Urbanization and its Challenges in Russia-India-China

Urbanization is a direct manifestation of the process of economic development. The challenges of rapid urbanization are being faced by Russia-India-China (RIC). Recent trend in the urbanization process shows that Asia will be the centre of future urbanization in the world.  The increased pace of urbanization and industrialization in post-reform Russia had a profound impact upon urban society and on its size & structure. Despite legal, economic and public health barriers, large number of people poured each year into the cities in search of food or fortune. Urbanization in Russia brought tremendous social and economic upheaval, bringing the growth of new social class i.e. a new class of capitalists. Urban population dynamics in the post Soviet Russia have been characterized by significant changes in the overall population dynamics of Russia. In today’s Russia, the main zones of population concentration are mostly in Russian towns which have mainly emerged within a 500 km radius around Moscow. This region has set the tone of economic reforms attracting migrants from around the country as well as from former Soviet states.  Urbanization largely focuses on the issue as one of impending crisis. Infrastructure is already falling apart, cities have exhausted their funds, and slums increased leading to social unrest. There are not enough job & basic facilities in rural areas and therefore migration is continuing from rural areas. In spite of numerous problems the fact remains that urban dwellers have contributed widely in transforming the economy. Fundamentally, the reason cities attract migrants is that they provide jobs, which eventually lead to economic growth. Though urbanization created reasonable economic growth and opportunity in Russia-India-China but decent living environment needs are missing in most of the urban sectors. Urbanization is related to the stagnation and volatility of agriculture and lack of sectoral diversification within agrarian economy and India is no exception to this fact. The growth rates in agricultural production and income has been noted low, unstable and disparate across regions in India over the past decade, resulting in lack of livelihood opportunities in rural areas. Rapid growth of urban population was also observed in India over past decade. India has been considered to be a major contributor to the incremental urban population, both due to its large demographic weight and also due to dynamics of urbanization.  Due to urbanization in India the existing cities are growing rapidly in all directions. Current estimates of urban population are in excess of 300 million and likely to reach 600 million by 2030. It seems over the next few years the urban population will be close to double in less than two decades. The population of towns and cities in India is set to double in the space of a generation. This paradigm shift and the urbanization process is attracting attention of demographers, sociologists, scientists, and politician’s creating disparity and confusion.  China’s rapid urbanization process has created huge migration over the past few years. Within a few decades, China will have hundreds of millions of new city dwellers.  Soon urbanization will turn this predominantly rural country into a highly urbanized society. Research reports also mentioned that this pattern will continue. This process will drive fundamental shifts and will have significant consequences for the world economy. The year 2011 marked a milestone in China’s several-thousand-year history as for the first time, more people lived in cities and in towns than in the countryside. The country’s 690 million urban dwellers now account for 51.3% of China’s total population of 1.35 billion. China’s recent urban transition is definitely a historic event of global importance. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has called this process as one of the significant force shaping the world in the 21st century. In 2012, China’s urbanization landmark has assumed significance for the global economy too. With Europe’s debt crisis and US and Japan’s struggle to maintain growth, many looked at Asia as the saviour of the world economy. The huge potential of the Asian market, based on the assumption of a rapidly rising middle class across the continent has fuelled hopes for a global rebound and growth for the next two decades. It is true that China is undergoing rapid urbanization, if one simply looks at the number of people relocating to cities and the new buildings being built-up. But China’s rural-urban transition is bit different from urbanization elsewhere in the world, the process there is a much more complicated phenomenon. China’s hukou system allows rural migrants to go and work in the cities but denies their access to urban social security. The popular narratives have too often overlooked China’s special set of conditions, especially how the rural-urban divide increased by institutions such as the hukou (household registration) system. Hampered by an obsolete hukou system, this model has constrained the growth of the middle class and consumption demand. A major overhaul is needed to improve the overall economic & social system. Once that is in place, one can begin to envision that China urbanizing its way to prosperity taking the rest of the world along with it. Urbanization brings with it a unique set of advantages and disadvantages. The contemporary urban scenario in RIC (Russia-India-China) shows that the growth in urban population has been modest and also fluctuating over the past few decades. Cities attract rural population for better employment & education opportunities, good health care but rapid and often unplanned urban growth is often associated with poverty, environmental degradation and population demands that outstrip service capacity in the process of urbanization, affecting the entire gamut of population in these three significant countries of the world Russia-India-China.

