Current Trends: Urbanization, Sprawl and Making New Land

Let's start with a question

Ask the oldest person in your family where they grew up. Many Canadian families have a story like this: a great-grandparent grew up on a farm or in a small town, and their children or grandchildren moved to a city for school or work. That family story is part of one of the biggest trends in human history: urbanization.

Urbanization: the move to cities

For most of human history, most people lived in rural areas and farmed. That has changed. According to the United Nations (World Urbanization Prospects, 2018):

• In 1950, about 30% of the world's people lived in urban areas.
• By 2018, about 55% did. More than half the world's people now live in urban areas.
• By 2050, the UN projects (predicts) about 68%.

Countries define "urban" in different ways, so different reports can give somewhat different numbers, but they all show the same trend: the world is becoming more urban. Most of the growth is now in Asia and Africa.

Why do people move to cities?

Pull factors attract people to cities: jobs, higher wages, schools and universities, health care, entertainment, and family or friends who already live there.

Push factors encourage people to leave rural areas: farms that need fewer workers because of machines, few jobs, drought or poor harvests, distance from services, and sometimes conflict or disasters.

Megacities

A megacity has more than 10 million people. In 2018 the UN counted 33 megacities. Examples include Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, São Paulo, Mexico City, Cairo and Mumbai.

When a city grows very fast, it can be hard to build enough housing, roads, transit, water pipes and sewers in time. In many fast-growing cities, people who arrive with little money build homes in informal settlements: neighbourhoods built without official permission, which often lack clean water, sewers or secure housing. The people who live there work hard, and over time many of these neighbourhoods are improved with water, electricity and better homes.

Canada: an urban country

In the 2021 Census, Statistics Canada found that 17.8% of Canadians lived in rural areas, so about 82% lived in urban areas. Most population growth is in and around large cities such as Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa–Gatineau. Many newcomers to Canada settle in these large cities.

A counter-trend: leaving the big city

Not everyone is moving into big cities. Some people move from big cities to smaller towns and rural areas, for example because of high housing costs, the chance to work from home, or a quieter life. Statistics Canada reported that during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021), more people than usual moved out of the Toronto and Montréal areas to other parts of their provinces. This trend helps some small towns grow, but it can also raise housing prices there.

Urban sprawl and habitat loss

When cities grow outward with low-density suburbs, big parking lots and wide roads, geographers call it urban sprawl. Sprawl usually means:

• Farmland and natural areas (forests, wetlands, meadows) are paved over. Much of Canada's best farmland is in southern Ontario, close to its growing cities.
• Animals lose habitat, and roads cut through the areas they need to move between.
• People depend on cars, because homes, stores and jobs are far apart.

Many cities now encourage intensification: building up instead of out, with apartments and mixed-use buildings near transit, on land that is already developed.

Making new land: land reclamation

Where land is scarce, people sometimes create it:

• The Netherlands: about a quarter of the country is below sea level. The Dutch have drained lakes and coastal waters to make polders (low land protected by dikes and kept dry by pumping).
• Kobe, Japan: hemmed in by mountains, Kobe built Port Island in its harbour between 1966 and 1981, using soil from the mountains, to make room for port facilities and homes.
• Hong Kong: its international airport, opened in 1998, was built largely on reclaimed land.
• Toronto: much of today's downtown waterfront south of Front Street was once part of Lake Ontario and was filled in over many years. The Leslie Street Spit, built from construction fill, is now Tommy Thompson Park, an important place for birds.

Reclaimed land gives cities room to grow, but it is expensive, it destroys shoreline and wetland habitat, and it can be at risk of flooding and of liquefaction (shaking soil acting like a liquid) in earthquakes.