In the history of mankind references can be found to large cities since ancient times. In the sixth century B.C., Babylon was known to have a population of 350,000.

Other instances of large-sized cities are Pataliputra (now Patna in India), with a population of 700,000 in the first century B.C.; Rome, with a population of 1,100,000 in the second century, A.D.; Baghdad, with a population of 750,000 in the ninth century; and Angkor (Khmer Empire), with a population of 1,500,000 in the tenth or eleventh century.

Up to the eighteenth century, many parts of Asia had higher levels of urbanisation than Europe. Since the later middle Ages, however, the rise of commercial towns in Europe has gradually led to massive urbanisation.

The main difference between the urban centres of the East and the West was that while Eastern historic urban centres were mainly dependent on the resources of the economy and in that sense may be considered to be transited; not being of any use to the rural areas, the function of the Western urban centres was mainly commercial.

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Such commercial urban centres resulted in a wider distribution of benefits, thus increasing agricultural productivity and purchasing power. These (developments increased the potential of urban growth.

Other factors which led to the emergence of urban centres, specially sea and river ports were that they arose out of the mercantilist phase of modern imperialism, with a great deal of competition among States.

The Industrial Revolution necessitated the employment of a large labour force. As a result, huge sections of the population changed over from agricultural occupations to manufacturing occupation in urban centres.

Kingsley Davis and Hilda Hertz have estimated the percentages of the population living in urban localities of different sizes for the period 1800-1950.

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While in 1800, only three per cent of the world’s population lived in places with 5,000 or more inhabitants, in 1950, this percentage was 29.8. In each period of 50 years since 1800, the percentage has more than doubled.

When places with 20,000 or more inhabitants are considered, a similar pattern is observed. For places with 100,000 or more inhabitants, the percentages increased from 1.7 in 1800 to 5.5 in 1900. Later, there was more than a two fold increase, with 13.1 per cent of the total population living in such areas.

As the definition of urban areas differs from country to country, a study of the trends of urbanisation can be restricted only to agglomerations of 20,000 or more inhabitants.

In 1920, 266.4 million people in the world lived in agglomerations of 20,000 or more inhabitants; this number went up to 760.3 million in 1960, the percentage of such population to total population going up from 14.3 to 25.4 in the same period. In 1920, the developing regions had 68.7 million persons living in such agglomerations against 197.7 million in the developed regions.

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In 1960, these figures went up to 310.7 million and 449.6 million respectively. The corresponding percentages were 5.8 and 29.4 respectively in 1920 and 15.4 and 46.0 respectively in 1960. The largest increase was observed during the period 1950-1960.

When the developing and developed regions are considered separately, the 1950-1960 decade may be seen to be important for population growth in such agglomerations for both types of regions, though more so for the developing regions.

It is evident from this Table that, for both the types of urban localities, the average annual rates of population growth have been higher for the 1950-1960 decade than for the period 1920-1960.

While the average annual rates of growth for the entire period 1920-1960 were 2.6 and 2.9 for agglomerations of 20,000 or more inhabitants and cities of 100,000 or more inhabitants respectively, the corresponding average annual rates of growth were 3.6 and 3.9 for the decade 1950-1960.

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Moreover, the average annual rates of growth of population in cities of 100,000 and more inhabitants have been higher than those for agglomerations of 20,000 of more inhabitants.

This is true more particularly of the developing than of the developed regions, indicating that, in the former, there is more concentration of urban population in large cities than in the latter regions.