REGIONAL COMPARISONS AND ANALYSIS

The scale of urban growth in coming years is unprecedented. The 20th Century witnessed very rapid rates of growth in towns and cities, but the absolute magnitude of that growth was relatively small by comparison to ongoing and future growth. During the first four decades of this century, the world will witness an increase in urban population similar to that which occurred during the entire 20th Century, despite decreasing rates of urban growth. Indeed, as shown in Figure 1, rates of urban growth have been falling steadily in recent decades. In part, this is due to the fact that as cities grow, it takes a greater increase in population to impart the same velocity of growth as when it was smaller.

Figure 1 – Average annual rate of change of the urban population of major regions, 1950-2030

Different patterns of growth

Urbanization patterns vary considerably from one region to another, as shown below in Figure 2. The developed regions (Europe, North America and Oceania) have already attained high levels of urbanization and, given their overall low levels of population growth, are not expected to experience serious growth in their cities during coming decades.

The biggest story undoubtedly has to do with expected urban growth in Asia and Africa. Levels of urbanization in those two regions are considerably lower than in all other regions, as shown in Figure 2. That is, the majority of the population in Africa and Asia still lives in rural areas. Under the combined influence of globalization and continued population growth, cities are expected to grow at a rapid rate in those two regions. Between 2000 and 2030, Asia’s urban population will nearly double -- from 1.36 to 2.64 billion -- and Africa’s will more than double from 294 to 742 million. By 2030, Africa and Asia will include almost seven out of every ten urban inhabitants in the world.

Figure 2 – Percentage of the total population living in urban areas, by region, 1950-2030

In most countries of the LAC Region, the urban transition is well underway: Not only is the proportion of the total population living in urban areas already high (around 75 per cent), but a large proportion of these urban dwellers live in fairly large cities.

As seen in Figure 3 below, these differentials in past urbanization trends, combined with the relative population size in each world region, are producing enormous differences in the volume of urban growth by region. The large starting population sizes of Africa and Asia, together with their projected rates of urban growth – which are expected to remain at relatively high over the next 25 years – will result in a massive increase in the urban population of these two regions. These huge increases in urban population are occurring in countries having relatively low levels of per capita income. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the least urbanized region in the world, with only 34 per cent of its population residing in urban areas. The region is expected to sustain the highest rate of urban growth in the world for the next decades, with underlying rates of natural increase playing an important role.

Some three-fifths of the world’s population lives in Asia, a region so vast and heterogeneous as to defy generalization on many issues. It contains some of the largest and richest economies, as well as some of the smallest and poorest. However, one trait generally unites the region –low levels of urbanization in all but a few countries. Given its huge size, it contains half of the world’s urban population despite its low urbanization levels. Its urban population has increased more than five times since 1950. It also includes 11 of the world’s 20 mega-cities, that is, cities having a population of 10 million or more.

Figure 3- Urban growth in world regions, selected periods

City sizes by region

The urbanization patterns of the various regions are also marked by the way that the urban population is apportioned among cities of different sizes. Figure 4 shows how the urban population of each major world region is distributed among cities of different sizes. The main feature of this graph is that it reveals that the majority of the world’s population still lives in smaller cities (less than 500,000 inhabitants). Africa and Asia still have well over half of their total urban population in cities of that size, while Asia and LAC have almost half of theirs in that category.

Since Oceania has no cities of more than 5 million inhabitants, its population is disproportionately concentrated in cities of 1-5 million, in comparison to other regions. Moreover, Europe has by far, the largest proportion of its total urban population (almost 70 per cent) living in smaller cities (less than 500,000 inhabitants) and the lowest proportion in mega-cities (10 million or more inhabitants)

Among the developing regions, Africa has a higher proportion living in smaller-sized cities than LAC or Asia. The latter, in turn, have higher proportions of their urban population in mega-cities and in other very large cities (5 to 10 million).

Urbanization: An Environmental Force to Be Reckoned With

by Barbara Boyle Torrey

(April 2004) Human beings have become an increasingly powerful environmental force over the last 10,000 years. With the advent of agriculture 8,000 years ago, we began to change the land.1 And with the industrial revolution, we began to affect our atmosphere. The recent increase in the world's population has magnified the effects of our agricultural and economic activities. But the growth in world population has masked what may be an even more important human-environmental interaction: While the world's population is doubling, the world's urban population is tripling. Within the next few years, more than half the world's population will be living in urban areas (see Figure 1).2

Figure 1

Urban and Rural Populations, 1950-2030

Source: UN, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2003 Revision (2004).

The level and growth of urbanization differ considerably by region (see Figure 2). Among developing countries, Latin American countries have the highest proportion of their population living in urban areas. But East and South Asia are likely to have the fastest growth rates in the next 30 years. Almost all of future world population growth will be in towns and cities. Both the increase in and the redistribution of the earth's population are likely to affect the natural systems of the earth and the interactions between the urban environments and populations.

