habitats suffer, leading to loss of biodiversity and natural beauty.

In summary, while some environmental benefits may arise from urbanization, the negatives often outweigh the positives. It’s crucial to adopt sustainable practices to mitigate the environmental consequences.

Urbanization is a double-edged sword, offering both opportunities and challenges to rural areas. Whether it’s economic, social, or environmental, each impact holds significant weight. Through balanced analysis and compelling examples, your essay can explore the multifaceted effects of urbanization on rural areas. Remember, a well-structured and objective essay will not only inform but also engage and persuade your readers.

Happy writing, and may your essay illuminate the subtle nuances of this important topic!

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Urbanization and Its Effects: An In-depth Exploration for IELTS Learners

Urbanization, a phenomenon deeply intertwined with global development, frequently appears as a topic in the IELTS Writing Task 2. By studying past exam questions, we can ascertain that urbanization is a recurrent theme. This suggests …

Written by: IELTS Mentor

Published on: August 5, 2024

Table of Contents

Past IELTS Exam Questions on Urbanization

• “Urbanization mainly benefits the urban area, while it has various disadvantages for rural communities. Do you agree or disagree?”

“As countries become more developed, urbanization increases. How does urbanization affect the cities themselves and the people living there?”

• “Rapid urbanization can bring numerous benefits, but it also causes several problems. Discuss both views and give your opinion.”

Selected Task for Detailed Analysis

Analyzing the task.

This essay prompt asks you to consider both the positive and negative effects of urbanization on urban areas and their inhabitants. The primary task is to analyze the impacts thoroughly, covering various aspects such as social, economic, and environmental factors.

Model Essay

Urbanization is an inevitable consequence of economic development, resulting in profound impacts on cities and their residents. While the expansion of urban areas can drive innovation and economic prosperity, it also introduces challenges that require careful management.

One of the primary benefits of urbanization is the enhancement of economic opportunities. Urban centers are hubs of industry, commerce, and services, attracting investments and fostering job creation. The concentration of talent and resources in cities stimulates innovation and entrepreneurship, driving societal progress. For example, cities like San Francisco and Tokyo are at the forefront of technological advancements, largely due to their urbanized infrastructures and skilled workforces.

However, urbanization can exacerbate social inequalities. As cities grow, the demand for housing and amenities can lead to increased living costs. This phenomenon often results in the marginalization of lower-income groups, who may find themselves in substandard living conditions. A prime example is the proliferation of slums in metropolises like Mumbai, where the stark contrast between wealth and poverty is glaring.

Urban Slums Mumbai

Environmental degradation is another crucial issue associated with urbanization. The construction of new infrastructure and the surge in vehicular traffic elevate pollution levels, significantly affecting air and water quality. Additionally, urban sprawl often leads to the loss of green spaces, adversely impacting biodiversity and contributing to climate change.

Despite these challenges, well-planned urbanization can mitigate its adverse effects. Implementing sustainable urban planning practices, such as the development of green buildings and efficient public transportation systems, can alleviate environmental impacts. Policies aimed at inclusive growth can address social disparities, ensuring that urbanization benefits all residents.

In conclusion, while urbanization brings numerous advantages, including economic growth and innovation, it also poses several challenges such as social inequality and environmental degradation. By adopting comprehensive urban planning and inclusive policies, cities can harness the benefits of urbanization while minimizing its detrimental effects.

(Word count: 297)

Key Considerations When Writing on Urbanization

• Balanced Discussion: Ensure you discuss both positive and negative impacts.
• Cohesive Structure: Organize your essay into clear paragraphs with topic sentences.
• Specific Examples: Use real-world examples to reinforce your arguments.
• Complex Sentences: Employ a range of complex sentence structures to demonstrate advanced grammar skills.
• Vocab Variety: Utilize a diverse vocabulary pertinent to Urbanization And Its Effects .

Vocabulary to Remember

• Marginalization (noun): [ˈmɑːr.dʒɪ.nə.laɪˈzeɪʃən] – the process of making a group or class of people less important or relegated to the fringes of society.
• Urban sprawl (noun): [ˈɜːr.bən skrɔːl] – the uncontrolled expansion of urban areas.
• Inclusive (adjective): [ɪnˈkluː.sɪv] – aiming to include and integrate all people and groups.
• Infrastructure (noun): [ˈɪn.frəˌstrʌk.tʃər] – the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society.
• Biodiversity (noun): [ˌbaɪ.oʊ.dɪˈvɜːr.sə.ti] – the variety of plant and animal life in a particular habitat.

In summary, urbanization and its effects are multifaceted, encompassing both benefits and challenges. By comprehensively preparing for this topic, you can enhance your ability to tackle similar questions in the IELTS Writing Task 2 exam. Future topics to prepare for could include the role of technology in urbanization, comparisons between urban and rural living conditions, and the impact of international migration on urban areas.

By mastering these elements, you’ll be well-equipped to excel in your IELTS academic writing. Good luck!

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What Are the Causes, Effects, and Solutions for Urbanization?

City living may seem like the norm, but its damaging effects may overwhelm us all unless it becomes sustainable.

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Did you know that over half of the people on Earth are living in a city right now? Urbanization is the runaway trend for human habitation, with people abandoning rural life and flocking to cities. But with city life comes city problems, and urbanization is increasingly identified as the driver of many environmental and social concerns.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the causes, effects, and solutions for urbanization, including a breakdown of the sustainable cities strategy and how future current and future generations might implement this.

What is urbanization?

Urbanization is the phenomenon of the sustained mass movement of people from the rural areas of a country or region to cities and suburbs.

What is an urban area?

The US Census defines an urban area as a continuously built-up region with a population of 50,000 or more. These towns and cities usually have a central built-up area with a surrounding densely settled urban fringe.

The urbanization phenomenon

Due to this massive population shift to cities, their size had grown, leading to an increasing proportion of land being requisitioned and developed for housing and amenities for an expanding urbanized population. Conversely, rural populations have gradually declined as more and more people leave for the cities.

Urbanization is taking place all over the world. It is as common in more economically developed countries as it is in lesser economically developed countries. According to the World Bank , more than 56% of the world’s population lives in cities. This means that more than 4.4 billion people call some part of a city their home. The urbanization trend is set to continue, with a peak of over 70% of people living in urbanized environments by 2050.

The scale of the urbanization issue

Urbanization is a global issue that has led to a marked change in how people work and live.

Here are some urbanization trends statistics:

• According to Our World in Data , urbanization is greatest in the world’s wealthiest regions, with North America, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia having up to 80% of the population living in cities.
• Middle-income regions, including Eastern Europe, South America, and Southern Africa, have between 50 and 80% of their population living in cities.
• Only 1.5% of all land on Earth is urbanized!
• But 1.5% of the Earth’s land (cities) is responsible for more than 50% of global productivity.
• Up to 50% of people in the Americas, Puerto Rico, Israel, and Japan live in urban agglomerations that consist of defined cities and metropolitan areas connected by large areas of urban sprawl.

But this is changing quickly. By clicking on any country shown in the World Data map, you can see how urbanization rates change with time. For many countries, you see a rapid migration of populations into towns and cities.

It’s all about people

Urbanization is primarily about the movement of people rather than the buildings and infrastructure that they inhabit. This phenomenon is really about people leaving to seek better living conditions, work and opportunities, and an environment that appears to offer them.

Money moves to cities, too

The expectation of a better life by moving to cities is understandable, as more than 80% of global GDP is generated in cities. Urbanization is a key characteristic of global economic development. Wealth and productivity are concentrated in cities, leading to an uplift in the per capita level of income for residents and trickle-down rises in the standard of living.

Cities are hubs of regional infrastructure, often with industrialized districts where manufacturing and other productive activity take place. This industrialization of economies was historically the primary driver of net migration from rural communities to cities, as plentiful work was available.

In countries with a service-based economy, the industry is not the primary pull, but the migration for job opportunities has continued.

What are the causes of urbanization?

There are significant drivers of urbanization that are similar throughout the world. Here are the leading identified causes for the population shift to towns and cities:

1. The industrialization of economies

The 18th-century industrial revolution that was born in Great Britain has been gradually exported around the world. As countries industrialize their economies, they build infrastructure to process raw materials and manufacture various goods for domestic use and export.

This necessitates the creation of jobs to supply the manpower for factories and other industrial facilities. Industrial workers also need nearby housing and amenities, drawing other workers to establish urban communities.

The industrial district also develops infrastructure related to the movement of goods, trade, and commerce. This catalyzes the development of towns and cities around areas of industry.

2. Employment opportunities

A city is a man-made ecosystem that is driven by human activity. Continuous labor is required for every aspect of urban existence, with jobs spanning administration to waste management. This means plentiful job opportunities enable incomers to establish themselves quickly in cities.

Urban jobs typically pay a regular wage that is usually higher than can be earned in the countryside. This is a powerful draw for people living a physically demanding rural lifestyle, which is seasonal and often has unpredictable earnings.

3. Infrastructure and amenities

Another cause of urbanization is the attraction of the advanced infrastructure that urban areas contain. Towns and cities are developed environments where sustained investment has created robust networks of roads, telecommunications, power, fresh water access, sanitation, and sophisticated supply chains for the products and services that city dwellers require.

People want to move to cities to take advantage of these services that may not be available in many rural parts of the world. Urban areas provide residents with access to key amenities like schools, hospitals, shops, and entertainment and recreational facilities that can provide residents with a better quality of life.

4. Centralization of commerce

Through industrialization and the manufacture and trade of goods, cities quickly become commercial centers, with people heading into them to buy and sell. The high and concentrated population increases the demand for goods and services which can be delivered to the population for profit.

The high level of financial transactions in cities and towns necessitates the presence of banks and other financial institutions that concentrate wealth. Many cities even have their own stock exchange or markets for the large-scale trading of commodities and other investments.

5. Centralization of education, culture, and government

Urbanization has offered people a massive uplift in their quality of life, enabling them to pursue pursuits beyond subsistence living. Cities are often well-designed and government, making them centers of political power.

In addition, leading academic institutions use the infrastructure and amenities to educate the population and attract the leading thinkers within a nation. Entertainment venues like theaters, bars, and sports facilities shape a cohesive identity and culture for a city’s inhabitants. These factors make the concept of a city aspiration to many people.

