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Overurbanization is a thesis developed by scholars in the mid-20th century to describe cities whose rate of urbanization outpaces their industrial growth, either related to other countries at the time or the historical development of other countries.

Definition
The concept of overurbanization first emerged in the mid-20th century to describe cities whose rate of industrialization was growing slower than their rate of urbanization. According to Josef Gugler, the concept was "widely accepted in the 1950s and into the 1960s" and was split into two approaches, a diachronic and a synchronic approach.

Another approach taken in the 1950s was proposed by Davis and Golden who defined overurbanization relative to other countries in the same time period, also known as a diachronic approach. Comparing "the percentage of economically active males not engaged in agriculture and the percentage of the population in cities of 100,000 or above in a large number of the countries in the world," Davis and Golden found a "correlation coefficient of 0.86 between the degree of industrialization and the degree of urbanization." Thus the authors conclude that this coefficient can be represented by a regression and that outliers on the graph of this curve are "overurbanized." . A few countries in particular that Davis and Golden identified as overurbanized at the time were Egypt, Greece, and Korea. Davis and Golden did not see overurbanization as a necessarily negative phenomenon, but rather a statistical reality that could have its challenges but would ultimately be self-correcting as an appropriate balance was found between levels of urbanization and industrialization. Sovani was one of the first to discount this argument, as he found that the connection between urbanization and industrialization was more significant in underdeveloped countries than developed ones, suggesting that the coefficient they found was not a valid point of comparison.

The definition offered by the United Nations and UNESCO in 1956 measured overurbanization as historically relative to other countries, defining overurbanization as a phenomenon of underdeveloped and developing countries, emphasizing that "at comparable levels of urbanization developed countries of today had a correspondingly greater proportion of their labour force engaged in non-agricultural occupations." This historical, or diachronic, approach was applied in the report to Asia, arguing that because a smaller percentage of the labor force was engaged in non-agricultural activities than certain Western developed countries had at similar levels of urbanization, Asia was overurbanized. However, this approach has been criticized by scholars who argue that this approach supports an ethnocentric idea that all countries follow the same path of development. Furthermore, Sovani argued that this approach is not consistent with the development trajectories of developed countries, pointing out that "in Switzerland, though the proportion of the labor force in non-agricultural occupations was 60 percent in 1888, there was no city with a population of 100,000 or more in the entire country at that time."

Sovani was the first to question whether to accept the 1950s definition of overurbanization. His debunking of the formerly accepted definitions of overurbanization encouraged further scholarly analysis and attempts to redefine the term. Sovani suggested that "the basic thought underlying the concept of over-urbanization seems to be some kind of undesirability of rapid urbanization in the underdeveloped countries." However, he claimed that there still lacked evidence for the idea that rapid urbanization actually made areas worse off. David R. Kamerschen found that there was little statistical evidence to support that "rapid urbanization in underdeveloped countries hampers economic growth," suggesting that the phenomenon of overurbanization is questionable.

Following Sovani's work, several scholars offered alternative definitions for the term, many of them including not just the relationship between population growth and their means of employment but also the ability of the urban area to provide public services, reflecting that economic development lagged behind population growth in a multitude of ways Several scholars also increasingly embraced a negative connotation for the term.<ref name=Dyckman/   Dyckman suggested that inability to accommodate the expectations of migrants to the city made overurbanization a threat to social order. Graves and Sexton argue that the definition of overurbanization must "involve the presence of negative net external effects for the city size in question," suggesting that as long as "positive external social benefits" from rapid urbanization dominate negative externalities, overurbanization is not at play. Gugler defined overurbanization by two factors: that migration to cities led to a "less than optimal allocation of labor between the rural and urban sectors" and that migration to cities "increases the costs of providing for a country's growing population."

Causes
The biggest cause of uverurbanization emphasized by scholars is rural-urban migration and the "push" factors associated with it, including "increased population, diminished size of holdings, and absentee landlord exactions." . The larger process of urbanization is characterized both by these factors that "push" migrants away from their homes as well as factors that "pull" them towards new areas. Davis and the UNESCO report both discuss that overurbanization is affected by the "push" factors away from rural areas being stronger than the "pull" factors towards urban areas like expansion of economic opportunity and the infrastructure of cities as administrative centers Because migrants are primarily motivated by factors pushing them out of rural areas rather than factors such as demand for labor pulling them to the city, these rural-urban migrants often find themselves unemployed or quitting "low productive agricultural employment to [enter] yet another section marked by low productivity employment, namely handicraft production, retail trading, domestic services in urban areas."

Sovani argues that there is little evidence for the role of "push" factor of increased population in rural areas, as even countries where there is little pressure for land experience this phenomenon, but that instead the opportunity for higher income is responsible for the excessive migration and pressure on cities, as the salary for an unproductive job in an urban area was almost always higher than the salary for unproductive work in a rural area. Graves and Sexton also emphasize that individuals move in spite of negative externalities, suggesting that the benefits do indeed outweigh the costs and questioning whether the term "overurbanization" could be used to describe the phenomenon. Gugler argues that while the benefits outweigh the costs for an individual migrating to an urban area, greater costs are present when this occurs at a larger scale.

Sovani also argues that the definition of overurbanization as developed by scholars in the 1950s and 1960s suggests some sort of limits to density "beyond which the resulting social situation is abnormal" which need to be defined more clearly. Such limits to density would suggest that the cause of overurbanization is urbanization happening too rapidly for a city's level of economic development. Dyckman would call this the "pre-takeoff period." However, several scholars have questioned the causal relationship between urbanization and industrialization.

Economic
Davis and Golden did not see overurbanization as an inherently negative phenomenon, but as a statistical fact that would likely correct itself, as "urbanization will fall off sharply or industrialization will gain a new impetus." Expanding on the latter, they suggest that overurbanization could spur industrial growth, modernization of agriculture, and social change. Even in the case of overurbanization, some of the positive effects of urbanization could be present in regards to economic growth, such as the development of more efficient economics due to scale, diversity of both products and occupations, "the greater opportunity of occupational and social mobility and greater readiness to adapt, and the dynamic influence of technical progress."

Turning to the modernization of agriculture, though Davis and Golden did not correlate urbanization and population density, they do negatively correlate urbanization and "agricultural density." They argue that industrialization supports greater efficiency of agriculture through technology, an advantage for the productivity of rural farmers as well as urban consumers. Finally, they argue that greater density of dissatisfied impoverished masses could improve conditions to the extent that it provokes the government to enact change to avoid revolution. Dyckman agreed that overurbanization lends itself to the potential for revolution, though he saw this as a potentially destabilizing factor as the conditions would lead to social dissatisfaction and seizure of control by revolutionary leaders

Nevertheless, the UNESCO report emphasized the negative effects of overurbanization, detailing "low levels of living" as "inadequate housing, the almost complete absence of mass sanitary facilities, the presence of filth, squalor, repugnant odours, disease and high mortality" and "large urban groups who have little or no access to educational facilities." Several scholars have agreed that overurbanization puts a strain on the wellbeing of urban residents due to the difficulty of providing adequate public services.  Despite arguing the potential for economic growth, the report also states that overurbanization prevents urban areas and countries from utilizing their "potential human and physical resources" due to unemployment and under-employment.