Aims

A brief presentation of the various conceptions of ways of measuring the process of urbanisation, and a presentation of this process in countries of the north and south, and its relationships with migrations.

Main themes

- Definitions: The statistical approach including classical dichotomies (town-country, urban-rural, and the shift from the towns/cities to urban agglomerations); the dynamic approach with the process of urbanisation and its sociological, economic, geographical and demographic conceptions.
- Measuring instruments: From simple (e.g. size of the population) to composite indicators.
- The process of urbanisation in time and space: An analysis of the various phases (e.g. the rural exodus, the peopling of centres, over-urbanisation, peri-urbanisation and re-urbanisation).
- A review of relations between the process of urbanisation, structures and demographic behaviour.

Content and teaching methods

The course will consist of lectures, but students will be required to participate actively. A large section of the course will address issues of defining and measuring the process of urbanisation; these issues will be based on the process's dual spatio-temporal dimension. The remainder of the course will aim to provide students with a basic knowledge of the demographic and sociological content of the process of urbanisation in countries of the north and south.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Assessment: This will be in the form of summarised reading and applied work.

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