6. Modernization

Urban areas are also attractive because they are associated with a modern way of life. Cities attract a highly literate, savvy, and well-informed population with access to the most advanced technology a nation can offer its people. New fashions, political ideas, and creativity often come from urban districts, which may be more liberal due to their wealth and opportunity.

Cities absorb large numbers of people who want to live an urbanized lifestyle. Many people are even prepared to endure living in slum-dwellings for many years to escape rural poverty, and to obtain the chance for social advancement.

7. Displacement of peoples

People do not always voluntarily find themselves living in urban areas. Throughout history, the displacement and concentration of people have been associated with war, famine, land grabs, and slavery.

As people disperse from rural areas, the agricultural and natural resource potential of rural areas is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The world’s five biggest landowners , including the Roman Catholic Church, Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart, and Mudanjiang City Mega Farm own nation-sized quantities of land.

8. Natural resource exploitation

Previously underdeveloped rural areas can be rapidly transformed into urbanized communities through the discovery of valuable natural resources like precious metals, minerals, or oil. Resource exploitation requires massive investment infrastructure that attracts workers and their dependents.

The increased productivity and wealth creation of mining towns can lead to them becoming cities, with diversified real estate, like commercial buildings and shops, and robust transport links (road, rail) to other urban areas.

9. Population increases

Global population growth accelerated in the second half of the 20th century and currently stands at over 7.8 billion people. Many nations house most of their population in urban areas because it offers the opportunity for high-density housing that can accommodate large numbers of people in a relatively small area rather than lower-density rural housing.

The key effects of urbanization

Towns and cities attract people because of their opportunities and convenience. But urbanization has numerous advantages, and the disadvantages of rapid and often unplanned urban growth. are increasingly recognized. Here are some of the most important effects of urbanization :

An uplift in living standards for many

Cities can significantly uplift living standards for larger populations of people than rural areas. This is primarily because of the centralization of a region’s economic and human resources, driving wealth creation and innovation.

Cities provide ready access to essential services like education and healthcare. In particular, studies have shown that infant mortality is significantly reduced in urban areas because of quick access to health services.

Authorities and private companies can also easily provide cheaper access to fresh water, sanitation, and utilities in the city than in expansive underdeveloped rural areas.

The development of slums and squatter settlements

One of urbanization’s most important negative effects is the development of slum districts. These are unofficial extensions to towns and cities that offer the cheapest housing opportunities for poor people who have migrated to an urban area.

Slums are found worldwide but are most concentrated in developing countries. The UN has suggested that up to a third of urban inhabitants live in slums. These urban districts are characterized by the following:

• Poor housing is often erected using discarded materials.
• Overcrowded high-density neighborhoods.
• Few utilities and amenities as the neighborhoods are informally erected or squatter communities.
• No waste disposal or sanitation facilities, leading to disease outbreaks.
• Few public services creating impoverished, segregated communities with little hope of improving their circumstances.

Increased demand for water and sanitation

Though access to water and sanitation is one of the key benefits of urbanization, the rate of urbanization can outstrip these essential resources. Many poorer countries not only have to provide water to metropolitan areas but also have to meet rising demand from slums and other informal urbanized settlements.

A continuous rise in urban population leads to a massive increase in the demand for water, stressing reservoir and groundwater supplies. In addition, municipal authorities have the challenge of dealing with the wastewater generated by a large and concentrated population. Many developing countries have little to no sewage infrastructure in place.

Providing sanitation infrastructure for slums is difficult because the neighborhoods are unplanned and heterogeneous. Any pit latrines or septic tanks that are installed are often inadequate and can become a health risk, contaminating freshwater supplies or overflowing and spreading disease.

Generation of waste and pollution

The concentrated human population in urban areas negatively affects the surrounding environment significantly. This is not because of the people themselves but because of how they live. Urban lifestyles consume natural resources and generate waste and pollution. Negative effects include:

• Air pollution : Traffic in urban areas is often congested, leading to increased air pollution and a sustained deterioration in air quality in urban centers. Air quality is also degraded by burning wood for heat and cooking, and exhaust fumes from industrial activity.
• Water pollution : In many developing countries, surface water and watercourses in urban areas become open sewers and polluted with solid waste. Without regulation and enforcement, businesses will also discharge pollutants into waterways, leading to long-term contamination of surface and groundwater supplies . 
• Municipal solid waste : The waste generated by urban populations needs to be carefully managed, or it will pollute the environment. Many urban areas and slums are affected by the open dumping or burning of waste . This releases pollutants that are extremely hazardous to human health. 

Damage to human health

Though people in towns and cities often have ready access to healthcare facilities, urbanization can have devastating long-term effects on human health. The main adverse health effects of urbanization come from the pollution and waste that is generated by the artificially concentrated population.

Poor urban inhabitants face the health challenges that come with degraded living conditions and limited clean water and sanitation. But poor air quality or waterborne disease outbreaks can affect city-dwellers of all socioeconomic levels. Sadly, the youngest and most vulnerable members of urbanized communities are often affected most.

Pressure on food supplies

The massive movement of people to cities places pressure on the supply and distribution of food. People living in cities are no longer producers of their own food. As consumers, they are reliant on purchased food that needs to be brought into the city.

Food security in urban areas is vulnerable to the market prices for different foods. As demand rises, food can become expensive, especially as the availability of agricultural land is increasingly eroded by urban sprawl . Freshwater pollution can also harm fish stocks that urban communities may rely on for food.

Social problems

Urban environments can also foment entrenched social problems, often driven by socioeconomic deprivation and slum proliferation. Built-up urban environments that are not properly managed and secured can allow criminal activity like drug abuse and prostitution to proliferate and dominate specific parts of a town or city.

Poorer residents of cities may find themselves working long hours, leading to strain on family and community relations. Overcrowding and poor living conditions deteriorate the quality of life, health, and prospects of younger urban dwellers. In developing countries, neglected children may become street children missing out on education.

Are there solutions for urbanization?

Organizations like the World Bank and the UN have partnered with governments and stakeholders to investigate and develop solutions for urbanization. The current consensus is that a new type of urban environment known as a sustainable city should be developed.

What is a sustainable city?

Sustainable cities and communities are a reimagined form of urbanization with environments that have been deliberately created to be environmentally and resource sustainable. Governments have the aspiration that sustainable cities will be resilient and productive environments with impeccable green credentials.

According to the Energy and Environmental Building Alliance , sustainable cities have the following characteristics, which each serves as solutions to the problems caused by urbanization: 

• A safe and accessible public transportation network with city-wide coverage encourages people to leave their cars at home.
• Neighborhoods that are easily biked or walked, for a reduction in short car journeys, which are the most polluting. 
• A network of electric car charging stations to increase the adoption of electric vehicles in urban environments.
• Integration of renewable energy sources .
• Development of energy-efficient, sustainable architecture that features living roofs, solar panels , insulation , and smart building management technology.
• Infrastructure to maximize the recycling of waste.
• Access to green spaces and community gardens for the cultivation of food.

In line with the UN’s sustainable development goals, sustainable cities will be inclusive, going a long way to ending the extreme poverty that still affects many parts of the world. Organizations are currently investing and lending money to kickstart the creation of these cities, with the World Bank funding over 230 projects with $33.9 billion in loans and investment project financing.

How sustainable cities are being created

The transition towards sustainable urban environments is already underway. Many of the Sustainable Development Goals are currently being integrated into governmental policy and legislation with little public consultation. However, here are the strategies that are currently being used to develop sustainable cities:

1. Develop new planning policies

A key driver of sustainable cities will be the planning policies used to create and shape them. Urbanization problems like sprawl and slums have arisen because of an absence of urban planning, zoning, or governance.

The movement for sustainable cities is therefore targeting municipal authorities with training, white papers, and diagnostic tools that can help them make better-informed planning decisions. With strengthened planning systems, cities can manage their assets better and develop the sustainable urban environments of the future.

2. Release funding for sustainable development projects

Transforming existing urban environments into sustainable cities and developing new ones will require trillions of dollars, far beyond most countries’ GDP, including the US. This means that financial resources for these cities will have to be raised through borrowing money from banks like the IMF and World Bank. 

The financing costs for sustainable urbanization are estimated to cost more than $5 trillion per year, especially if efforts are made to develop low-emission infrastructure. Developing countries will require the most funding, which could lead to them becoming indebted if they do not derive an economic advantage from the development.

3. Build infrastructure to connect regions and distribute wealth

The centralization of wealth, administration, and governance has long been a feature of cities. However, to ensure that the economic uplift of sustainable cities benefits an entire nation, infrastructure should promote interconnectivity between settled regions.

Strategists specializing in territorial and spatial development advise that infrastructure should level up inequalities within cities and lagging regions to accelerate growth and make jobs accessible to workers without migrating over long distances. By harnessing agglomerations, nations can leverage the productivity of key cities to boost economic growth!

4. Build for environmental resilience

Cities in many parts of the world are vulnerable to the damaging effects of natural disasters like tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Developing countries are most affected, with natural disasters costing their economies at least 1% of their GDP annually.

Sustainable cities will feature architectural design and engineering that can withstand disaster conditions. City authorities also have to upgrade their building regulations to ensure they are built in line with the most advanced construction standards.  

The hazardous environments and precarious housing conditions of slums mean that they suffer the most damage if a natural disaster occurs. Urban housing development needs to consider slum communities and embrace an inclusive home-building approach.

5. Invest in the poorest and most marginalized communities

Tackling marginalization is key to creating more productive and inclusive urban environments. Stakeholders are keen to target investment at eradicating entrenched urban poverty and slums. Architects and designers will be required to develop safe and secure housing that can accommodate people who will be displaced as slum neighborhoods are redeveloped.

An important issue has been the lack of service access and connectivity access that slum and informal settlement communities face. By investing in internet access, and other services, these city residents can participate in the digital economy and find opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty.

Another area where inclusivity will be integrated into sustainable cities is accessibility for people with visible and hidden disabilities, maximizing participation by everyone in these innovative urban environments.

In conclusion

The urbanization trend shows no sign of slowing down. As cities become the predominant setting for human life and activity, these built-up environments need to change to be safe, and sanitary and lessen their environmental impact.

