Settlements and urbanization
About 55–58% of the world's people now live in urban areas, and more arrive every year. That shift changes where jobs, homes, schools and hospitals are needed. It also puts heavy pressure on a city's infrastructure (roads, water supply, power and so on). Geographers track urbanization closely because it shapes the lives of billions of people.
A place where people set up their homes. Settlements develop over time, and their function (what the place is mainly used for) can change as they grow.
An increase in the proportion of a population that lives in urban areas, usually because people move from the countryside into towns and cities.
The key word in that definition is proportion. Imagine a country where the population of its cities and the population of its villages both doubled. The cities would be bigger, but the country would not have urbanized, because the balance between urban and rural would be the same as before. Urbanization happens only when the urban share goes up.
Why a settlement first grew up in a particular spot is covered in the lesson on settlement location.
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