Urbanisation

Urbanisation is the physical growth of urban areas from rural areas as a result of population
immigration to an existing urban area. Effects include change in density and administration services.
While the exact definition and population size of urbanised areas varies among different countries,
urbanisation is attributed to growth of cities. Urbanisation is also defined by the United Nations as
movement of people from rural to urban areas with population growth equating to urban migration.
The UN projects half the world population will live in urban areas at the end of 2008. In order to
explain the process of urbanisation we can discuss the following three aspects:
1. The demographic and spatial aspects
2. Economic aspects and
3. Socio-cultural aspects

The demographic-spatial aspects of urbanisation deal with shift of people from rural to urban areas,
population density in urban areas and change in the pattern of land use from agriculture to nonagricultural activities. Economic aspects of urbanisation relate to the change from agricultural to
non-agricultural occupations. As cities have been the centers of diverse economic opportunities, they
attract people from rural areas. This attraction pulls a significant section of the rural population to
the urban areas. Rural poverty, backwardness of agricultural economy and the destruction of cottage
and small industries also push villagers to urban areas. These pull and push factors of migration
play an important role in the process of urbanisation.
The socio-cultural aspects of urbanisation highlight the emerging heterogeneity in urban areas. The
city has generally been the meeting point of races and cultures.
Patterns of urbanisation.
There are following patterns of urbanisation:
1. Demographic Aspect: In India, population concentration has been one of the key features of
urbanisation. The percentage of urban population has been little more than doubled from 10.8
per cent in 1901 to 23.3 per cent in 1981. And this has been almost tripled by 2001, when it has
been recorded to be 27.8 per cent. The urban population of India as per the 1991 census is
217,177,625 and this accounts for 25.72 per cent of the total population. So far urban population
of the country is concerned, only 25.85 million lived in towns in 1901 and by 1991 it increased
by more than 8 times to 217.18 million. Out of the total population of 1027 million as on 1st
March 2001, 285 million lived in urban areas. The net addition of population in urban areas
during 1991-2001 has been to the tune of 68 million where as during the decade 1981-1991 it
was 61 million. Urban population has significantly increased in the post Independence period.
For the forty years period from 1901 to 1941 the increase of urban population from 25.85 to
44.15 million has been quite modest compared to the 62.44 million of the next decade. There has
been an increase of 115.05 million in urban population from 1941 to 1981. Note that 64.8 per
cent of this population has grown in the two decades between 1961 and 1981. Similarly the
urban population has almost doubled in the decades 1971 (109.11 million) to 1991 (217.18 million).
There was a slow growth (and also decline in 1911) in the proportion of urban to total population
in the early decades (1901-21). This is mostly because of natural disasters and slow rate of
industrial and economic development.
The rapid growth of urban population during 1941-51 has been mostly due to partition of the
country and other political reasons, which led to refugee migration in the urban areas. The
steady increase in the urban population in the decades prior to 1981 came about not so much
because of planned economic development and industrialisation, but due to imbalanced
agricultural development. The annual rate of growth of urban population declined from 3.83
per cent during 1971-1981 to 3.09 per cent during 1981-1991. During the decade 1971-1981 the
level of urbanisation increased by 3.43 per cent points. During 1981-1991 decade the increase
has been only 2.38 per cent. The increase in the urbanisation further declined to 2.1 per cent
points during the decade 1991-2001. As a consequence the annual rate of gain in percentage of
urban population has also declined from 1.72 to 1.02 during the decade 1981-1991. This indicates
that the tempo of urbanisation in India has slowed down since 1981.
2. Spatial Pattern: Spatial disparities have marked the Indian urban scenario. These disparities
emerged mainly due to regional disparities, imbalanced population concentration and sometimes
because of the change in the census definition of “urban areas”, to mention about two concepts,
namely over urbanisation and sub-urbanisation.
Over-urbanisation
Towns or urban areas have certain limitations in accommodating population, providing civic
amenities or catering to such needs as schooling, hospitals etc. Beyond certain optimum capacities,
it becomes difficult for the town administration to provide facilities for the increasing population.