Figure 2

Population Living in Urban Areas

Source: UN, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2003 Revision (2004).

The best data on global urbanization trends come from the United Nations Population Division and the World Bank.3 The UN, however, cautions users that the data are often imprecise because the definition of urban varies country by country. Past projections of urbanization have also often overestimated future rates of growth. Therefore, it is important to be careful in using urbanization data to draw definitive conclusions.

The Dynamics of Urbanization

In 1800 only about 2 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas. That was small wonder: Until a century ago, urban areas were some of the unhealthiest places for people to live. The increased density of populations in urban areas led to the rapid spread of infectious diseases. Consequently, death rates in urban areas historically were higher than in rural areas. The only way urban areas maintained their existence until recently was by the continual in-migration of rural people.4

In only 200 years, the world's urban population has grown from 2 percent to nearly 50 percent of all people. The most striking examples of the urbanization of the world are the megacities of 10 million or more people. In 1975 only four megacities existed; in 2000 there were 18. And by 2015 the UN estimates that there will be 22.5 Much of the future growth, however, will not be in these huge agglomerations, but in the small to medium-size cities around the world.6

The growth in urban areas comes from both the increase in migration to the cities and the fertility of urban populations. Much of urban migration is driven by rural populations' desire for the advantages that urban areas offer. Urban advantages include greater opportunities to receive education, health care, and services such as entertainment. The urban poor have less opportunity for education than the urban nonpoor, but still they have more chance than rural populations.7

Urban fertility rates, though lower than rural fertility rates in every region of the world, contribute to the growth of urban areas. Within urban areas, women who migrated from rural areas have more children than those born in urban areas.8 Of course, the rural migrants to urban areas are not a random selection of the rural population; they are more likely to have wanted fewer children even if they had stayed in the countryside. So the difference between the fertility of urban migrants and rural women probably exaggerates the impact of urban migration on fertility.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the urban fertility rates are about 1.5 children less than in rural areas; in Latin America the differences are almost two children.9 Therefore, the urbanization of the world is likely to slow population growth. It is also likely to concentrate some environmental effects geographically.

Environmental Effects of Urbanization

Urban populations interact with their environment. Urban people change their environment through their consumption of food, energy, water, and land. And in turn, the polluted urban environment affects the health and quality of life of the urban population.

People who live in urban areas have very different consumption patterns than residents in rural areas.10 For example, urban populations consume much more food, energy, and durable goods than rural populations. In China during the 1970s, the urban populations consumed more than twice as much pork as the rural populations who were raising the pigs.11 With economic development, the difference in consumption declined as the rural populations ate better diets. But even a decade later, urban populations had 60 percent more pork in their diets than rural populations. The increasing consumption of meat is a sign of growing affluence in Beijing; in India where many urban residents are vegetarians, greater prosperity is seen in higher consumption of milk.

Urban populations not only consume more food, but they also consume more durable goods. In the early 1990s, Chinese households in urban areas were two times more likely to have a TV, eight times more likely to have a washing machine, and 25 times more likely to have a refrigerator than rural households.12 This increased consumption is a function of urban labor markets, wages, and household structure.

Energy consumption for electricity, transportation, cooking, and heating is much higher in urban areas than in rural villages. For example, urban populations have many more cars than rural populations per capita. Almost all of the cars in the world in the 1930s were in the United States. Today we have a car for every two people in the United States. If that became the norm, in 2050 there would be 5.3 billion cars in the world, all using energy.13

In China the per capita consumption of coal in towns and cities is over three times the consumption in rural areas.14 Comparisons of changes in world energy consumption per capita and GNP show that the two are positively correlated but may not change at the same rate.15 As countries move from using noncommercial forms of energy to commercial forms, the relative price of energy increases. Economies, therefore, often become more efficient as they develop because of advances in technology and changes in consumption behavior. The urbanization of the world's populations, however, will increase aggregate energy use, despite efficiencies and new technologies. And the increased consumption of energy is likely to have deleterious environmental effects.

Urban consumption of energy helps create heat islands that can change local weather patterns and weather downwind from the heat islands. The heat island phenomenon is created because cities radiate heat back into the atmosphere at a rate 15 percent to 30 percent less than rural areas. The combination of the increased energy consumption and difference in albedo (radiation) means that cities are warmer than rural areas (0.6 to 1.3 C).16 And these heat islands become traps for atmospheric pollutants. Cloudiness and fog occur with greater frequency. Precipitation is 5 percent to 10 percent higher in cities; thunderstorms and hailstorms are much more frequent, but snow days in cities are less common.