However, countries are likely to become heavily indebted to international banks to achieve the sustainable cities proposed as the solution for urbanization. Without a reasonable return on investment, through economic growth and shared prosperity, sustainable cities cannot be sustained.

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Home Essay Samples Social Issues Urbanization

Causes and Effects of Urbanization in the World

Table of contents, introduction, how serious is the situation of urbanization, the causes of urbanization, the effects of urbanization.

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19 Urbanization Examples

Sanam Vaghefi (PhD Candidate)

Sanam Vaghefi (BSc, MA) is a Sociologist, educator and PhD Candidate. She has several years of experience at the University of Victoria as a teaching assistant and instructor. Her research on sociology of migration and mental health has won essay awards from the Canadian Sociological Association and the IRCC. Currently, she is am focused on supporting students online under her academic coaching and tutoring business Lingua Academic Coaching OU.

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Chris Drew (PhD)

This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.

Urbanization refers to the growth of urban city living and the movement of populations from rural to urban areas. It results in a larger proportion of people living in urban areas compared to rural areas.

The key effects of urbanization have included social change, a shifting economy, and environmental degradation.

During the industrial revolution, mass urbanization led to less intergenerational households, shifts in employment from agricultural to factory work, and increased reliance on supply chains for consumption (Hussain & Imitiyaz, 2018)

Sociologists study urbanization to understand its effects on society and their implications. We also aim to identify the underlying social processes that drive urbanization (namely: migration, globalization, and economic development).

Urbanization Definition

Urbanization refers to the process of internal migration where people move from rural areas to urban areas. This leads to an increase in the proportion of a population living in cities and towns.

Scholarly definitions include:

“[Urbanization is] the increase in the proportion of the population residing in towns, brought about by migration of rural populations into towns and cities, and/or the higher urban levels of natural increase resulting from the greater proportion of people of childbearing age in cities.” (Mayhew, 2015)

“The trend toward increasing numbers of people living in cities.” (McKinney & Schoch, 2003)

“the process of mass-scale migration from the countryside to cities.” (Cowan, 2021)

From these definitions, we can confidently draw two key features of urbanization:

• Growth of city population and population density.
• Proportional increase of city populations compared to rural populations.

According to Mayhew (2015), this process began in the 18 th Century (that’s 1700-1799) but boomed in the 19 th Century (1800-1899) as a result of industrialization. It’s also seen by other human geographers, such as Inglehart and Welzel (2005), as a key feature of modernization .

Urbanization Examples

• London (during the Industrial Revolution): One of the first cities to experience urbanization was London. Between 1700 and 1800, London grew from 600,000 to 1.1 million residents. This was due to industrialization and the growth of urban factories that had a strong need for labor. People started moving to London in search of work in the factories.
• Mexico City (Megacities): Urbanization is the cause of the growth of megacities such as Tokyo, Mexico City, and Mumbai, which have populations of over 10 million people. In such cities, people spend their lives living in (and raising children in) high-rise apartment buildings.
• LA and Sydney (Suburbanization): This refers to the expansion of suburban areas around cities, leading to the development of large metropolitan regions such as the Greater Los Angeles Area and the Greater Toronto Area (Hirt, 2007). Another example is Sydney Australia, where urban sprawl stretches for hours so people can still live in self-standing houses rather than apartments.
• Shenzen (Emergent Urban Centers): Urbanization can be seen in the development of new urban centers in China, such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou, as part of the country’s rapid economic growth. These cities spring out of nowhere and become huge cities rapidly, partly thanks to the Chinese government’s control over economic development.
• Medellin (Informal Settlements during Urbanization): Urbanization can also cause informal settlements to emerge. What we might call ‘slums’, these settlements often come about due to lack of affordable housing or poor population management by local governments. A key example of this is the Communa 13 district of Medellin.
• Seoul and Singapore (Smart Cities): “Smart cities” is a term used to refer to cities that have embraced technology to help overcome growing strains. Seoul, for example, has embraced technology to help more efficiently manage traffic flow and urban security.
• Vancouver and San Francisco (Gentrification): The phenomenon of gentrification involves the displacement of lower-income residents from urban neighborhoods due to rising costs of living. Generally, it involves revitalization of poor but well-positioned areas close to city centers but pushes people out of suburbs that their families had lived in for generations (Redfern, 2003). This is currently occurring, for example, in the downtown eastside of Vancouver and occurred in the 1990s in downtown San Francisco.
• Singapore (Urban Tourism): Due to their bustling mixes of cultures, large urbanized cities have become major destinations for travelers seeking cultural and entertainment experiences. A key example is Singapore, a city-state that takes millions of tourists a year to see its beautiful gardens and sporting events.
• New York City (Urban Cultural Movements): Urbanization has also led to the emergence of new cultures. A key example is urban culture in New York City, which led to hip hop music, which today is a mainstream genre of music.

Urbanization by City (Population Changes)

Effects of urbanization.

Sociologically, urbanization has a number of important implications:

• Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism : It often leads to the formation of diverse and heterogeneous communities, with people from different ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds coming to the city for economic opportunities.
• Changing Social Relations: Urbanization can lead to the development of new forms of social organization , such as the growth of labor unions or the emergence of new political movements. According to Durkheim (1982), agrarian societies are organized via shared values ( mechanical solidarity ) whereas urbanized societies achieve cohesion due to mutual interdependence and respect for diversity ( organic solidarity ).
• Infrastructure Strain: The growing concentration of human populations into urban areas often requires increasingly complex city infrastructure that requires significant urban planning. Affected infrastructure includes transportation routes (with increasing need for public transit), communication, waste management, and logistical supply chains (Hussain & Imitiyaz, 2018).
• Inequality: urbanization can also create new forms of inequality , such as the concentration of poverty in certain areas or the creation of exclusive enclaves for the wealthy.

These sociological aspects of urbanization highlight the complex and dynamic nature of urban life, and the need for careful study and analysis to understand its impact on society (Hussain & Imitiyaz, 2018).

Case Studies: How Urbanization Changes Nations

1. suburbanization.

Suburbanization refers to the growth of satellite suburbs around cities. It is an effect and sub-category of urbanization.

When cities grow, working- and middle-class residents begin to move from city centers to suburban areas in search of land at a lower cost per square meter, more space, and a quieter lifestyle for raising their children (Hirt, 2007).

This process has significant social, economic, and cultural implications. Centrally, it causes strain on causeways into city centers and logistical strain throughout the city. It may also cause destruction of environments and native animal habitats on city peripheries (Hirt, 2007).

2. Gentrification

Gentrification is a feature of contemporary urbanization. It refers to the process of wealthier residents moving into working-class inner-city suburbs.

This process tends to be of concern because it displaces low-income residents from their neighborhoods. Often, these residents – who may have lived in the neighborhood for generations – end up living in suburbs that become too expensive.

Furthermore, gentrification often leads to over-policing of working-class people in their own neighborhoods (Redfern, 2003).

Overall, gentrification tends to change the cultural identity of a space, dislocates the working-class, and pushes the disadvantaged farther away from city amenities that they need to help them to achieve social mobility .

3. Environmental Effects

Urban planners need to identify ways to mitigate the heat-generating effects of large cities, as well as help to decrease concentrations of pollution and fog.

Some scholars (e.g. Satterthwaite, 2009) argue that urbanization can exacerbate climate change. Urban areas create heat islands, alter the natural water cycle, and encroach on the natural environment (Satterthwaite, 2009).

But urban areas can also play a critical role in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Sustainable urban areas require greenways, resource saving practices, policies and practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficient appliances, and renewable energy sources (Satterthwaite, 2009).

4. Urban Social Movements

With the increasing concentration of populations in urban areas, social movements emerge that attempt to directly address the unique concerns of urban dwellers.

Key concerns could include housing affordability, mitigating the effects of gentrification, achieving equality and justice in multicultural cities, and seeking more environmental sustainability in cities (Pickvance, 2003).

Urban social movements may engage in protests and demonstrations, participate in community organizing, and engage in volunteerism.

Of key concern to sociologists – and especially urban ethnographic researchers – is exploration of the power struggles and social conflicts that shape urban life and lead to urban social movements (Pickvance, 2003).

Urbanization Pros and Cons

Urbanization refers to the growth and development of urban areas, and it has far-reaching sociological consequences. It leads to the formation of cultural pluralism , new challenges for urban planning, and even new consequences for social justice.

Urbanization also has environmental impacts, including climate change and habitat destruction. Suburbanization and gentrification are two key processes associated with urbanization that reflect changing patterns of social and spatial inequality.

Despite these challenges, urban areas are also sites of social innovation, creativity, and cultural diversity. 

Cowan, R. S. (2021). Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil.  Technology and Culture ,  62 (3), 916-917. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2021.0115

Durkheim, É. (1982)  The Rules of Sociological Method  Free Press. (first published. 1895).

Hirt, S. (2007). Suburbanizing Sofia: Characteristics of post-socialist peri-urban change. Urban Geography , 28 (8), 755-780. doi: https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.28.8.755

Hussain, M., & Imitiyaz, I. (2018). Urbanization concepts, dimensions and factors. International Journal of Recent Scientific Research , 9 (1), 23513-23523.

Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The human development sequence . Cambridge University Press.

Krause, M. (2013). The ruralization of the world. Public culture , 25 (2 70), 233-248. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2020575

Mayhew, S. (2015).  A dictionary of geography . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McKinney, M. L., & Schoch, R. M. (2003).  Environmental science: Systems and solutions . Los Angeles: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Pickvance, C. (2003). From urban social movements to urban movements: a review and introduction to a symposium on urban movements. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research , 27 (1), 102-109.

Redfern, P. A. (2003). What makes gentrification ‘gentrification’?. Urban Studies , 40 (12), 2351-2366. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0042098032000136101

Satterthwaite, D. (2009). The implications of population growth and urbanization for climate change. Environment and urbanization , 21 (2), 545-567.

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Urbanization and the Environment Research Paper

Introduction, ecosystem and ecology, general environmental effects of urbanization, works cited.