Mumbai and Kolkata are two such examples of cities (among others) which have urban population
growth beyond their capacities to manage. This feature refers to over-urbanisation.

Sub-urbanisation
Closely related to over-urbanisation of a town is a feature called sub-urbanisation. When towns
get over-crowded by population, it may result in sub-urbanisation. Delhi is a typical example
(among others) where sub urbanisation trend is taking place around it. Sub-urbanisation means
urbanisation of rural areas around the towns characterised by the following features:

(a)	a sharp increase in the ‘urban (non-agricultural) uses’ of land
(b) inclusion of surrounding areas of town within its municipal limits, and
(c)	intensive communication of all types between town and its surrounding areas. Now, we can also look at some of the variations in spatial disparities found in the pattern of urbanisation in India. The Growth of Towns and Cities
(i)

The growth of urban towns did not show a unidirectional progress in India. Because of
the variation in the census definition of ‘urban’ areas the number of urban centres declined.
Only 1,430 towns out of a total of 1,914 towns existing in 1901 survived till 1961. About
480 areas considered as towns in 1901 lost their urban status because of the new definition
of town in 1961 census. It is for this reason that one can see the decrease in the number of
towns to 2700 in 1961 compared to 3060 in 1951. For example, in Rajasthan there were 227
towns in 1951, whereas this number declined to 201 in 1981. Similar decline has also been
noticed in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. In the 1991 census 4,689 places
were identified as towns as against 4,029 in 1981 census. Out of the 4,689 towns of 1991 as
many as 2,996 were statutory towns and 1,693 were census or non-municipal towns as
against 2,758 and 1,271 respectively in 1981. At the all India level, 93 of the 4029 towns of
1981 census were declassified and 103 towns were fully merged with other towns by
statutory notifications of the concerned state/union territory administrations during 1981-
1991. As many as 856 new towns were added to the urban frame of 1991. The maximum
number of towns declassified were from the states of Punjab (21), Karnataka (19), and
Andhra Pradesh (13) and the maximum number of the statutory towns added in 1991
census was from Madhya Pradesh (91).
(ii) Variation in Urbanisation among the States
The pattern of urbanisation among different states in India shows an interesting feature
of urban domination in some states. Five states namely Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil
Nadu, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh altogether accounted for 56 per cent (in 1961) to
55 per cent (in 1971) of the total urban population of India. In contrast the six states of
Orissa, Haryana, Assam (including Meghalaya), Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh
and Nagaland account for 5 per cent (in 1961) to 5.5 per cent (in 1971) of the total urban
population of India. In 1991 census some of the states having a higher proportion of urban
population to the total population than the national average of 25.72 per cent were
Maharashtra (35.73 per cent), Gujarat (34.40 per cent), Tamil Nadu (34.20 per cent) and
West Bengal (27.39 per cent). As per the Census 2001, Tamil Nadu (43.9 per cent) is the
most urbanised state followed by Maharashtra (42.4 per cent) and Gujarat (37.4 per cent).
The proportion of the urban population is lowest in Bihar with 10.5 per cent followed by
Assam (12.7 per cent) and Orissa (14.9 per cent). Himachal Pradesh is the least urbanised
state. These show that the urban domination in some states continues to exist even at the
beginning of twenty first century.
Between 1961 and 1971 the pattern of urban density for Indian states shows somewhat
similar trends. The states of West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Assam and Kerala have
densities higher than the all India average of 2948 persons per sq. km in 1961. A similar
trend was found in 1971 also. States of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland, Jammu
and Kashmir, Orissa, Bihar and Rajasthan had densities less than the all India average of
2,048 in 1961. The 1971 census reflected the same trend that was seen in 1961, with respect
to the above mentioned states. Urban density for Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Assam
lessened, during 1961-71 decade, possibly because of outward migration of people. In the year 1991, the urban density was highest in the state of West Bengal followed by Uttar
Pradesh, Maharashtra, Haryana and Punjab. States of Tamil Nadu, Nagaland, Jammu
and Kashmir, Orissa, Bihar and Rajasthan had densities less than the all India average of
3,370 in 1991 also. Thus, when we look at the census figures we can see that the variation
in terms of the urban density continued to the year 1991 almost unchanged.