Urbanization also affects the broader regional environments. Regions downwind from large industrial complexes also see increases in the amount of precipitation, air pollution, and the number of days with thunderstorms.17 Urban areas affect not only the weather patterns, but also the runoff patterns for water. Urban areas generally generate more rain, but they reduce the infiltration of water and lower the water tables. This means that runoff occurs more rapidly with greater peak flows. Flood volumes increase, as do floods and water pollution downstream.

Many of the effects of urban areas on the environment are not necessarily linear. Bigger urban areas do not always create more environmental problems. And small urban areas can cause large problems. Much of what determines the extent of the environmental impacts is how the urban populations behave — their consumption and living patterns — not just how large they are.

Health Effects of Environmental Degradation

The urban environment is an important factor in determining the quality of life in urban areas and the impact of the urban area on the broader environment. Some urban environmental problems include inadequate water and sanitation, lack of rubbish disposal, and industrial pollution.18 Unfortunately, reducing the problems and ameliorating their effects on the urban population are expensive.

The health implications of these environmental problems include respiratory infections and other infectious and parasitic diseases. Capital costs for building improved environmental infrastructure — for example, investments in a cleaner public transportation system such as a subway — and for building more hospitals and clinics are higher in cities, where wages exceed those paid in rural areas. And urban land prices are much higher because of the competition for space. But not all urban areas have the same kinds of environmental conditions or health problems. Some research suggests that indicators of health problems, such as rates of infant mortality, are higher in cities that are growing rapidly than in those where growth is slower.19

Urban Environmental Policy Challenges

Since the 1950s, many cities in developed countries have met urban environmental challenges. Los Angeles has dramatically reduced air pollution. Many towns that grew up near rivers have succeeded in cleaning up the waters they befouled with industrial development. But cities at the beginning of their development generally have less wealth to devote to the mitigation of urban environmental impacts. And if the lack of resources is accompanied by inefficient government, a growing city may need many years for mitigation. Strong urban governance is critical to making progress. But it is often the resource in shortest supply.20 Overlapping jurisdictions for water, air, roads, housing, and industrial development frustrate efficient governance of these vital environmental resources. The lack of good geographic information systems means that many public servants are operating with cataracts. The lack of good statistics means that many urban indicators that would inform careful environmental decisionmaking are missing.21

When strong urban governance is lacking, public-private partnerships can become more important.22 These kinds of partnerships can help set priorities that are shared broadly, and therefore, implemented. Some of these public-private partnerships have advocated tackling the environmental threats to human health first. "Reducing soot, dust, lead, and microbial disease presents opportunities to achieve tangible progress at relatively low cost over relatively short periods," concluded conferees at a 1994 World Bank gathering on environmentally sustainable development.23 But ultimately there are many other urban environmental priorities that produce chronic problems for both people and the environment over the long term that also have to be addressed.

Much of the research that needs to be done on the environmental impacts of urban areas has not been done because of a lack of data and funding. Most of the data that exist are at a national level. But national research is too coarse for the environmental improvement of urban areas. Therefore, data and research at the local level need to be developed to provide the local governments with the information they need to make decisions. Certainly the members of the next generation, the majority of whom will be living in urban areas, will judge us by whether we were asking the right questions today about their urban environments. They will want to know whether we funded the right research to address those questions. And they will also want to know whether we used the research findings wisely.

Barbara Boyle Torrey is a writer and consultant who serves on PRB's board of trustees.

Germany-Population Distribution and Urbanization Mortality

Following unification, the Federal Republic encompassed 356,958 square kilometers and was one of the largest countries in Europe. With about 81.3 million people in mid-1995, it ranked second behind Russia in population among the countries of Europe. Unification actually reduced the Federal Republic's population density, however, because East Germany, which had a large rural area, was more sparsely populated. With an average of 228 persons per square kilometer in late 1993, unified Germany ranked third in population density among European countries. It ranked behind the Netherlands and Belgium, which had 363 and 329 persons per square kilometer, respectively.

Germany's population density varies greatly. The most densely populated Länder are Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen, with densities of 3,898, 2,236, and 1,697 persons per square kilometer, respectively, at the end of 1992 (see table 7, Appendix). The least densely populated are two new Länder , Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg, both mostly rural in character. They had population densities of eighty and eighty-six persons per square kilometer, respectively, at the end of 1992. Other Länder are closer to the national average: the largest Land , Bavaria, with 167 persons per square kilometer, is mostly rural, but its capital is the large city of Munich; Rhineland-Palatinate, with 196 persons per square kilometer, is also mostly rural but has numerous heavily populated areas along the Rhine; and Saxony, with 252 persons per square kilometer, also has a number of heavily populated areas.