The United Nations (UN) articulates that approximately half of the entire population in the world now lives in urban areas. Due to urbanization, the number, the size, the kind and the compactness of cities, in addition to the effectiveness of their management of the environment are major concerns for attainment of the international sustainability.

The rural-urban migration, which the main explanation behind urbanization, is because of two major causes namely: the rural exclusion aspects (poverty, shortage of land and job chances) and the pleasant aspects of the city (job provisions and social amenities). All the same, there is a common view that urbanization has enormous effects on the environment.

Soil and water pollution, the most conspicuous ones, arise because of the lack or insufficiency of management on industrial waste in addition to the insufficiency of control on chemical pollutants (Rimal 54-56). Other noteworthy impacts associated with urbanization are the decrease of the carrying capacity, viz. the size of urban land cannot sustain such a huge population size as compared to an equal land in rural areas due to a greater environmental pressure associated with urban population.

Moreover, urbanization has also a great impact on the food sector, because it takes up farming land with the growth of cities and decreases food supply since farmers progressively migrate to the cities. This research paper discusses urbanization with respect to a specific environment issues.

According to the Ecological Society of America (ESA) ecology signifies the study of the associations involving living beings, comprising humans, with the physical environment (Liu, Rendong, and Xuefeng 4-7). Consistent with the ecology discipline, physical environment denotes things like water, soil, and temperature just to mention a few. An ecosystem signifies a specific organizational level holding a varied set of living as well as non-living constituents that are self maintained.

The ecosystem is controlled by negative and positive feedback loops. Additionally, ecosystems are typified by energy flows and motility of substances on pathways. The species of both plants and animals make up the living constituents of the ecosystem while water, soil, temperature, and air are some of the non-living constituents onto which living constituents rely for continued existence.

The aforementioned natural constituents of ecosystems represent environmental resources from where a range of gains can be produced for human utilization. Ecosystems give services to all living beings. Environmental supplies of ecosystem in addition to their services to people are endless and valuable. A number of the basic resources to the natural equilibrium of the ecosystem and that could be affected by human infringement are biodiversity, water, and soil.

Effects of urbanization on ecosystem supplies

The association involving the urbanization and the environmental factors has been commonly examined from two diverse points of view. In a number of studies, urbanization is the core of research because it is an international progression.

This progression not only signifies a concentration of residents, but also a profound conversion of the rural areas, and their ensuing environmental significance (Haiying and Lian 141-145). In contrast, in a number of other studies, urbanization is perceived as a secondary subject, since there are no suitable general associations between urbanization, concentration of residents, and the environment.

The ecosystem services offer numerous of responsibilities and services that generate significance for human consumers and are vital to the maintenance of human development. Nevertheless, people have blotted out the subsistence and significance of ecosystem services with the intention of hurriedly celebrating urban illusion.

Research articulates the actuality of rising disengagement of people with nature as existing in two pervading worlds. One of these worlds is the natural world that has been falsified in a pot for a long time. The second world is the artificial world, the world constituted of cities and infrastructure, lands and artifacts that human beings have been designing over the past few years (Adachi et al. 1441-1443).

The development and success of the artificial world has appeared from the outlay of the supplies of the natural world. Designed jumble people have made their environs, cities, and ecosystems owing a lot to the deficiency of a consistent viewpoint, vision, and performance of plan that is stuck in a wealthy comprehension of ecology.

A big gap exists between the two different worlds. In a bid to fill this gap and connect people with nature, an environmental perspective is required in the planning process. Management, renewal, and stewardship policies could be employed into the land utilization planning as well as judgment making course.

Effects of urbanization on the soil

Soil has been illustrated as an intricate and active ecosystem that upholds physical practices and chemical changes fundamental to a terrestrial existence. Soil offers services to every kind of being that range array from micro-organism to animals and plants. Despite its biological or environmental services, the value of soil is extremely established in the organization of human development via cultural, religious conviction systems.

The significance of soil can be connected to the very continuation of human development as developments neither vanish overnight nor prefer to be unsuccessful. Normally, they weaken and then decrease as their soil wanes over years (Feng et al. 7187-7203). Soil is vital to the prolonged existence of any development (prehistoric or digital) and thus human beings ought to value soil like the living basis for material affluence and take care of it as an asset and a precious inheritance.

Nevertheless, the significance and worth of soil are undetected and not emphasized in the modern society as a result of their ease of use and a great quantity and most significantly since soils are at all times underfoot. As a result, soils have been utilized without regard to their loss or ruin that at all times carries with it noteworthy environmental and economic outlays.

Land utilization transformation propelled by urbanization has placed cities on soils best fitted for other applications like growing of food, forests and wetlands. Urbanization changes the natural, physical, and chemical aspects of soil and thus degrades its excellence in a manner that it brings about loss of plants, pitiable water infiltration, water wastage, soil erosion, and buildup of heavy metal. Soil excellence is frequently corrupted by soil erosion.

The strength of slopes (whether natural or non-natural) establishes the susceptibility of a slope collapse or a landslide. Violation of the city and vegetated lands for urbanization reasons and the development of constructed areas and road systems into steeper landscape weakening slopes bring about slope failures. For instance, landslides in the United States cause one to two billion dollars in destructions and over 25 deaths every year (Buczkowski, Douglas and Deborah 1-9).

Urbanization as well as recreational advancement into hillside regions places more human beings and possessions into the possibility of landslide dangers. in recent times, a section of Pacific Coast Highway, which is in a hilly landscape of California, was shut for approximately one week because of likely landslide and a Pierce County road in the United States was closed for fixation after a mudslide.

Effects of urbanization on water supplies

Water denotes the most essential natural supply that is renewable but limited. The supply of surface water is mainly rivers, lakes, wetlands, and streams. The water sources are in or neighboring to the land occupied by human beings. For that reason, land activities by the people affect water sources greatly.

The significance of water is not restricted to human utilization, but it is covers the operation of the entire universe. Water is a complete ecosystem (aquatic) that gives habitation for countless of identified and unidentified kinds of flora and fauna. Water cycles constantly flow into the environment and take care of the universe.

Population increase, rising tendency of urbanization, utilization of land, and climatic change have had a great impact on water accessibility and value in the United States in such a manner that the country’s water sources are progressively turning out to be limited.

In numerous sections of the nation, clashes over water supplies have already happened and the condition will worsen in the future. Water quality has considerably bettered in past few years because of the government directives and environmental fortification programs like the Clean Water Act (Andersen, Lasse, and Sten 595-611).

However, over a third of rivers and other sources of water in the United States are damaged or polluted and the majority of the aquatic ecosystems in conjunction with their biota have been reduced or eradicated because of non point resource pollution of water as a result of urbanization.

Effects of urbanization on biodiversity

In general, biodiversity signifies the wealth of animal and plant types that are indigenous to a given habitat or environment. Every species in an ecosystem provides particular role via life cycle and food chain. An alteration in species variety changes the biogeochemical sequences and has an impact on the general operation of the system. Therefore, the sustainability, operation, and constancy of ecosystems rely on biodiversity (Johnson et al. 34-36).

Urbanization changes habitat in the course of construction of houses, roads, and cutting down of vegetation just to mention a few. Residential improvement connected with expansion of infrastructure and utilities creates a threat to the natural world through loss, deprivation, and disintegration of habitat.

Habitat variation as a result of urbanization is so harsh and prevalent that it brings about the jeopardy and loss of species together with a long-term loss of habitat. Despite decreasing the affluence of indigenous species, urbanization augments the domination of non-indigenous species in a habitat thus bringing about biological homogenization.

Urban residents interrelate with their environment and change the environment in the course of their utilization of food, water, soil, and energy.

Consequently, the contaminated urban environment has grievous impacts on the health and excellence of existence of the urban population. Human beings residing in urban dwellings have “very diverse patterns of consumption when compared to dwellers of rural areas; for instance, urban residents use more foodstuff, durable goods, and energy when judged against rural populations” (Li et al. 129).

The urban residents in China eat over two times as much pork like the rural residents who were keeping the pigs. Urban residents not only eat more foodstuffs, but they as well eat more durable and expensive goods. The expensive consumption in cities is attributable to deprived environments where farming is not practiced that make the purchase of commodities expensive.

The use of energy as a result of urbanization helps in forming heat islands that are capable of altering local climatic patterns and climate downwind. The formed heat islands occurrence is produced since urban areas give out heat back into the environment at a pace 15% to 30% less as compared to rural areas.

The mixture of the raised energy expenditure and variation in radiation signifies that urban areas are warmer (Li et al. 131-133). The formed heat islands turn out to be snares for ecological contaminants. For example, murkiness and fog crop up with a higher incidence. To prove this, it has been witnessed in the United States that rainfall is 5% to 10% greater in urban areas, but the occurrence of snow in urban areas is less frequent.

The occurrence of heat islands as a result of urbanization has turned into an increasing concern. Occurrence of this trend in addition to concern regarding it has grown over the years. A heat island occurs as a result of industrial and urban regions increasing and ensuing in bigger production and withholding of heat. A huge quantity of solar energy that has the effect on rural regions is used in vaporizing water from plants and soil.

In urban areas, where vegetation in addition to uncovered soil is very minimal, most of solar energy is taken up by urban constructions and mineral pitch (Johnson et al. 37-39). Consequently, less cooling in urban areas brings about greater surface heat as compared to rural regions. Automobiles and factories discharge further heat in the urban atmosphere.

Additionally, urbanization has a great impact on the wider urban environments. Regions Urbanization normally creates more rain, but decreases the percolation of water and impoverishes the groundwater levels. In this regard, runoff happens more hurriedly with higher climax flows, and flood volumes rise. Water contamination increases and moves downstream (Johnson et al. 40-42).

The majority of the impacts of urbanization on the environment are not essentially one-dimensional. Larger urban regions do not at all times produce more environmental difficulties and small urban regions could stimulate greater troubles. a great deal of what establishes the degree of the environmental effects is the way urban residents conduct themselves, their eating and living practices and not merely how big they are.

Solid waste

Management of solid waste signifies appropriate collection, transportation, recycling as well as dumping of solid wastes. In most cities in the world, solid waste dumping is ineffective or non-offered. Solid wastes like those from hospitals and industries are more challenging than domestic wastes as they frequently includes dangerous and poisonous chemicals, in addition to bacteria and other harmful micro-organisms.