(iii) Population concentration in the cities
The population in the larger urban centres (with 1,00,000 or more) has constantly been
growing in India. In 1981 more than 60 per cent of the urban population in India lived in
this category of cities. By 1991 their rate reached almost 65 per cent. Out of the total number
of towns, according to the 1991 census, in 300 the population exceeds 1,00,000 each. These
300 urban agglomeration/cities account for 64.89 per cent of the urban population of the
country. In the case of Maharashtra and West Bengal the share of Class 1 urban
agglomerations/cities in the urban population is high, being 77.85 per cent and 81.71 per
cent respectively. Class 1 urban agglomeration/cities contribute about two thirds of the
urban population in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Meghalaya
and Tamil Nadu.
(iv) Growth of Metropolitan Cities
In India, Kolkata was the only city with a population of over a million in 1901. Mumbai
crossed the one million mark by 1911. Till 1941 there were only these two cities in this
category, i.e., with a population of over one million. Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad entered
into this category by 1951. Ahmedabad and Bangalore by 1961, and Kanpur and Pune by
1971. Lucknow, Nagpur and Jaipur by 1981 crossed the one million mark bringing the
number of million-plus cities upto 12. At the time of 1991 census enumeration there were
23 metropolitan agglomerations/ cities with a population of more than a million each.
The number almost doubled during the decade 1981-1991. Its number has been increased
to 35 at the time of 2001 census. At the time of 1981 census 25 per cent of the total urban
population was concentrated in the million plus cities. By the year 1991 this has become
32.54 per cent. That means that these cities in 1991 accounted for roughly one third of the
country’s urban population and one twelfth of the country’s total population.
In 1981 barring Delhi which forms part of the Union Territory of Delhi, the remaining 11
cities are located in 8 states. In 1991, the 23 metropolitan cities were scattered among 13
states in India. But their concentration was more in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu,
and Uttar Pradesh, each having 3 such metropolitan cities. Andhra Pradesh and Madhya
Pradesh have two each and 7 were distributed among Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab,
Rajasthan, West Bengal and Delhi. In Kolkata the concentration of urban population was
higher than other metropolitan cities for the decade 1971-81. This was followed by
Bangalore, Chennai and Ahmedabad. The 23 metropolitan cities exhibited quite a
diversified pattern of growth of population during 1981-1991. Of these metropolitan cities
the highest growth of population was recorded in Visakhapatanam urban agglomeration
(74.27 per cent) followed by Hyderabad urban agglomeration (67.04 per cent), both of
which are in Andhra Pradesh, The lowest growth rate was recorded by Kolkata urban
agglomeration (18.73 per cent) followed by Patna urban agglomeration. Kolkata urban
agglomeration which occupied the prime position since 1901 in terms of highest
concentration of urban population relegated to the second position in 1991 and Greater
Mumbai which occupied the second position since 1901 has been moved to the prime
position in 1991. Kolkata was followed by Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. In
1988, while describing the glaring disparities that marked the Indian urban scene, the
National Commission on Urbanisation stated two main aspects: (a) while the urban centres
in India grew at an average rate of 46.2 per cent during the 1970s, the million-plus
metropolitan centres had an average growth rate of population only 29.6 per cent during
the same period, and (b) the significant regional variation in the nature of urbanisation
process. Indeed, spatially the pattern of Indian urbanisation has been highly localised.