The Land with the most population, one-fifth of the nation's total, is North Rhine-Westphalia. With a population density of 519 persons per square kilometer at the end of 1992, it is the most heavily settled of all Länder , with the exception of the three city Länder of Bremen, Hamburg, and Berlin. North Rhine-Westphalia's density is caused by its many cities; several dozen of these cities have populations above 100,000, including five with populations above 500,000. Many of these cities are located so close together that they form one of Europe's largest urban agglomerations, the Ruhrstadt (Ruhr City), with a population of about 5 million.

The Federal Republic has few very large cities and many medium-sized ones, a reflection of the centuries when the name Germany designated a geographical area consisting of many small and medium-sized states, each with its own capital (see table 8, Appendix). Berlin, by far the largest city, with a population of 3.5 million at the end of 1993, is certain to grow in population as more of the government moves there in the second half of the 1990s and as businesses relocate their headquarters to the new capital. Some estimates predict that Greater Berlin will have a population of 8 million by early in the twenty-first century.

Berlin already dwarfs the only other cities having more than 1 million inhabitants: Hamburg with 1.7 million and Munich with 1.3 million. Ten cities have populations between 500,000 and 1 million, seventeen between 250,000 and 500,000, and fifty-four between 100,000 and 250,000. In the early 1990s, about one-third of the population lived in cities with 100,000 residents or more, one-third in cities and towns with populations between 50,000 and 100,000, and one-third in villages and small towns.

Other densely populated areas are located in the southwest. They are Greater Stuttgart; the Rhine-Main area with its center of Frankfurt am Main; and the Rhine-Neckar region with its center in Mannheim. The greater Nuremberg and Hanover regions are also significant population centers. The new Länder are thinly settled except for Berlin and the regions of Dresden-Leipzig and Chemnitz-Zwickau.

Urban areas in the east are more densely populated than those in the west because the GDR saw little of the suburbanization seen in West Germany. As a result, there is a greater contrast between urban and rural areas in the new Länder than in the west. West Germany's suburbanization, however, is not nearly as extensive as that experienced by the United States after the end of World War II. Compared with cities in the United States, German cities are fairly compact, and their inhabitants can quickly reach small villages and farmlands.

Germany's population growth has been slow since the late 1960s. Many regions have shown little or no growth, or have even declined in population. The greatest growth has been in the south, where the populations of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria each increased by well over 1 million between 1970 and 1993. (Each had also grown by over 1 million in the 1960s.) North Rhine-Westphalia, which had grown by 1 million in the 1960s, added another 750,000 to its population between 1970 and 1993, a small increase, given a total population of nearly 18 million at the end of 1993. Bremen, Hamburg, and the Saarland experienced some population loss between 1970 and 1993. With the exception of united Berlin, all the new Länder lost population between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of 1993. In general, this development reflected long-term trends in East Germany, although the rate of decline has been higher since unification.

Data as of August 1995

In the postwar period, the former GDR developed a comprehensive health care system that made steady advances in reducing infant mortality and extending life expectancy for both men and women. Early in the postwar period, life expectancy in some categories was actually longer for East Germans than for West Germans, and infant mortality was lower until 1980. However, starting in the mid-1970s, West Germany began to register longer life expectancies in every age-group, and after 1980 the infant mortality rate dropped below that of East Germany. In 1988 infant mortality in West Germany was 7.6 per 1,000 live births and 8.1 per 1,000 in East Germany.

The better health and longevity of West Germans probably stemmed from an increased interest in quality of life issues, personal health, and the environment. East Germans, in contrast, suffered the ill effects of the Soviet model of a traditional rust-belt industrial economy, with minimal concern for workers' safety and health and wanton disregard of the need to protect the environment. Improving environmental conditions and a more health-conscious way of living should gradually reduce remaining health differences among Germans. In mid-1995 unified Germany had an estimated mortality rate of about eleven per 1,000, and life expectancy was estimated at 76.6 years (73.5 years for males and 79.9 years for females). The major causes of death were the same as those of other advanced countries (see Current Health Care Issues and Outlook for the Future, ch. 4).

Population Distribution and Urbanization

Following unification, the Federal Republic encompassed 356,958 square kilometers and was one of the largest countries in Europe. With about 81.3 million people in mid-1995, it ranked second behind Russia in population among the countries of Europe. Unification actually reduced the Federal Republic's population density, however, because East Germany, which had a large rural area, was more sparsely populated. With an average of 228 persons per square kilometer in late 1993, unified Germany ranked third in population density among European countries. It ranked behind the Netherlands and Belgium, which had 363 and 329 persons per square kilometer, respectively.