The chemicals present in the solid waste require special concern when shifting, storing, transporting and discarding them. When these chemicals are let to go into water sources, they can pollute the entire water cycle and have unpleasant effects. Some solid wastes are illegally dumped at open spaces, near residential houses and at times find their way to rivers (Rimal 57-60).

Occasionally they are accumulated to set land sites though the safeguarding of water sources and groundwater is not effective. When solid wastes are dumped in the open or in set disposal sites, horrifying environmental troubles come up. With the falling of the rain, most of the solid waste is carried into water resources.

Additionally, the solid waste could bring about the contamination of ground together with surface waters as a consequence of leaching. Solid wastes could at times be utilized for landfill although decayed solid waste can equally contaminate groundwater by way of seepage, mainly in moist tropics.

Seepage of the waste into water bodies can have vast health effects in developing nations where the application of water in wells for drinking is widespread. Moreover, the waste burning (incineration) causes yet a different environmental danger. People desire disposing of the solid wastes and do so by burning them in the open.

Since urbanization causes people to live close together in residential houses, the gases produced by the burning waste are directly inhaled. These gases could give rise to various respiratory illnesses. Uncollected solid waste as well ruins the environmental outlook of cities.

The environment in the urban areas is a significant aspect in shaping the excellence of life in cities and the effect of urbanization on the wider environment. A number of environmental setbacks in urban areas that comprise of insufficient water and sanitation, inefficient waste disposal, and industrial contamination are known to cause serious health problems. Unluckily, decreasing the problems and improving their impacts on the urban residents are costly (Rimal 61-65).

Apart from the aforementioned respiratory illnesses, other health effects of environmental troubles comprise contagious and parasitic sicknesses. Capital outlays for constructing better environmental infrastructure, for instance, establishing hygienic public transportation networks like passageway, and constructing additional hospitals are more in urban areas, where costs surpass those offered in rural areas.

Moreover, land prices in cities are higher owing to the contest for space as a result of urbanization. Finally, not every city has the types of environmental situations or health troubles as others. Some studies affirm that pointers of health troubles, like rates of infant mortality, are common in urban areas that are developing quickly than in the ones where development is slower.

Urbanization signifies the physical development of urban areas as a consequence of rural migration in addition to population rise in cities.

Research has found that approximately half of the total population in the world currently lives in urban areas. Despite everything, there is a general view that urbanization has huge effects on the environment. Soil, biodiversity, solid waste, and water pollution, the most conspicuous environment effects, arise as a consequence of the lack or insufficiency of management on industrial waste in addition to the insufficiency of control on chemical pollutants.

The use of energy as a result of urbanization causes the formation of heat islands that are capable of varying local climatic patterns (Adachi et al. 1445-1454). When solid wastes are deposited in the open or in set disposal sites, horrifying environmental troubles crop up. With the onset of rainfall, most of the solid waste is carried into water resources. Smaller urban areas are generally found to have more environmental problems than big cities.

Adachi, Sachiho, Fujio Kimura, Hiroyuki Kusaka, Tomoshige Inoue, and Hiroaki Ueda. “Comparison of the Impact of Global Climate Changes and Urbanization on Summertime Future Climate in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.” Journal of Applied Meteorology & Climatology 51.8 (2012): 1441-1454. Print.

Andersen, Hans, Jensen Lasse, and Engelstoft Sten. “The End of Urbanization? Towards a New Urban Concept or Rethinking Urbanization.” European Planning Studies 19. 4 (2011): 595-611. Print.

Buczkowski, Grzegorz, Richmond Douglas, and Gordon Deborah. “The Effect of Urbanization on Ant Abundance and Diversity: A Temporal Examination of Factors Affecting Biodiversity.” PLoS ONE 7.8 (2012): 1-9. Print.

Feng, Jin-Ming, Yong-Li Wang, Zhu-Guo Ma, and Yong-He Liu. “Simulating the Regional Impacts of Urbanization and Anthropogenic Heat Release on Climate across China.” Journal of Climate 25.20 (2012): 7187-7203. Print.

Haiying, Ma, and Lina Lian. “Rural-urban Migration and Urbanization in Gansu Province, China: Evidence from Time-series Analysis.” Asian Social Science 7.12 (2011): 141-145. Print.

Johnson, Pieter, Jason Hoverman, Valerie McKenzie, Andrew Blaustein, Katherine Richgels, and Marc Cadotte. “Urbanization and wetland communities: applying metacommunity theory to understand the local and landscape effects.” Journal of Applied Ecology 50.1 (2013): 34-42. Print.

Li, Yangfan, Yan Zhou Li, Yalou Shi, and Xiaodong Zhu. “Investigation of a coupling model of coordination between urbanization and the environment.” Journal of Environmental Management 98.1 (2012) 127-133. Print.

Liu, Yaobin, Li Rendong, and Song Xuefeng. “Grey Associative Analysis of Regional Urbanization and Eco-environment coupling in China [J].” Acta Geographica Sinica 2.1 (2005): 4-7. Print.

Rimal, Bhagawat. “Urbanization and the Decline of Agricultural Land in Pokhara Sub-metropolitan City, Nepal.” Journal of Agricultural Science 5.1 (2013): 54-65. Print.

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• Pollution Due to Urbanisation Essay

Essay on Pollution Due to Urbanisation

Below, you will find an essay on pollution due to urbanisation (long) and also a short essay on pollution due to urbanisation. While urbanisation has its positives, it is imperative to look at every object according to its pros and cons. Here are two essays on pollution due to urbanisation of 400-500 words and 100-200 words, respectively. We will discuss the importance of urbanisation for countries, and how urbanisation is polluting the world.

Long Essay on Pollution Due to Urbanisation

Urbanisation is a great concept which is required to develop any country. It refers to the concept of urbanising remote areas by building infrastructure which then brings about development. Infrastructure refers to all the buildings and institutions which are necessary for economic development to take place in an area. For example, educational institutions like schools, colleges, vocational learning centres are part of the infrastructure. Healthcare facilities such as hospitals and clinics, employment opportunities, food security, etc. are also part of the infrastructure of a country.

It is seen very often that a big corporation sets up shop in a rural area, and around this, infrastructure is built, and development and urbanisation take place. Jamshedpur is an example of such a place, where Tata Industries set up shop many years ago and made the area highly developed. Thus, urbanisation definitely encourages the people of a place to have a better life by giving them more opportunities to achieve good life through education, jobs, etc.

On the other hand, it must be duly noted that urbanisation is one of the leading causes of pollution in today’s world. There are several different kinds of pollution, such as air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution and noise pollution. The facets of urbanisation contribute to each one of these types of pollution in one way or another. Factories and mines contribute to air pollution through the fumes that each of them emits into the air. The damage done to the water and soil around factories because of their flowing septic is harmful to both humans as well as aquatic life. Additionally, the noises that come from mines, the whirring of machinery in factories, etc. contribute to noise pollution.

Additionally, it is not only big industries that contribute to pollution due to urbanisation. Part of urbanisation is also the development of roads, which means more cars, buses, two-wheelers, three-wheelers, trucks, etc. on the road. These all contribute to noise pollution because of the incessant honking, and also to air pollution, because of the fumes that all motor vehicles emit. Even when we are stuck in traffic in an auto, it becomes difficult to breathe because of the fumes which surround us on the roads. If we are finding it difficult to breathe, imagine what so many fumes are doing to our planet.

Short Essay on Pollution Due to Urbanisation

150 Words Paragraph On Pollution Due to Urbanisation

Pollution takes place when air, water or soil becomes contaminated with unwanted substances. Air pollution takes place because of the fumes of factories and motor vehicles on th e road. Soil pollution and water pollution take place due to the septic waste being released into soil or water that surrounds a factory. Even oil spills are a major reason for water pollution, and all kinds of pollution can be very dangerous for living beings. Another type of pollution is noise pollution, which comes from the honking of cars, loud sounds in factories, the passing of aeroplanes and trains, etc.

Urbanisation is a result of the need to achieve economic development. It refers to when a relatively rural or remote area is made more urban by constructing roads, hospitals, schools, offices, etc. In this way, development is a result of urbanisation, which is extremely good for all countries.

However, all the great factors that urbanisation brings in, such as factories to work in, motor vehicles to drive, and so much more, all of these contribute to pollution more and more. Even though urbanisation is very important for a country, it is important to address all the kinds of pollution

Pollution is one of the most pressing concerns confronting our civilization today. When their environment deteriorates on a daily basis, humans face major challenges. The mixing of any toxic element or contaminants in our natural environment is referred to as pollution. Many contaminants are introduced into the natural environment as a result of human activities, contaminating it too dangerous proportions. Pollution is caused by a variety of factors, one of which is urbanisation.

The negative aspect of urbanisation is the manufacturers, which emit a great deal of pollution. Their equipment emits smoke into the environment, pollutes water streams and the surrounding land, and makes a lot of noise. As a result, there is a lot of pollution as a result of urbanisation, and it is extremely destructive to the environment when it first begins.

The majority of the pollution in our environment is due to urbanisation. It's because factories are springing up all over the place, there are a lot more cars on the road now, and so on.

Pollution Due to Urbanisation

Our mother planet is choking, and we are unable to do anything about it. Today, we confront several issues, one of which is pollution. Pollution occurs when a contaminating substance is introduced into our environment and pollutes our natural resources. There are numerous causes of pollution, most of which are caused by humans. Natural resources and habitats have been depleted as a result of our activities.

Urbanisation is one of the primary causes of human pollution. Pollution levels began to rise when humans began to construct cities and industrialization developed. Human needs continue to expand, and we loot our mother planet to meet them. As a result of development, many beautiful valleys, mountains, hilltop stations, and woods have become pollution carriers. Trees have been felled, rivers and lakes have been poisoned, and natural reserves have been exploited.

As a result, we now live in severely polluted cities where daily life has become increasingly challenging. As a result of urban pollution, we are experiencing a variety of health issues, the worst part of which is that we are fully unconscious of it. It is past time for us to take steps to reduce pollution and make the world a better place for future generations.

