(i) Modern urban life is specifically connected with capitalist industrialization. Urbanisation means growth of towns and a faster growth of town population as compared with rural population. Urbanisation is therefore a result of not just natural growth in population, but also of shift of population from countryside to towns because of industrialization and greater economic opportunities in towns.

(ii) This process was not uniform throughout the world, and not even throughout Europe, or within a country, and did not come about all of a sudden.

(iii) There was a great divergence in rhythm of change between industrial and non-industrial areas, and areas where agriculture had become mechanised and not become mechanised.

(iv) With industrialization most people came to be employed in the production of manufactured goods and services, both of which were concentrated in towns and cities.

(v) In 1900, UK, the country that industrialised first, was still the most urbanised country with a 77% urban population, while Germany, which by then had a faster pace of industrialization, had about 56% living in urban areas.

(vi) Other countries still had less than half its people living in urban centres. At the beginning of this century about 70% of the population still lived in rural areas.

(vii) During the course of the 20" century, with significant shifts in production due to science and technological changes, urbanisation becomes more widespread

(viii) In UK and USA, by the mid 1970s more than 95% of the employed population was engaged in manufacturing and services and less than 5% in agriculture; in Europe (excluding Russia) by mid 1980s more than 70% lived in urban areas; in Japan, more than 80% were in manufacturing and services and less than 20% in agriculture.

(ix) In countries like Russia even in 1917 the majority of its population was linked with villages, although the 1930s and the latter half of the century saw rapid urbanisation.

(x) In many countries of Asia, including India, agriculture is still a much bigger sector in terms of people engaged in it.