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Read this article to learn about the meaning of urban community!
The first difficulty with which we meet in the study of urban community is regarding the definition of the word ‘urban’. The difficulty lies in the fact that the term ‘community’ denotes two conditions: first, the physical condition, second, the social condition. The physical condition may not necessarily give rise to social condition. Generally, by an urban area we mean an area with a high density of population.
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But a village with an average number of persons per room as great as the city may not be called urban since it has too small an absolute population and too small an inhabited area. Then a village with too large an area may not be called urban, the population being small. Therefore, a city cannot be defined in terms of density of population. Account must also be taken of absolute population and absolute area.
But there is no uniformity of standards in different countries, in the context of ‘India, the census reports to date have defined (i) those places as urban areas which have a local authority like municipality, cantonment board, notified area committees, (ii) all other places which satisfy the requirements of a minimum population of 5,000 at least 75 per cent of the male working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits and a density of population of at least 900 persons per square Km.
Taking up the social aspect of urban community, the city is a way of life. The word ‘urbane’ suggests this way of life; it indicates fashionable living, wide acquaintance with things and people and political manner of speech. But is urban way of life limited only to the urban population? As we know, the rural people also have come under the influence of urban ways of life.
The rural areas can become urbanized. While there may be causal connection between the demographic features and social features of an urban community, a country can be demographically urban but socially more rural than the one which is demographically rural and socially more urban. For example, Chile has a greater population living in cities than does Canada, but its people are more rural than Canadians.
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Thus, it is difficult to frame a definition of the term ‘urban’. While the distinction between “rural” and “urban” is a familiar one and is commonly recognized in everyday language, the criteria employed are not very exact and scientifically precise. Sorokin and Zimmermann used occupational criteria to distinguish the ‘rural’ from ‘urban’ who said. “The principal criterion of the rural society or population is occupational, collection and cultivation of plants and animals. Through it, rural society differs from other, particularly, urban, populations engaged in different occupational pursuits.”
These writers mentioned other characteristics also in which rural and urban communities differ: size, density, heterogeneity, social differentiation and stratification, mobility, environment and systems of interaction, but according to them, these characteristics are causally connected.
The first ‘variable’, the agricultural occupation carries the other variables with it. These authors also recognize that the above traits differ in degree and not in kind. They observe: “In reality the transition from a purely rural community to an urban one is not abrupt but gradual.
There is no absolute boundary line which would show a clear cut cleavage between the rural and the urban community. Many differential characteristics of the rural and urban community would consist not so much in the presence of certain traits in rural, and their absence in urban communities, as much as in a quantitative increase of these characteristics.”
The above conception has been given the name of “rural-urban continuum” by recent writers suggesting that the differences between the two types of community are gradual and continuous, and not qualitative differences per se, resulting in a simple dichotomy.
Thus, Stuart A. Queen and David B. Carpenter claim that “there is a continuous gradation from rural to urban rather than a simple rural-urban dichotomy.” According to Gist and Halbert,” The familiar dichotomy between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ is more of a theoretical concept than a division based upon the facts of community life.” Every village possesses some elements of the city while every city carries some features of the villages. The slum areas of a city are no better than a village. As remarked by MacIver, “But between the two there is no sharp demarcation to tell where the city ends and country begins.”
Generally speaking, the urban communities are identified as large, dense and heterogeneous and the rural communities as small, less dense and homogeneous, yet no hard and fast line can be drawn. While the extremes can be easily identified, problems arise in drawing a hard and fast line.
Similarly, occupational criteria would also present the problem of demarcation. At what point should the proportion engaged in agriculture be set in order to determine whether a community is rural or urban? Should a simple majority be regarded as sufficient to classify a community one way or the other?
Thus, the characteristics of size, density, heterogeneity and occupation exhibit differences in degree from place to place and Lime Lo Lime. Sharp and absolute divisions between rural and urban communities do not exist and, therefore, we must recognize the fact that rural and urban communities are polar types and that they may be found at many points to the so-called “continuum” that extends from one extreme pole Lo the other.