Urbanisation is a really great step forward for any country, and it is and should be the main aim of all countries. All people around the world should have access to proper healthcare, education, sanitation, nourishment and safety, and urbanisation is how we can help achieve this goal. However, in the process of meeting this goal, we cannot forget that pollution due to urbanisation does take place, and is very dangerous for the planet and, therefore, all species living on earth in the long run.

FAQs on Pollution Due to Urbanisation Essay

1. What are the pros and cons of urbanisation according to the essay on pollution due to urbanisation?

The essay on pollution due to urbanisation says that urbanisation is good and is vital for a country, but can also be harmful for the environment. Urbanisation brings in better education, better healthcare facilities, better roads, and better infrastructure in general. However, it improves the lifestyles of human beings at the cost of hurting the environment by putting more contaminants into air, water and soil in the form of toxic fumes and septic waste. Thus, urbanisation is important, but it has to be brought about in a more sustainable manner.

2. How can we reduce pollution due to urbanisation?

At the individual level, there are some very simple ways to reduce pollution due to urbanisation. To reduce air pollution, we can choose to walk, carpool, or use public transport instead of taking a taxi. Garbage should not be thrown on roads and in water bodies, in order for us to stop soil and water pollution. We should also not honk on roads unnecessarily, to curb noise pollution. Unless the big companies and industries do not decide to take a stand and do what’s good for the environment, we will have to keep relying only on individual measures.

3. What are the different types of pollution and their causes?

Pollution in Cities: Types and Causes

Air Pollution: The air in metropolitan places is constantly polluted with harmful compounds, making breathing increasingly dangerous. The air in cities is suffocating. The air is polluted by smoke from autos, factories, and power plants. There are also other contaminants in the air, such as chemical spills and other harmful substances.

Water Pollution: Natural water supplies are becoming increasingly scarce in metropolitan areas, and those that do exist are becoming progressively contaminated. There is a lot of waste dumping in lakes and rivers, such as residential and industrial waste. A lot of trash is washed into the rivers when it rains.

Soil Pollution: Toxic mixtures in the soil are causing ecosystem disruption.

Noise Pollution: Cities are among the noisiest places on the planet. Noise pollution is caused by a variety of sources, including traffic noises, loudspeakers, and other undesirable noises, which cause a variety of health problems.

Radioactive Pollution:   Nuclear power facilities' unintentional leaks represent a serious concern.

Visual Pollution: Signs, billboards, screens, high-intensity lights, and other forms of overexposure to sights in cities can also be highly unsettling.

There is also ' Thermal pollution ,' which is created by an excess of heat trapped in the earth's atmosphere.

4. How can pollution due to urbanisation be controlled?

One can implement the following methods to reduce pollution caused by urbanisation: 

Conserve Energy: People in urban areas always use more energy than people in rural areas. The use of energy results in numerous types of pollution. One of the most effective strategies to reduce pollution is to conserve energy wherever possible. When you are not using an electrical appliance, turn it off. This tiny step can make a tremendous difference.

Reduce water waste: We waste a lot of water on a daily basis, which might have negative implications. We must make every effort to utilize as little water as possible.

Plant more trees: Urban areas are the ones with the least amount of greenery. It's a good idea to have a kitchen garden and a little lawn near your house.

Green belts: The government can assist by declaring specific sections in each city as green belts, allowing trees and other plants to flourish freely.

Use fewer loudspeakers: Using fewer loudspeakers can significantly minimise noise pollution. It's also a good idea to turn down the music level at functions after a specific amount of time has passed.

Indoors: In cities, home interiors are likewise heavily contaminated. We must also have some plants inside our homes to filter the polluted indoor air.

Industrial trash: Factory owners must make every effort to avoid dumping industrial waste in lakes or rivers. The government can also enact legislation in this regard.

5.  What problems are caused due to Urbanization?

The necessity for open space to develop roads, buildings, and bridges, among other things, resulted in widespread deforestation. To accommodate the ever-increasing population, trees were cut down, fields were cleared, and built new space. It goes without saying that tree cutting is a major source of pollution. The high population density resulted in a scarcity of everything, including space and natural resources such as water and coal.

A number of serious challenges have arisen as a result of the interaction of the urban population with the environment. The spending habits and lifestyles of the urban people had a significant impact on the environment. Consumption of food, energy, and water is all higher in cities. Cities have much more filthy air than rural areas. This is mainly due to the increased use of automobiles and the expansion of industries and factories that pollute the air.  We utilise electricity to power almost all of our equipment.

6. What is urbanisation, and how is it caused?

The population shift from rural to urban regions, the resulting decline in the number of people living in rural areas, and the methods in which societies adjust to this transition are all referred to as urbanisation. It is basically the process by which towns and cities evolve and grow as more people choose to live and work in central locations.

Individual, community and state activity result in either organic or planned urbanisation. Living in a city can be culturally and economically advantageous since it can provide more options for access to the labour market, better education, housing, and safety conditions, as well as lower commute and transit time and costs. A healthy urban environment is characterised by density, proximity, diversity, and marketplace rivalry. However, there are also negative social consequences associated with urban living, such as alienation, stress, higher living costs, and mass marginalisation. Suburbanization, which is occurring in the greatest developing countries' cities, can be seen as an attempt to balance these negative aspects of city living while still giving access to a huge number of shared resources.

7. What is the Impact of Urbanisation in Indian Cities?

The following are the main effects of urbanisation on environmental quality in Indian cities:

According to the entire slum population in India in 1991, 41 per cent of the overall slum population lived in cities with populations of one million or more, which account for 27 percent of the country's total population.

According to the current situation of municipal solid trash creation and collection situation in Indian metropolitan cities, Maharashtra creates the most municipal solid garbage (11,000 tonnes per day), followed by Delhi (8700 tonnes per day) in 2019, both of which are expected to rise in the near future.

In India and other Metropolitan Cities, the number of automobiles on the road is increasing.

In India and other metropolitan cities, the number of automobiles on the road has increased. The usage of vehicles has increased by 10% or more on average, posing a significant threat to air pollution.

Water resources are dwindling day by day as a result of rising population, wasteful usage, and a lack of conservation. Huge amounts of wastewater enter rivers as cities and industries grow, contaminating river streams that are used for drinking and other reasons.

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Between 2018 and 2050, the world’s urban population is expected to grow by 2.5 billion, an addition of about 170,000 people a day, according to estimates by the United Nations . This is equal to adding a city the size of Providence, Rhode Island, every day for the next 41 years. A majority of this growth will occur in developing countries.

As Earth’s population continues to grow, remote sensing data offer a view from space of the impacts of urbanization, whether that's changes in the landscape through deforestation, the creation of heat islands through sunlight-absorbing building materials, or the modification of air quality through increases in pollutants. NASA also curates sociological data to provide more context around people’s living standards and population distribution.

Our data include resources useful to the study of urbanization and urban sprawl, such as metropolitan statistical areas, heat estimates, nighttime lights datasets , and population density grids. These products help scientists understand the ecological, sociological, and economic impact of growing cities around the world.

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• Open access
• Published: 23 October 2024

Indirect and direct effects of nighttime light on COVID-19 mortality using satellite image mapping approach

• Daisuke Yoneoka 1 ,
• Akifumi Eguchi 2 ,
• Shuhei Nomura 3 , 4 , 7 ,
• Takayuki Kawashima 5 ,
• Yuta Tanoue 6 ,
• Masahiro Hashizume 4 &
• Motoi Suzuki 1  

Scientific Reports volume  14 , Article number:  25063 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

• Epidemiology
• Infectious diseases

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of understanding environmental factors in disease transmission. This study aims to explore the spatial association between nighttime light (NTL) from satellite imagery and COVID-19 mortality. It particularly examines how NTL serves as a pragmatic proxy to estimate human interaction in illuminated nocturnal area, thereby impacting viral transmission dynamics to neighboring areas, which is defined as spillover effect. Analyzing 43,199 COVID-19 deaths from national mortality data during January 2020 and October 2022, satellite-derived NTL data, and various environmental and socio-demographic covariates, we employed the Spatial Durbin Error Model to estimate the direct and indirect effect of NTL on COVID-19 mortality. Higher NTL was initially directly linked to increased COVID-19 mortality but this association diminished over time. The spillover effect also changed: during the early 3rd wave (December 2020 – February 2021), a unit (nanoWatts/sr/cm 2 ) increase in NTL led to a 7.9% increase in neighboring area mortality ( p  = 0.013). In contrast, in the later 7th wave (July – September 2022), dominated by Omicron, a unit increase in NTL resulted in an 8.9% decrease in mortality in neighboring areas ( p  = 0.029). The shift from a positive to a negative spillover effect indicates a change in infection dynamics during the pandemic. The study provided a novel approach to assess nighttime human activity and its influence on disease transmission, offering insights for public health strategies utilizing satellite imagery, particularly when direct data collection is impractical while the collection from space is readily available.

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Introduction.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has presented significant challenges in various domains including politics, economy, science, and public health worldwide. Although the World Health Organization declared an end to the global Public Health Emergency for COVID-19, its impacts continue to persist, leaving behind numerous lessons to be learned. These lessons range from the importance of rapid and effective public health responses to understanding the long-term socio-economic repercussions of such a global health crisis.

By the end of June 2023, Japan experienced large-scale COVID-19 cases and the subsequent mortality, pervading all prefectures 1 , 2 . The continued study to understand the factors that contributed to controlling COVID-19 infections is critical for better preparedness and response strategies for any future pandemics. In addition to vaccination, social distancing remains a key approach in curbing the virus transmission through human interactions. Concurrently, environmental factors such as the presence of green spaces 3 , air quality 4 , and climatic conditions including temperature and humidity 5 , 6 , have been indirectly linked to COVID-19 transmission. For example, green spaces may facilitate safer social engagement relative to indoor settings, potentially diminishing transmission risks 3 . Nevertheless, these environmental factors do not directly measure the intensity of human interactions, which are crucial in understanding the spatial dissemination of the disease 7 .