3. Economic Dimension: Urbanisation is a natural and inevitable consequence of economic
development. Urbanisation accompanies economic development because economic development
entails a massive shift of labour and other inputs from predominantly rural sectors to those
predominantly urban. The National Commission on Urbanisation of India recognises the
economic importance of the Indian cities and towns. It considers “urbanisation as a catalyst for
economic development and that the towns and cities despite their problems are for the millions
and millions of our people the road to a better future” the various cities in India, that some
cities have come up during twentieth century in places where there were nothing but forests
earlier. One of the first steel cities in India, like Jamshedpur in Bihar, has provided employment
to a large number of people including the Santals who are the local tribal inhabitants of this
area. These tribals who were relatively isolated earlier have come into contact with a wide
section of Indian population, coming from different regions, speaking different languages, and
so on. Besides Jamshedpur, three more steel towns have emerged after Independence. These
are Bhilai in Madhya Pradesh, Rourkela in Orissa and Durgapur in West Bengal. Emergence of
these steel factories has brought about not only prosperity but has led to the modification of the
whole social scenario of this area. Areas that were socio-economically backward have now
become prosperous and cosmopolitan. While talking about the economic features of urbanisation
in contemporary India, occupational diversification and migration appear to be the key aspects.
Briefly examine these aspects.
(i) Occupation
The degree of urban-industrialisation and planned development through the Five-Year
Plans could not bring about a significant shift in occupational structure in India till 1990.
The percentage of Indian labour force in agriculture remained static between 1901 and
1971. In the said period 69.4 per cent and 69.7 per cent of the total labour force was in
agriculture respectively. Though the percentage of urban population increased
substantially during this period there have not been corresponding increase in the
percentage of the labour force in the urban manufacturing, construction and service sector.
Things have started improving slightly by 2001. In 1991 around 67 per cent of the total
workers were in the agricultural sector. In 2001 only 58 per cent of the total workers have
been recorded to be in the agricultural sector. The results from 2001 census clearly suggest
a shift in the composition of labour force from a predominantly agricultural to moderately
non-agricultural sector. The percentage of urban workers engaged in primary (comprising
cultivation, household industry, mining quarrying, fishing), secondary (comprising
manufacturing and processing) and tertiary (comprising commerce and service) sectors
during 1993-94 is 16.8, 31 and 52.1 per cent, respectively. Whereas the total workforce
engaged in these three sectors during the same period is 67.5, 12.0 and 20.5, respectively.
Percentage of Urban Workers by Sectors, 1993-94

Sector	Male	Female	Total
Primary Secondary Tertiary	9.0 33.0 57.9	24.7 29.1 46.3	16.8 31.0 52.1

There is widespread unemployment among the unskilled and other marginal workers in
most of the cities. Again, unemployment among educated classes in urban areas is a
peculiar feature in Indian society. It is estimated that 46 per cent of the total educated
unemployed are reported to be concentrated in the four major metropolitan cities in India.
During the period 1983 to 1999-2000, the percentage of persons in the labour force at the
national declined from 66.5 percent in 1983 to 61.8 percent in 1999-2000. The growth in
employment for persons employed in the age group 15 years and above on the usual
principal and subsidiary status has declined significantly in the nineties vis-a-vis the
eighties. And this has lead to the increased incidence of unemployment. There was an increase in the incidence of unemployment both for males and females on the whole and
in particular for rural areas. In the case of urban areas, however, there was a sharp decline
between 1983 and 1993-94 from 5.1 per cent to 4.6 per cent, which has been somewhat
eroded by a subsequent increase to 4.8 per cent in 1999-2000.
(ii) Migration
In the process of urbanisation in India, migration of the rural people to the urban areas
has been continuous and is an important feature. The Urban Commission of India viewed
rural urban migration to be “of vital importance for the development of rural areas”. The
Commission again points out that besides releasing the surplus labour from the rural
areas, for the landless labourers, harijans and adivasis these cities provide the opportunities,
which are enshrined in our constitution. For these millions, our urban centres will continue
to be havens of hope, where they can forge a new future.
In India, this increase in urban-ward migration is of fairly recent origin which began in
the late 1930s. Of the total migrants in urban areas 20 per cent persons are displaced from
Pakistan, 51 per cent from rural areas of the same state and 2.5 per cent from the rural
areas of other states. An important feature of the immigrant stream in urban areas is its
predominantly male character. Due to the increase of unemployment in the rural areas,
surplus rural labour force gets pushed to urban centres with the hope of getting
employment. The other factors, which have pulled sections of the rural population
(including the affluent sections) toward the city, have been the expectation of a variety of
glamorous jobs, good housing, medical, educational and communication facilities.
