Urban and rural

Start with a question: where do you live, a village or a city? How can you tell?

India has had cities for a very long time:

• Harappan cities: Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi;
• later cities: Vijayanagara, Varanasi, Ujjain.

Most of the later ones are still busy cities today.

What makes a place urban (a town or city)?

• many people living close together;
• many kinds of businesses and jobs;
• government offices;
• often big transport and communication systems.

Urban areas have elected local bodies (such as a municipality) that look after roads, water and other services.

Rural areas (villages) have:

• fewer people;
• close-knit communities, where people know each other;
• more jobs linked to farming;
• fewer businesses;
• simpler transport.

They are run by gram panchayats.

Here is something surprising: the line between urban and rural is not the same everywhere. Each country draws it differently:

• Denmark: urban if more than 220 people;
• Japan: 50,000;
• India: 5,000.

So the same settlement could be a town in Denmark and a village in Japan. 'Urban' is a decision a country makes.

How crowded is a place? Demographers use population density: the number of people per square kilometre.

Population density = total population ÷ area.

The chapter shows two satellite photos:

• the village of Asadpur Khera, Haryana: big patches of green and brown open land;
• the city of Gurugram: a dense grey network of buildings.