In contrast to these environmental factors, high-resolution nighttime light (NTL) imagery, captured from satellites, has emerged as a more direct indicator of human interaction intensity 8 , significantly influencing COVID-19 transmission dynamics 7 , 9 , 10 , 11 . Prior studies showed that NTL satellite imagery has been employed to estimate population density 12 , economic growth 13 , Gross Domestic Product 13 , 14 , urbanization 15 , and so on, all of which bear relevance to COVID-19 transmission dynamics. Furthermore, exposure to more intense NTL has been associated with elevated obesity prevalence 16 , 17 , and obese individuals may be more prone to severe COVID-19 consequences 18 , 19 . Some studies have analyzed NTL changes during social distancing periods in several large cities including China and the U.S 10 , 20 . Nighttime light exposure potentially facilitates the spread of COVID-19 by extending social activities and disrupting natural sleep patterns, leading to increased human interactions and altered behavior in densely populated areas 7 , 9 , 11 .　However, there has been little spatial analysis concerning how NTL attracts human aggreggation and consquentially propagates infections spatially. More specifically, there is a lack of detailed analysis regarding the “spillover effect” of NTL: that is, how illuminated area attracts individuals, thereby facilitating the transmission of infections to the neighboring areas and impacting health outcome therein. This gap in research highlights the need for a more focused study on the spatial dynamics of NTL’s role in influencing human gatherings and the consequent diffusion of COVID-19.

The aim of this research was to investigate the relationship between COVID-19 mortality and NTL intensity, which is indicative of higher nocturnal activity and human gatherings, with a focus on estimating the spillover effect of NTL on the virus transmission to the neighboring area in Japan. Additionally, this research aimed to examine the variations in this association throughout different pandemic waves, with a particular focus on contrasting earlier waves against subsequent ones dominated by variants such as Delta and Omicron.

Literature review in spatial spillover effect

The spillover effect, which occurs when the impact of a dependent variable or covariates in one area extends beyond its borders and affects neighboring regions, has been studied in various fields such as crime 21 , air pollution 22 , human mobility 23 , 24 , child health 25 , obesity 26 , primary care services 27 , hospital treatment 28 and infectious diseases 29 , 30 , 31 . To assess these effects, several methods have been developed, including spatial Durbin model (SDM) and spatial Durbin error model (SDEM) 32 . The SDM includes a spatial lag of the dependent variable and covariates and the SDEM extends the SDM with a spatial lag of the error term. From a theoretical perspective, due to the difference in the model specifications, SDM implies global spatial spillovers (i.e., the impact goes to not only neighbors, but neighbors to neighbors, neighbors to neighbors to neighbors, and so on), while SDEM leads to local spatial spillovers (i.e., the impact goes to immediate neighbors) 33 . In the context of COVID-19, researchers have studied the presence of spillover effects from different perspectives. Some studies focused on the spatial spread of COVID-19 by examining the relationship between cases in different regions 34 , 35 . These studies suggest that factors such as deaths, recoveries, or vulnerability in one area could influence the number of confirmed cases in nearby areas. Another approach is to investigate the role of non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as social distancing or lockdown, whch highlighted the significant spillover effects of these interventions in areas with both geographic and social network proximity, as well as considerable differences in the spillover effects produced by various types of places 36 , 37 , 38 .

Data and outcome variable

This study used national mortality (vital statistical) data obtained from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare between January 2020 and October 2022. It is a population-based database that includes all deaths in Japan, governed by the Japanese law, “Japanese Family Registration Law”. This dataset includes demographic information including the date of death, age at death, and place of residence, covering all deceased individuals in Japan, irrespective of nationality, as well as those who had a residence card. COVID-19 deaths were defined on the ICD10 classification basis (U071). The primary outcome variable was the number of COVID-19 deaths per 10,000 persons in the following analytical model.

Environmental from satellite image

NTL data was derived from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) at a spatial resolution of 463 m (source: https://ngdc.noaa.go ). It is ultra-sensitive to low-light conditions, offering superior spatial and temporal resolution for nighttime lights compared to previously provided nighttime lights data. To ensure accuracy, the data is filtered to remove effect from stray light, lightning, lunar illumination, and cloud-cover using the VIIRS Cloud Mask product, although anomalies such as aurora, fires, boats, and other temporal lights 39 , 40 . Then, averaging was conducted on a monthly basis. Figure  1 shows the average NTL over the study period. Additionally, we extracted daily Absorbing Aerosol Index (AAI) data from Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite launched in October 2017 by the European Space Agency to monitor air pollution. The AAI is calculated using measurements at 354 nm and 388 nm wavelengths and is sensitive to changes in Rayleigh scattering in the UV range, allowing for the monitoring of aerosol plumes from dust, volcanic ash, and biomass burning events 41 . These environmental covariates, which are shown to be associated to the COVID-19 mortality 4 , 7 , were then aggregated at the municipal level. The time trend of NTL during the study period is shown in Supplementary file 2 .

Environmental covariates

Environmental factors such as average daily temperature and humidity 42 , 43 were extracted from the Japan Meteorological Agency. The data were sourced from one weather station within each prefectural capital city with hourly measurements across 24 h being averaged to derive daily temperature values.

Socio-demographic covariates

Furthermore, we obtained prefecture- or municipality-level census variables, identified as potential confounders in the relationship between NTL and COVID-19 outcomes, from the Regional Statistics Database provided by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in Japan 3 , 7 . These variables included the proportion of residents aged < 15 and ≥ 65 as of 2015, average household taxable income in 2020, the number of restaurants in 2006, the proportion of single-person households in 2020, the proportion of employees in tertiary industry in 2009, and population density (per 1km 2 ) in 2015.

Data processing on outcome and covariates

A directed acyclic graph (DAG) elucidating the assumed causal pathway is presented in the supplementary file. The spatial distributions of these covariate values are shown in the Supplementary file 3 . All data, including both the outcome variable and environmental covariates, were aggregated according to the following time periods corresponding to five distinct COVID-19 waves in Japan 44 : Wave3 (December, 2020 – February, 2021), Wave5 (July – September, 2021, dominated by Delta variant), Wave6 (January – March 2022, dominated by the Omicron variant (BA.1/BA.2)), Wave7 (July – September 2022, dominated by the Omicron variant (BA.5)), and the Reference period (WaveRef, April – June 2022). These Waves were selected for primary two reasons: they had a significantly large number of deaths, and they overlapped with periods when nation-wide prevention measures were implemented in Japan. In particular, during the study period, Wave7 was the largest wave with around 1.5 million COVID-19 cases. WaveRef is set between Wave 6 and Wave 7, a period with relatively few COVID-19 cases, corresponding to the normal-life period. In addition, Wave3 overlapped with Japan’s second state of emergency (January 8 to March 21, 2021), Wave4 overlapped with the fourth state of emergency (July 12 to September 30, 2021), and Wave6 overlapped with the second implementation of the Priority Measures to Prevent the Spread, commonly known as “Manbo” (January 9 to March 21, 2022).

Spatial analysis

Japan was divided into 1902 municipalities at the time of the study, organized within 47 prefectures. Geographical analysis in this study was conducted at the municipality level. Geographical coordinates defined as the centroid of the area (measured by latitude and longitude) were extracted from map data for each municipality. Baseline data were reported as mean (standard deviation, SD) and linear regression was used to calculate the p -for-trend by the strength of NTL.

Firstly, empirical Bayes estimates of mortality per 10,000 persons were calculated to visually inspect how the COVID-19 death were geographically distributed or concentrated in Japan during the study period. The advantage of use of empirical Bayesian estimates is that it can incorporate the information from the spatial neighborhood areas to smooth the mortality toward the local neighborhood mean, stabilizing estimates for municipalities with small numbers of deaths 32 , 45 . The spatial neighborhood was defined as the k -nearest neighborhood method with k  = 8. Then, to test whether the neighbors were spatially associated with one another, global Moran’s I statistics and the p -values were calculated by each wave.

Secondly, Spatial Durbin Error Model (SDEM), which includes the lagged error term and the lagged dependent variable as well as the independent variables, was used to model the spatial direct association between NTL and COVID-19 mortality and spillover effect of NTL to neighboring municipalities. The SDEM can be formulated by:

where Y represents a \(\:N\times\:1\) vector consisting of one observation of the outcome variable (i.e., the number of COVID-19 deaths per 10,000 person) for every municipality ( \(\:i=1,\dots\:,N\) ), W is the \(\:N\times\:N\) row-standardized adjacency matrix defined by the Gaussian kernel, \(\:\rho\:\) is a (scaler) parameter to control the spatial association of Y , X denotes an \(\:N\times\:P\) matrix of covariates with the \(\:P\times\:1\) vector of parameter \(\:\varvec{\beta\:}\) , \(\:\varvec{\theta\:}\) is a \(\:P\times\:1\) vector of parameter indicating the spatial spillover effect of X , \(\:\varvec{u}\) is a \(\:N\times\:1\) vector of error term with a parameter \(\:\lambda\:\) to control the spatial association of the error term, and \(\:\varvec{\epsilon\:}\) is a \(\:N\times\:1\) vector of independently and identically distributed error term with zero mean and variance \(\:{\sigma\:}^{2}\) . The covariate vector X include all variables explained above. Note that \(\:\varvec{\beta\:}\) and \(\:\varvec{\theta\:}\) are also known as direct and indirect (= spillover) effects, respectively. The direct effect, \(\:\varvec{\beta\:}\) , represents the extent to which the outcome in a given area changes when a covariate in that same area increases by one unit. The indirect effect, \(\:\varvec{\theta\:}\) , represents the extent to which the outcome in neighboring areas changes when a covariate in the given region increases by one unit. More detailed estimation procedure can be found in elsewhere 32 . The statistical significance of direct and indirect effects are evaluated with Monte Calro simulations with 1000 iterations. In addition, to validate the use of SDEM by checking the residual distribution, we conducted Lagrange Multiplier (LM) lag and LM error tests for comparison with a simple linear model. Lastly, to check the robustness of the results against spatial heterogeneity, we divided Japan into several subzones and estimated the regression parameters within each subzone. In these subzone analyses, we conducted “SubAnalysis 1”: three subzones, including Kita-Nihon (Prefectures #1–7), Higashi-Nihon (Prefectures # 8–23) and Nishi-Nihon (Prefectures # 24–47) and “SubAnalysis 2”: seven subzones, including Hokkaido/Tohoku (Prefectures #1–7), Kanto (Prefectures #8–14), Chubu (Prefectures #15–23), Kinki (Prefectures #24–30), Chugoku (Prefectures #31–35), Shikoku (Prefectures #36–39) and Kyusyu/Okinawa (Prefectures #40–47). Note that due to the small sample size, Wave3 was not analyzed in the subzone analysis.