4. Socio-cultural Character
In the process of urbanisation the towns and cities of India have achieved heterogeneous character
in terms of ethnicity, caste, race, class and culture. In the urban areas there has always been
coexistence of different cultures. Studies show that though various ethnic and/or caste groups
have adjusted themselves with each other in the city, they have also tried to maintain their
traditional identity. The migrants have maintained distinctive cultural traditions in the towns.
Various migrant groups have maintained their own cultural identity. N.K. Bose points out that
the migrants tend to cluster around people with whom they have linguistic, local, regional,
caste and ethnic ties. A study by Jagannathan and Haldar on the pavement-dwellers in Calcutta
shows that they retain close ties with kinship and caste groups for socialising and transmitting
or receiving information from the village. Thus, cultural pluralism has been an important sociocultural dimension of the urbanites. Many of the Indian towns have a “mixed” character, i.e.,
they are the capital cities, centres of trade and commerce, important railway junctions etc. In
these types of cities a “core” area which consists of the old inhabitants. This area is the oldest in
the city and on its fringe the new immigrants. The pattern of residence of this “core” population
shows a close relation to language, caste and religion. Bombay is cited as an example of this
type of city. Lynch also points out that in many Indian cities, especially in the traditional cities
like Agra, neighbourhoods have remained homogeneous in terms of caste and religious groups.
There the untouchable Jatavs caste is concentrated in particular areas called mohallas (ward).
But changes have taken place mostly because of politicisation, spread of education, and
occupational diversification. But D’Souza noticed that in the planned city like Chandigarh
neighbourhood has not been developed on the basis of ethnicity, common interest and other
similarities. In this city the religious activities, friendship and educational ties are often outside
one’s own neighbourhood. Social stratification has taken a new form in the urban society. It is
assumed that with urbanisation caste transforms itself into class in the urban areas. But caste
systems do exist in the cities though with significant organisational differences. Ramkrishna
Mukherjee demonstrates that people in Kolkata rank themselves in terms of caste-hierarchy.
Stratification has also taken place on the basis of occupational categories. For example, Harold
Gould (1965) points out that the rikshawalas of Lucknow belonging to several religious and
caste groups exhibit uniformity in the pattern of interaction and attitudes in respect to their
common occupation. Again it has been found that caste has not played a significant role in
determining the choice of occupation in the urban areas.

But it is important to note that both the caste and the class have their respective importance
based on time and space and situational focus marriage and family are two important aspects
of social life. In the urban areas caste norms have been flexible with regard to the selection of
mates. There have been increasing opportunities for the free mixing of young men and women.
Again the voluntary associations have encouraged inter-caste marriages. As a result there has
been more inter-caste and inter-religious marriage in the urban areas than earlier. In the cities
many little traditions have been brought in by the migrants and the great traditions have also
achieved dimensional change. It has been pointed out that many forms of the great traditions
are modified in the modern cities. Milton Singer (1968) shows that “the intellectual and ritualistic
approaches to God are being discarded in favor of the devotional approach, which is more
catholic and suited to urban conditions in Madras city. Technological innovations like
microphone, cinema, automobile, etc. are used in promoting religious activities. Religious
activities are not on decline in the metropolitan city of Madras but are being modernised.
Problems of urbanization in contemporary India
The current process of urbanisation has faced many problems in different parts of India. The most
important of these has been the development of slums, in the urban areas. Slum population accounts
for a substantial share of urban population in all types of cities in India. Even a planned city like
Chandigarh has not escaped slums. The per centages of the slum population in Kolkata, Mumbai and
Chennai are 32, 25 and 24, respectively. Slums are characterised by substandard housing, overcrowding
and lack of electrification, ventilation, sanitation, roads and drinking water facilities. Slums have
been the breeding ground of diseases, environmental pollution, demoralisation, and many social
tensions. Crimes, like juvenile delinquency, gambling, have also increased in number in slum areas.
