Urbanization in Shanghai: A Study of Growth and its Broad Impacts

This essay examines urbanization and its impacts, using Shanghai, China, as a case study to illustrate changes between the past and present. Urbanization, defined as the shift of population from rural to urban areas, has significantly impacted Shanghai's economic, environmental, social, and health aspects. The essay highlights the accelerated urbanization process in Shanghai, marked by increased building area, GDP growth, population expansion, and decreased cultivated land. Factors such as water quality, habitat fragmentation, and food waste are affected, along with societal health issues like nutrition, crime rates, and mental health. Overall, the essay demonstrates how urbanization has transformed Shanghai and the world.

Running Head: URBANIZATION
0
Urbanization
City: Shanghai
(Student Details: )
4/5/2020

URBANIZATION 1
Urbanization in Shanghai
The essay is focused on urbanization and its impacts on the world with the help of an
example of a city. The chosen for seeing how urbznaition has changed between the past and
the present is taken as Shanghai, China.
Source: (Cui & Shi, 2012)
From the definition perspective, urbanization is the process where population usually shift
from rural areas to urban areas. In this way, urbanization causes a considerable decrease in
the proportion of people who live in rural areas. In other words, urganization refers to the
process through which numerous people become everlastingly concentrated in small areas,
while forming urbanized cities worlwide. It is worth knowing that rapid urbanization and
global warming both have great impacts on local temperature and urban heat island (UHI)
impacts.

URBANIZATION 2
Source: (Cui & Shi, 2012)
It has been announced by the United Nations that in 2008, total 50 % of the globe’s
population started living in cities as urban areas. Likewise, urganization in Shanghai is like a
milestone in demographic history of China as well as the world. In China, Shanghai is a
coastal modern megacity in East China, having an area of 6340.5 square kms and the
population of 26.0 million. It has been found that urbanization in Shanghai has been marked
by a process of accelerated urbanization. It means that growth of UHI in Shanghai is being
seen increased in area of buildings as well as roads and transportation. To see how
urbanization has changed between the past and the present, factors like number of operating
buses, rapid increase of GDP, expansion of population and the decrease in area of cultivated
land are observed in case of Shanghai, China.
Source: (Cui & Shi, 2012)

URBANIZATION 3
The urbanization has changed the city a lot between past and present by impacting the
economic, environmental, social, health aspects of the population living in the city. These
aforementioned factors and above graph are showing how urbanization has changed the
whole city and world. For example, elements like water quality, habitat fragmentation, food
waste, have been impacted by urbanization during last decade. On the other had, health of the
society has been affected largely by urbanization as nutrition gets affected by it. In addition,
social effects include crimes, less physical activities, increased pollution, increased mental
health issues and many more.
In whole, urbanization has considerably changed the city Shanghai as well as the whole
world and it has been explored well with this essay.