ABSTRACT
Cities have a long history, but the growth of very large cities and the transition towards a global urban society date from the advent of industrial urbanism in the early nineteenth century (see Chapter 3). Since then, two different population waves have affected Western Europe and North America. For much of this period the dominant direction of population movement was from rural to urban areas, reflecting the emergence of urban industrial society. More recently, since the Second World War, a reversal of this long-standing pattern has become apparent, with people on both sides of the Atlantic, and in Australia, reoccupying peri-urban areas. Despite evidence of a reurbanisation trend in some metropolitan regions, counterurbanisation remains a major characteristic of contemporary Western societies (see Chapter 4). In contrast to the centrifugal pattern of urban population change in advanced societies, the centripetal processes of urbanisation and urban growth continue to dominate urban population dynamics in the Third World (see Chapters 21 and 23).