Signs of poverty are most visible in these places. Lack of housing has been another important problem
in the process of urbanisation in India. This problem has been acute in cities with over a million
populations. Related to housing there have been problems on the planned use of urban land. The
lack of adequate housing has been very marked especially for the lower income group and for the
urban poor. In the light of the gravity of this problem, the government has passed the Urban Land
Ceiling Act, Rent Control Act etc. The National Council on Urbanisation has also recommended that
at least 15 per cent of all new developments should be earmarked for the use of the economically
weaker sections of the urban population. Absence of planned and adequate arrangements for traffic
and transport is another important problem in majority of urban centers in India. Though various
new modes of transport and advanced technology have been used in our metropolitan cities to facilitate
the movement of the people, these have remained insufficient to cope with the growing population
there. Similarly, the extent of facilities medical, sanitation, drinking water, power-supply have
remained insufficient in a majority of the urban centers in India. After examining the extent of
availability of facilities like housing, transport and traffic, medical, sanitation, electricity etc. in the
urban areas, and the growth of urban population, one may say that there has been a tendency of over
urbanisation in India. The process of urbanisation in India has also been accompanied by suburbanisation. The development of modern modes of transport, and increasing demands on housing
has led to the growth of sub-urbanisation. The sub-urban areas are growing at a faster rate in the
metropolitan cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi and in all big cities of India. The Urban
Development Policy of India has been formulated to ensure that the urban centres play a positive role
in national and regional development, to promote the rural-urban continuum and to replace the
regional disparities. The Five Year Plans of the government of India have included various programmes
pertaining to housing, slum clearance, slum improvement, land acquisitions and development. The
Sixth Plan placed special emphasis on development of National Capital Region (NCR) to de-concentrate
economic activity from the core of Delhi into regional towns. The concept of NCR aims to bring better
regional parities in the process of economic development and social change in a vast area around
Delhi. It has been formulated in order to meet the growth and expansion needs of the capital. The
plan covers integrated development of about 30,000 sq. km in the Union Territory of Delhi and parts
of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. A statutory body has been constituted through an enactment
of Parliament in 1985 and a draft regional plan has since been prepared for the development of NCR.

The resource base of the National Capital Region includes budgetary allocation through plan provision
and institution borrowing in the form of line of credit, priority sector loans from financial institutions
and market borrowings in the form of taxable and tax-free bonds as extra budgetary resources. The
Ninth plan provision for NCRPB was Rs.200 crore and during the Ninth plan the board has envisaged
Internal and External Budgetary resources of Rs.3120 crore, to be mobilised from the capital market.
The NCRPB has facilitated the development of infrastructure facilities in different cities of the region
including roads, bridges, water supply, sewerage disposal facilities etc
Impact of urbanisation on Indian rural scene
India, urbanisation along with westernisation and modernisation has furthered the process of rapid
social change both in the rural and in the urban areas. One of the important results of urbanisation is
the rural to urban migration. Migration has become a continuous process affecting the social, economic
and cultural lives of the villagers widely. Rao (1974) distinguishes three different situation of urban
impact in the rural areas. In the villages from where large numbers of people migrate to the far off
cities, urban employment becomes a symbol of higher social prestige. Villages, which are located
near the towns, receive influx of immigrant workers and face the problems of housing, marketing
and social ordering. Lastly, in the process of the growth of metropolitan cities some villages become
the rural-pockets in the city areas. Hence, the villagers directly participate in the economic, political,
social and cultural life of the city. Srinivas pointed out that urbanisation in southern India has a caste
component and that, it was the Brahmin who first left the village for the towns and took advantage of
western education and modern professions. At the same time as they retained their ancestral lands
they continued to be at the top of the rural socio-economic hierarchy. Again, in the urban areas they
had a near monopoly of all non-manual posts. However, the anti-Brahmin movement and the economic
depression of the nineteen thirties led to the migration of Brahmins from the south and rural areas to
metropolitan cities. As a result of migration there has been a flow of urban money into the rural
areas. Emigrants regularly send money to their native villages. Such money facilitates the dependants
to clear off loans, build houses and educate children. The urban centers of India have become the
centers of national and international linkages. At present, many cultural traits are diffused from
cities to the rural areas. For example, dress patterns like pants, shirts, ties, skirts, jeans etc. diffuse
from cities to the rural areas. Besides these, new thoughts, ideologies are also diffused from the cities
to the rural areas due to increase in communication via radio, television, newspaper, computer, the
Internet and telephone. The urbanism, which emerges in the cities gradually, reaches to the rural
areas, depending on their proximity to the cities.