Germany's population density varies greatly. The most densely populated Länder are Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen, with densities of 3,898, 2,236, and 1,697 persons per square kilometer, respectively, at the end of 1992 (see table 7, Appendix). The least densely populated are two new Länder , Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg, both mostly rural in character. They had population densities of eighty and eighty-six persons per square kilometer, respectively, at the end of 1992. Other Länder are closer to the national average: the largest Land , Bavaria, with 167 persons per square kilometer, is mostly rural, but its capital is the large city of Munich; Rhineland-Palatinate, with 196 persons per square kilometer, is also mostly rural but has numerous heavily populated areas along the Rhine; and Saxony, with 252 persons per square kilometer, also has a number of heavily populated areas.

The Land with the most population, one-fifth of the nation's total, is North Rhine-Westphalia. With a population density of 519 persons per square kilometer at the end of 1992, it is the most heavily settled of all Länder , with the exception of the three city Länder of Bremen, Hamburg, and Berlin. North Rhine-Westphalia's density is caused by its many cities; several dozen of these cities have populations above 100,000, including five with populations above 500,000. Many of these cities are located so close together that they form one of Europe's largest urban agglomerations, the Ruhrstadt (Ruhr City), with a population of about 5 million.

The Federal Republic has few very large cities and many medium-sized ones, a reflection of the centuries when the name Germany designated a geographical area consisting of many small and medium-sized states, each with its own capital (see table 8, Appendix). Berlin, by far the largest city, with a population of 3.5 million at the end of 1993, is certain to grow in population as more of the government moves there in the second half of the 1990s and as businesses relocate their headquarters to the new capital. Some estimates predict that Greater Berlin will have a population of 8 million by early in the twenty-first century.

Berlin already dwarfs the only other cities having more than 1 million inhabitants: Hamburg with 1.7 million and Munich with 1.3 million. Ten cities have populations between 500,000 and 1 million, seventeen between 250,000 and 500,000, and fifty-four between 100,000 and 250,000. In the early 1990s, about one-third of the population lived in cities with 100,000 residents or more, one-third in cities and towns with populations between 50,000 and 100,000, and one-third in villages and small towns.

Other densely populated areas are located in the southwest. They are Greater Stuttgart; the Rhine-Main area with its center of Frankfurt am Main; and the Rhine-Neckar region with its center in Mannheim. The greater Nuremberg and Hanover regions are also significant population centers. The new Länder are thinly settled except for Berlin and the regions of Dresden-Leipzig and Chemnitz-Zwickau.

Urban areas in the east are more densely populated than those in the west because the GDR saw little of the suburbanization seen in West Germany. As a result, there is a greater contrast between urban and rural areas in the new Länder than in the west. West Germany's suburbanization, however, is not nearly as extensive as that experienced by the United States after the end of World War II. Compared with cities in the United States, German cities are fairly compact, and their inhabitants can quickly reach small villages and farmlands.

Germany's population growth has been slow since the late 1960s. Many regions have shown little or no growth, or have even declined in population. The greatest growth has been in the south, where the populations of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria each increased by well over 1 million between 1970 and 1993. (Each had also grown by over 1 million in the 1960s.) North Rhine-Westphalia, which had grown by 1 million in the 1960s, added another 750,000 to its population between 1970 and 1993, a small increase, given a total population of nearly 18 million at the end of 1993. Bremen, Hamburg, and the Saarland experienced some population loss between 1970 and 1993. With the exception of united Berlin, all the new Länder lost population between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of 1993. In general, this development reflected long-term trends in East Germany, although the rate of decline has been higher since unification.

Officially REPUBLIC OF POLAND, Polish POLSKA, or RZECZPOSPOLITA POLSKA, country lying at the physical centre of the European continent, approximately between latitudes 49° and 55° N and longitudes 14° and 24° E. Except for its southern mountainous regions, the country consists almost entirely of lowlands within the North European Plain. The total area of Poland is 120,728 square miles (312,685 square kilometres). Its capital is Warsaw (Warszawa).

Over the past millennium, the name Poland has been applied to a shifting territorial base. At one time, in the mid-1500s, Poland was the largest state in Europe. At other times there was no Polish state at all. Its current frontiers, stretching for 2,198 miles (3,538 kilometres), were drawn in 1945. Poland is bordered to the north by the Baltic Sea, to the northeast by Russia and Lithuania, and to the east by Belarus and Ukraine. To the south the border follows the watershed of the Beskid, Carpathian, and Sudeten (Sudety) mountains, which separate Poland from Slovakia and the Czech Republic, while to the west the border with Germany is defined by the Neisse (Nysa Luzycka) and Oder (Odra) rivers.

