Urban Geography

    When class first started, we got to see our exam grades so far. I have an 81%, but the essay part still needs to be graded. After we saw our grades, we started talking about urban geography. Urban geography is the part of geography that deals with cities. A city is a gathering or collection of people and buildings that are clustered together. They serve as a center of politics, culture, and economics. The term urban is used to describe the buildup of the central city and suburban realm, which includes the city and the surrounding environs connected to the city. For the first time in human history, in the last few years there are more people living in cities then in rural area. The Modern Process of Urbanization is when a rural area can become urbanized quite quickly in the modern world. An example of a place that has been affected is Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen used to be filled with ponds and rice paddies, but over the course of 25 years it is now filled with large buildings. Before urbanization occurred,which was over 10,000 years ago, people lived in agricultural villages. Agricultural villages were relatively small villages where most of the population was involved in agriculture. This means that they had to grow and find their own food. There are two components that are necessary in order to form cities: an agricultural surplus and social stratification. Agricultural surplus means that you have to have a lot of food, berries, grains, etc. in order to feed a large amount of people. Social stratification is a leadership class.