The process of urbanisation has not been an isolated phenomenon. At present, along with the whole
gamut of occupational diversification, spread of literacy, education, and mass communication etc.,
continuity between rural and urban areas has increased. Urban jobs and other amenities of living
have become status symbols in the rural areas. Many modern techniques of agricultural development
and many of the institutional frameworks for rural development also generate from the urban centers.
The large-scale commercialisation of agriculture has also been facilitated by the process of urbanisation.
Similarly, agricultural requirements for machinery have generated the growth of manufacturing units
in urban areas.

Features of urban life
The following features are generally associated with urban life.
Formality and Impersonality of Human Relationships
urban areas prevents intimate and face-to-face contacts among all the members in the community. In
urban communities, people interact with each other for limited and specialised purposes, for example,
teachers and students in a classroom, buyers and sellers in a store and doctors and patients in clinics.
Urbanites do not usually come to know each other as ‘whole persons’, i.e., they are not usually
concerned with all aspects of a person’s life. Apart from their family members and friends they do
not normally interact with others, except for limited or specialised purposes. This feature among the
urban dwellers results in formal, impersonal, superficial, transitory, segmental and secondary contacts.

This is in contrast to the primary contacts of people in villages who share personal, face-to-face,
intimate, longstanding relationships with each other.
Rationality
With the impersonal nature of urban relationships, the urban orientations tend to be utilitarian. That
is, people then enter into relationships, after calculating potential gains from these associations rather
than for the intrinsic satisfaction of association. Here relationships are generally of contractual kind
where profit and loss are carefully evaluated. Once the contract is over, the relationship between the
people tends to end, as for example, in having the services of a trained nurse for a sick person, or
entering into a contract with an agency to advertise your product, etc. This should however not give
you an impression that all relationships between individuals in urban areas are only utilitarian.
Always, there exists a wide range of variety in individual relationships.
Secularism
Heterogeneity of physical such as racial, social and cultural elements in urban life results in routine
exposure to divergent life styles and values. People become more tolerant of differences as they
become accustomed to seeing others very different from themselves. This rational and tolerant attitude
produces secular orientations in life. Even though it is very difficult to measure concepts such as
rationality and secularism, it is assumed that secular as opposed to religious orientations have often
been thought to be associated with urban social structure. However this feature is not always present
since we do find communal riots taking place in Indian cities more often than in rural areas.
Increased Specialisation and Division of Labour
Population growth leads to a higher ratio of people to land, called ‘material density’ by Emile
Durkheim. He differentiated two types of density, namely
(i) material density, that is, simple ratio of people to land
(ii) dynamic or moral density, that is, the rate of interaction, or communication within a population.
In his theory of social development, Durkheim viewed tribes or families as the basic social units
in pre-industrial or pre-urban societies. When they grow in size both their material and dynamic
densities also increase simultaneously. This results in greater interaction between formerly
separated social units. Trade and commerce between units serve as stimulus. In other words,
when similar but separated social units are fused by increased interaction into a larger and
denser settlement, the new and larger units exhibit more specialisation in terms of the division
of labour, than that found in some of the previously separate units.
Decline in the Functions of Family
Many of the educational, recreational and other functions, performed within a rural joint family
context, are taken over by other institutions such as schools, clubs and other voluntary organisations
in the urban social context. In urban society there is generally a clear demarcation between the home
and place of work, which is not always found in rural society. Correspondingly, at a psychological
level urban dwellers’ identities are not necessarily bound with their family roles. And also because of
greater geographical mobility, regular contact between kin is often difficult if not impossible in these
families. This however does not suggest that families are not vital in urban societies.