Urbanization is the conversion of rural regions to urban that affects the ecology and economies as well as changing the way those people live. Urbanization occurs through natural expansion, the transformation of close by pop from rural to urban, incoming migration or a combo. As agriculture, traditional services, and small-scale industries are created, it makes a more sustainable city. Larger cities provide more specialized goods and services to local and surrounding areas, function as transportation and wholesale hub for smaller places, accumulate more capital, financial service provision, an educated labor force and concentrating administrative functions for the area in which they lie. This relation is called urban hierarchy. Urbanization was the biggest trend in the 20th century because of mechanization replaced jobs, industrialization, and change in fuel starting from firewood to coal to petroleum. The first countries to urbanize had good industries and the more pop, the more city functions.
Metropolitan areas aren’t urban in character, but more for employment or commerce; also know as a commuter belt. Area is not part of city but connected to the city. Megalopolis means extended metropolitan area and you can see this in the Quebec city-Windsor Corridor. This is 1150km and the most densely populated as well as industrialized region that contains half of Canada’s pop. This also connects to the US to cities such as Sherbrooke, Buffalo, New Your, Detroit, and Michigan and has very similar infrastructure as well.
A megatropolis is also a megacity or a metroplitan area with pops in excess of 10 million. An ecological footprint is the amount of land that is required to sustain your lifestyle. Measures arable land and aquatic resources, based of pops consumption levels.More specifically measures water, energy use, uses of land for infrastructure and different forms of agriculture, forests, other forms of energy/material “inputs”, and land it takes to provide clean waste assimilation. Footprints can be measured for an individual, cities, regions, countries, or the planet. Analysts examine quantity; natural/manufactured materials/services used, then calculate the ecological footprint. The footprint indicates the amount of “nature” is available to a defined pop compared to what it needs to maintain current activities. Footprints depend on volume and types of natural resources consumed by a pop, which depends on lifestyle, income levels and technology. Therefore, ecological footprints are a good way to show the impacts of consumption. New urbanization is keeping close-knit communities to cut down on the use to vehicles. This would mean, perhaps a business park, to concentrated pedestrian and transit-centric walkable, mixed-use communities.