Relief

The natural landscape of Poland can be divided broadly into three relief groups: the lowlands, the highlands, and the mountains. The eastern extremes of Poland display characteristics common to eastern Europe, but the rest of the country is linked to western Europe by structure, climate, and the character of its vegetation. The lowland characteristics predominate: the average elevation of the whole country is only 568 feet (173 metres) above sea level, while more than three-fourths of the land lies below 650 feet.

Poland's relief was formed by the actions of Ice Age glaciers, which advanced and receded over the northern part of the country several times during the Pleistocene Epoch (1,600,000 to 10,000 years ago). The great and often monotonous expanses of the Polish lowlands, part of the North European Plain, are composed of geologically recent deposits that lie over a vast structural basin. In the southern part of the country, by contrast, older and more diverse geologic formations are exposed, and the topography is dominated by the mountainous arc of the Carpathians, dating from the Tertiary mountain-building period of about 25 million years ago. Around the northern rim of the Carpathians lies a series of structural basins, separating the mountain belt proper from a much older structural mass, or foreland, that appears in the relief patterns of the region as the Bohemian Massif, the Sudeten, and the Little Poland (Malopolska) Uplands.

Physiographic regions

The relief structure can be divided more specifically into a series of east-west-trending zones. To the north lie the swamps and dunes of the Baltic coast; south of these is a belt of morainic terrain with thousands of lakes, the southern boundary of which marks the limit of the last ice sheet. The third zone consists of the central lowlands, whose minimal relief was created by streams issuing from the retreating glaciers. This zone is the Polish heartland, the site of agriculture in places where loess has been deposited over the relatively infertile fluvioglacial deposits. The fourth zone is made up of the older mountains and highlands to the south; though limited in extent, it offers spectacular scenery. Along the southern border of the country are the Sudeten and Carpathian ranges and their foothills.

The coastal plain

The Baltic Coastal Plain stretches across northern Poland from Germany to Russia, forming a low-lying region built of various sediments. It is largely occupied by the ancient province of Pomerania, the name of which means "Along the Sea." The scarcely indented Baltic coastline was formed by wave action after the retreat of the ice sheet and the raising of sea levels. The Pomeranian (Pomorska) Bay in the west and the Gulf of Gdansk in the east are the two major inlets. In the southern portion of the former, two islands block off the Szczecin (Szczecinski) Lagoon, into which the Oder discharges its waters. In the Gulf of Gdansk, the Vistula (Wisla) River forms a large delta. Sandbars, on which the winds have created large dunes, line much of the coast, separating the coastal lakes and lagoons from the sea. The main urban centres are the ports of Szczecin (German: Stettin) on the lower Oder and Gdansk (Danzig) and Gdynia in the east. The central portion of the Baltic Coastal Plain is scantily populated--there are only small fishing ports, of which Kolobrzeg is the most important--and the landscape has a desolate beauty.

The lake region and central lowlands

The belt immediately to the south of the coastal plain presents, with its many lakes, a varied, hilly landscape of glacial origin. Wide river valleys divide the region into three parts: the Pomeranian (Pomorskie) Lakeland; the Masurian (Mazurskie) Lakeland, east of the lower Vistula; and the Great Poland (Wielkopolskie) Lakeland. The larger settlements and the main communications routes of this zone lie in and along the river valleys; the remainder of the area is mostly wooded and thinly populated. Only the eastern portion of the Great Poland Lakeland has a developed agriculture.

The extensive central lowlands contain isolated relief features shaped by the oldest glaciations, but their character is generally flat and monotonous. The postglacial lakes have long since been filled in, and glacial outwash masks the weakly developed meltwater valley channels. The basins of the main rivers divide the area into the Silesian (Slaska) Lowland, which lies in the upper Oder; the southern Great Poland Lowland, which lies in the middle Warta basin; and the Mazovian (Mazowsze) and Podlasian lowlands, which lie in the middle Vistula basin. Lower Silesia and Great Poland are important agricultural areas, but large industrial centres are found in many parts of the central lowlands. Warsaw, the capital, situated on the middle Vistula, is most prominent.