Statistical analysis was performed with R version 4.3.1 using the spdep package. For the statistical two-sided tests, p-values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. This study was conducted in accordance with the guidelines laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki. All experimental protocols were approved by the Ethical Committee of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (authorization no. 1747). The need for informed consent as waived by the Ethical Committee of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

Basic characteristics of data

A total of 43,199 COVID-19 deaths were included in this study: i.e., 6,038, 3,751, 12,948, 16,883, 3,579 deaths during Wave3, Wave5, Wave6, Wave7 and WaveRef, respectively. After removing missing data, 1895 municipalities were included. Table  1 indicates the basic characteristics of included municipalities, stratified by the quantile values of average NTL. As NTL move from Q1 to Q5, that is, as a city became brighter at night, an increase was observed in COVID-19 mortality per 10,000, the number of restaurants, taxable income, the proportion of inhabitants aged ≥ 65, and population density ( p -for-trend < 0.01 for all variables), while the proportion of people aged < 15 decreased ( p -for-trend < 0.01). Supplementary file 2 indicates the time trend of NTL, showing that it varies significantly across prefectures and tends to increase during the winter, but does not show substantial fluctuations across different periods.

Geographical distribution of COVID-19 mortality during study period

Figure  2 presents the empirical Bayes estimates of COVID-19 mortality rate per 10,000 persons and Table  2 indicates the global Moran’s I values. Overall, the global Moran’s Index of spatial autocorrelation ranged from 0.084 to 0.216 ( p  < 0.01 across all waves), reflecting a moderate level of spatial association among contiguous municipalities of Japan. Notably, the global Moran’s I has increased in each successive wave relative to the reference period (i.e., WaveRef), indicating a strengthening of positive spatial correlation. This trend suggests that municipalities with high COVID-19 mortality rate were often spatially surrounded by other municipalities with similar high COVID-19 mortality rates, indicating spatial clustering. Particularly during Wave6, the high COVID-19 mortality rate and high Moran’s I value suggest a nationwide increase in COVID-19 deaths in Japan, characterized by a significant spatial concentration of COVID-19 mortality rate. This finding indicates the presence of spatiotemporal autocorrelations within the outcome variable, suggesting that the SDEM could theoretically achieve superior results compared to the conventional Ordinary Least Square technique, which may not produce consistent results and thus may lead to inaccurate conclusions.

Results from SDEM by waves

Both the LM lag test and LM error test provided significant results ( p  < 0.01), supporting the use of SDEM over a simple linear model. The SDEM estimation results are also presented in Table  3 . We observed that the total effect (i.e., the sum of direct and indirect effects) was gradually degraded across Wave3-Wave7 (degraded from 0.079 to -0.101) with positively significance during Wave3 ( p  = 0.013), Wave5 ( p  = 0.045) and Wave6 ( p  = 0.050), while it was negatively significant during Wave7 ( p  = 0.013) and non-significant during WaveRef ( p  = 0.844). Interestingly, focusing on the estimation of indirect (spillover) effect of NTL, the results suggest that the NTL levels in neighboring municipalities had a positively significant effect on the COVID-19 mortality rate during Wave3 (Effect estimate: 0.079 (95% CI: 0.016–0.141), p  = 0.013) and a negatively significant effect during Wave7 (Effect estimate: -0.089 (95% CI: -0.169 - -0.009), p  = 0.029), while no significant effects were observed during other periods. In more formal terms, these results suggest that for one unit (nanoWatts/sr/cm 2 ) increase in NTL in the neighboring municipalities on average, it increases COVID-19 deaths by 7.9% during Wave3, and decreases by 8.9% during Wave7. The results of the subzone analysis are included in Supplementary File 4 . In SubAnalysis 1, a similar tendency was observed, particularly in the Nishi-Nihon area. Specifically, a positive spillover effect was observed (though non-significant, p  = 0.163) in the early stage of the pandemic (Wave 5), which shifted to a negative and significant spillover effect in the later stage of the pandemic ( p  = 0.014, Wave 7). In SubAnalysis 2, a similar tendency was also observed: the spillover effect changed from positive to negative over time, especially in Shikoku and Kyushu/Okinawa, which are classified as Nishi-Nihon. However, the results were not significant because the subzones were further divided into smaller subzones, reducing the sample size.

Numerous prior studies have elucidated the influence of environmental factors, such as temperature, air pollution, humidity, and the presence of green outdoor spaces, on the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 3 , 4 , 6 , 10 , 43 . This effect is attributed to the modulation of factors such as viral stability, host susceptibility, and interpersonal contact rates 3 , 4 , 7 , 42 , 43 . In addition, there is emerging evidence linking NTL with both the incidence and mortality rates of COVID-19 7 . However, to the best of our knowledge, few studies have statistically examined how the propagation effect of NTL on COVID-19 deaths in neighboring areas. In other words, it was still unclear how the illuminated area at night attracts people and spatially transmit COVID-19 to the neighboring areas.

This study has demonstrated two important findings regarding COVID-19 mortality. Initial findings revealed moderate spatial inequalities, including clusters of high COVID-19 mortality rate across Japan, closely correlated with NTL intensity (Table  1 ). This finding is consistent with the prior research: Zhang et al. (2022) found that compare to the first quintile of NTL value, the fifth quintile was associated with 23% higher mortality rates of COVID-19 in the U.S. during 2019 and 2020 7 . Furthermore, our study also identified a significant increase in COVID-19 mortality rate in brighter areas after adjusting sociodemographic and environmental factors. Notably, the spillover effect of NTL showed a positive sign with COVID-19 deaths in neighboring areas during the early waves, Wave3. Conversely, during Wave7, a negative sign of the spillover effect was observed, indicating a reduction in neighboring area deaths as cities became brighter. The flip of the sign is related to differences in the backgrounds and behavioral patterns of those who contributed to the spread of the infection. The positive spillover effect during Wave3 may be explained by the “nightlife effect”, where people congregating in illuminated night-time area become infected and subsequently disseminate the virus upon returning to their localities, leading to increased mortality 46 , 47 . In contrast, the negative spillover effect during Wave7 could be attributed to high-risk individuals, such as frequenters of social gathering spots, such as nightclubs, karaoke or bars 46 , 48 , having been previously infected or vaccinated, thereby mitigating virus spread to neighboring areas despite gatherings in these bright night-time areas. Additionally, the majority of deaths during Wave7 occurred mainly among the elderly 44 , and limited interaction with such high-risk groups can also be considered a contributing factor. Another possible explanation is that these illuminated night-time areas are typically densely populated with huge human mobility. Therefore, stringent infection prevention measures such as hand-washing and cough-etiquette are more likely to be implemented 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 . Especially during the large-scale wave of infection Wave7 including 16,883 COVID-19 deaths, the continuation of these rigorous preventive measures might have played a key role in keeping the transmission of the virus from congregated individuals to neighboring areas at a lower level. The identification of local spillovers underscores the value of epidemiological studies focused on individual movement patterns in understanding virus transmission. More importantly, our results imply that, even in situations where it is challenging to conduct detailed contact survey during pandemic, satellite-derived NTL data can serve as a useful proxy for estimating the level of nocturnal human contact and the subsequent COVID-19 mortality rates.

This research presents several significant limitations, which are further nuanced when considering the context of the Japanese COVID-19 situation and NTL intensity. Firstly, non-human light sources (e.g., aurora, wildfires) are not easily distinguishable from human light sources. Even if we assume that the human light source is well identified, the use of NTL data obtained from satellite imagery, while a useful proxy for outdoor NTL levels, may not accurately represent indoor nightlight exposure 7 , 53 . This potential discrepancy could lead to misclassification in assessing NTL exposure 54 , 55 and would be critical in densely populated Japanese urban areas where indoor and outdoor lighting environments differ markedly 7 . Secondly, employing an ecological study design at the municipality level can capture the association between NTL and COVID-19 mortality in population level. However, due to the ecological fallacy, this approach may obscure individual risk factors and personal activity in very small mesh areas that cannot be captured by satellites, thereby precluding the derivation of individual-level associations. For example, individual-level covariates, such as compliance with preventive measures (ex. mask-wearing and hand-washing) and proactivity in accessing health information were not adjusted for. The impact of these unobserved covariates may have changed as the pandemic progressed. Additionally, the prevalence of asymptotic or un-tested COVID-19 cases and related death, a notable concern in Japan during various waves during the pandemic, might affect the analytical outcomes of this study. Lastly, we used COVID-19 mortality as an outcome instead of COVID-19 incidence. While mortality data provided a robust and reliable measure, it does not capture the full spectrum of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact, particularly in terms of infection dynamics. Future research could benefit from utilizing more granular COVID-19 incidence data, should it become available, to explore the relationship between NTL spillover and COVID-19 transmission in greater depth.

These findings underscore the importance of understanding spatial dynamics and human behavior in pandemic responses. Furthermore, the utilization of satellite-derived NTL data as a proxy for human interactions offers a valuable tool for epidemiological studies, especially in situations where direct data collection is challenging. This study not only contributes to the knowledge on COVID-19 transmission dynamics but also highlights the potential of innovative data sources in enhancing our response to public health emergencies.

Average nighttime light (NTL) intensity (nanoWatts/sr/cm 2 ) during the study span. This map was created using R version 3.4.1 ( https://cran.r-project.org/ ) and zipangu package.

Empirical Bayes estimates of COVID-19 mortality rate per 10,000 persons, colored by percentiles. This map was created using R version 3.4.1 ( https://cran.r-project.org/ ) and zipangu package.

Data availability

The data underlying this article cannot be shared publicly due the rule from Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The data will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan (23HA2005), the Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JPMJPR21RC) and the Cabinet Agency for Infectious Disease Crisis Management in Japan.

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Yoneoka, D., Eguchi, A., Nomura, S. et al. Indirect and direct effects of nighttime light on COVID-19 mortality using satellite image mapping approach. Sci Rep 14 , 25063 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-75484-0

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