Good Learning Co.
SavannahYear 8
← Geography
GeographyThe urban and economic world25 min★★★ difficulty

Urbanisation and the rise of megacities

In 1950 fewer than one person in three lived in a town or city. Today it is over half, and almost all the growth still to come will happen in Africa and Asia.

Part of your national curriculum
  • Human and physical geography: Understand population and urbanisation, including international development and the causes and effects of migration
  • Human and physical geography: Understand urbanisation, including the causes and geographical effects, at country and city scale, of urbanisation and megacities

Lesson overview

What you'll learn in this lesson

Explain the causes and global pattern of urbanisation.

Key learning points

  • • Defining the terms
  • • Rural push factors
  • • Urban pull factors
  • • Natural increase compounds it

This lesson at a glance

  • 25 minutes
  • 17 parts to scroll through
  • 4 quick checks
  • Marked quiz at the end
  • Gentle pace: short sittings with pauses

Words to know

causesglobalpatternurbanisationdefining

Scroll down — the lesson carries on below

Part 1 of 17 · Discover6%
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Watch & discover

Part 1 of 17

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Urbanisation and the rise of megacities

An English teaching video on this topic from Mr B. Watch it, then scroll down for the lesson.

In a nutshell

Explain the causes and global pattern of urbanisation.

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Learning cycle

Part 2 of 17

Learning cycle 1 of 2

Part 1 · Defining the terms

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

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Explore the idea

Part 3 of 17

Learn

Defining the terms

Urbanisation is an increase in the proportion of a population living in urban areas. It is not the same as urban growth in raw numbers. A megacity is an urban area with over ten million people; there are now more than thirty, mostly in newly emerging economies. Suburbanisation, counter-urbanisation and urban regeneration describe later stages that mainly affect higher income countries.

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Explore the idea

Part 4 of 17

Learn

Rural push factors

Mechanisation of farming removes jobs. Land is subdivided between children until plots are too small to live on. Drought, flooding, soil erosion and conflict destroy livelihoods. Rural areas often have poorer schools, clinics, electricity and roads. People rarely leave for a single reason: push factors accumulate until staying becomes impossible.

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Quick check

Part 5 of 17

Quick check

Urbanisation means

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Quick check

Part 6 of 17

Quick check

Which is a push factor?

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Learning cycle

Part 7 of 17

Learning cycle 2 of 2

Part 2 · Urban pull factors

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

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Reset break

Part 8 of 17

Pause

That's sitting 1 of 2 done

Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.

Stop here for now
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Explore the idea

Part 9 of 17

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Urban pull factors

Cities offer higher and more reliable wages, formal and informal work, hospitals, secondary schools and universities, electricity, entertainment and the perception of opportunity, spread by relatives who already moved and by social media. Perception matters as much as reality: many migrants arrive to find work harder to get than they expected.

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Explore the idea

Part 10 of 17

Learn

Natural increase compounds it

Migrants are mostly young adults of working age, so cities gain a high proportion of people at child-bearing age. Birth rates therefore stay high while urban healthcare cuts death rates, and the city keeps growing even if migration slows. This is why urban populations in many NEEs continue to expand rapidly.

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Quick check

Part 11 of 17

Quick check

A megacity has a population of at least

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Quick check

Part 12 of 17

Quick check

Why does natural increase stay high in fast-growing cities?

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Explore the idea

Part 13 of 17

Worked example

Worked answer: explain why urbanisation is fastest in newly emerging economies (6 marks)

Rapid industrialisation concentrates factory and construction jobs in cities, so wages there rise well above rural incomes and attract migrants (2). At the same time agricultural mechanisation and land pressure remove rural work, so families have little reason to stay, and improved roads and mobile phones make moving and hearing about opportunities easier (2). Because those migrants are mostly young adults, natural increase then adds to migration, so the urban population grows from two directions at once (2).

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Challenge round

Part 14 of 17

Game · Sort it

Which of these are true?

Drag each card into the right column. Tap a card first if dragging is fiddly.

True

Not true

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Challenge round

Part 15 of 17

Game · Fill the gaps

Finish the sentences

Choose the word that belongs in each gap.

____ is an increase in the proportion of a population living in urban areas.

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Mastery quiz

Part 16 of 17

Marked quiz

End of lesson quiz: Urbanisation and the rise of megacities

4 questions, marked with the reasoning shown. No timer.

  1. 1. A city's population doubles in twenty years. Which pressure is most likely?

  2. 2. Urbanisation means

  3. 3. Which is a push factor?

  4. 4. A megacity has a population of at least

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Lesson round-up

Part 17 of 17

Lesson round-up

Ready when you are

Quiz score

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Points this lesson

0

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0 in a row

Luna: 0 out of 4 on the practice checks. Only if you feel up to it — one more?

Ask Luna

Do the work

Your written work for this lesson

This is the part you'd do in your book at school. Pick the pieces below, write here or on paper, and photograph anything you draw or work out.

Case study

Flooding on the River Calder

The town of Harbrook sits where a steep valley opens onto a flat floodplain. In December 2015, 120 mm of rain fell in 36 hours onto ground that was already saturated. The river rose 2.4 m in five hours, and 380 homes and 54 businesses flooded. Two roads and the railway closed for eleven days.

Geographers pointed to physical causes — steep slopes, impermeable rock, heavy rainfall — and human causes: moorland drained upstream, new housing built on the floodplain, and drains designed for smaller storms.

Since then the town has planted 40 hectares of woodland upstream, built leaky dams in small streams, and raised flood walls to 1.8 m. In the storm of 2020 the peak river level was 0.3 m lower and 40 homes flooded, not 380.

Written for Good Learning Co.

Reading questions

  1. List two physical and two human causes of the 2015 flood.
  2. Explain how planting woodland upstream lowers the river's peak level.
  3. Using the figures, judge how successful the scheme has been. Quote data in your answer.

  • Case study notes

    Writing

    Write the place, the facts and the figures from this lesson so you can revise them later.

    Half a page

  • Explain answer

    Writing

    Answer in full sentences, giving causes and effects. Use one figure or place name as evidence.

    8–10 sentences

  • Map or sketch

    Diagram

    Draw the map, cross-section or field sketch with a key, title and labels, then photograph it.

    1 map with a key

  • Data work

    Working out

    Plot your figures as a graph on paper and write one sentence about the pattern.

    1 graph + 1 sentence

Saved as you type.

Part 1 of 17 · Watch & discover

How this is going

  • Not looked at yet

    Understand population and urbanisation, including international development and the causes and effects of migration

  • Not looked at yet

    Understand urbanisation, including the causes and geographical effects, at country and city scale, of urbanisation and megacities

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