The Little Poland Uplands

These uplands, south of the central lowlands, extend from east to west, but they are folded transversely. In the west is the Silesian-Kraków upthrust, with rich deposits of coal. A second upthrust is formed by the ancient rocks of the Swietokrzyskie ("Holy Cross") Mountains, which reach a maximum elevation of 2,008 feet. Between these two regions lies the Nida River basin, with an average height of 650 to 1,000 feet. East of the Swietokrzyskie Mountains, the uplands are cut by the valley of the Vistula, beyond which lie the Lublin (Lubelska) Uplands. In the south occur patches of loess on which fertile brown- and black-earth soils have developed. The older geologic regions contain valuable minerals: in the Silesian-Kraków uplands there are coal, iron, zinc, and lead deposits. These mineral resources have made possible the rise of Poland's most important industrial region, and the landscape of Upper Silesia is highly urbanized. Katowice is the largest centre, and the region is closely linked with that around Kraków. The Little Poland Uplands protect the Little Poland Lowlands, in which Kraków lies, from the colder air of the north. To the north the Staropolski ("Old Polish") Basin, situated in the foothills of the Swietokrzyskie Mountains, has a long history of industrial production. Kielce is the area's urban centre.

The Sudeten

The Sudeten and its foreland, part of the larger Bohemian Massif, have a long and complex geologic history. They owe their present rugged form, however, to earth movements that accompanied the Carpathian uplift, and the highest portion, the Karkonosze ("Giant Mountains"), reaches 5,256 feet above sea level. The region contains rich mineral deposits, notably coking coal, which has occasioned the growth of an industrial centre around Walbrzych. The region has many small towns. Resorts and spas are found in more secluded areas. The foreland of the Sudeten, separated by a large fault from the larger mass, contains many granite quarries.

The Carpathians

The southernmost and also most scenic portion of Poland embraces the Carpathian Mountains and their associated chains and basins, created in the geologically recent mountain-building Tertiary Period (about 66.4 to 1.6 million years ago). Within the Polish frontiers lie the Oswiecim and Sandomierz basins, a portion of the Beskid Mountains, the Orawka-Podhale Basin, and the Tatra (Tatry) Mountains. The sub-Carpathian basins contain deposits of salt, sulfur, and natural gas and some petroleum. There are both a large rural population and many towns of medium size. The highest peak of the Beskid Mountains, Mount Babia, reaches 5,659 feet; the Tatras, with a maximum elevation of 8,199 feet (2,499 metres), are the highest portion of the Polish Carpathians. Zakopane, the largest tourist and resort centre in Poland, lies at their feet. The Bieszczady Mountains--rolling, carpeted in beech woods, and sparsely inhabited--lie in the extreme southeast.

Drainage and soils

Virtually the entire area of Poland drains to the Baltic, about half via the Vistula River and a third via the Oder. Polish rivers experience two periods of high water each year. In spring the lowland rivers are swollen by melted snow, the effect intensified both by ice dams (which block the rivers for one to three months) and by the fact that the thaw first strikes the upper reaches of the northward-flowing rivers. The summer rains bring a second maximum around the beginning of July.

There are some 9,300 Polish lakes with areas of more than 2 1/2 acres (1 hectare), and their total area is about 1,200 square miles, or 1 percent of the national territory. The majority, however, are found in the northern glaciated belt, where they occupy more than 10 percent of the surface area.

Polish soils are varied and without clearly marked regional types. The greatest area is covered by podzol and pseudopodzol types, followed by the less widely distributed brown-earth soils, which are richer in nutrients. In the south are extensive areas of fertile loess-based soils. The rendzinas, formed on limestone rocks, are a unique type. Alluvial soils filling the river valleys and peaty swamp soils found in the lake area and in poorly drained valleys are also of importance.

Climate

Varying types of air masses collide over Poland, influencing the character of both weather and climate. The major elements involved are oceanic air masses from the west, cold polar air from Scandinavia or Russia, and warmer, subtropical air from the south. A series of barometric depressions moves eastward along the polar front year-round, dividing the subtropical from the colder air, bringing to Poland, as to other parts of northern Europe, cloudy, wet days. In winter, polar-continental air often becomes dominant, bringing crisp, frosty weather, with still colder Arctic air following in its wake. Warm, dry, subtropical-continental air often brings pleasant days in late summer and autumn.

The overall climate of Poland has a transitional--and highly variable--character between maritime and continental types. Six seasons may be clearly distinguished: a snowy winter of one to three months; an early spring of one or two months, with alternating wintry and springlike conditions; a predominantly sunny spring; a warm summer with plenty of rain and sunshine; a sunny, warm autumn; and a foggy, humid period signifying the approach of winter. Sunshine reaches its maximum over the Baltic in summer and the Carpathians in winter, and mean annual temperatures range from 46o F (8° C) in the southwestern lowlands to 44o F (7° C) in the colder northeast. The climate of the mountains is determined by altitude.

The annual average precipitation is about 24 inches (600 millimetres), but in the mountains the figure approaches 31 to 47 inches, dropping to about 18 inches in the central lowlands. In winter, snow makes up about half the total in the plains and almost all of it in the mountains.