title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK won its twelfth Cup title in 2000 under coach Giannis Pathiakakis, defeating Ionikos 3–0 in the final (37' Nikolaidis, 77' Petkov, 82' Maladenis). The club continued its consistency in the Championship of 2001–02, finishing second by goal aggregate to Olympiacos, and beating Olympiacos in the Greek Cup final.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Dušan Bajević returned as coach in the summer of 2002, a move that sparked open hostility towards Bajević from a section of AEK supporters. A strong team, called "Dream Team" by the fans, was created with players like Kostas Katsouranis, Ilija Ivić, Dionysis Chiotis, Vasilios Borbokis, Grigoris Georgatos, Theodoros Zagorakis, Walter Centeno, Michalis Kapsis, Michel Kreek, Vasilios Lakis, Vasilios Tsiartas (who returned from Sevilla), Ioannis Okkas, Nikos Liberopoulos and Demis Nikolaidis.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Under Bajević, AEK progressed through the qualifying rounds in the 2002 UEFA Champions League by eliminating APOEL. Drawn in Group A with AS Roma, Real Madrid, and Racing Genk, AEK with good performances drew all their games and were knocked out of the competition. They continued to UEFA Cup, eliminating Maccabi Haifa (4–0, 4–1) before being knocked out by Málaga CF.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Off the field, president Makis Psomiadis (died 6 January 2016) caused many problems for AEK and with his mismanagement overcharged the club. Also, with the assistance of his bodyguards, he allegedly assaulted captain Demis Nikolaidis and other players.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: After the altercation, and partly due to the club's growing financial problems, Nikolaidis was let on free transfer by mutual consent to Atlético Madrid. Unable to cope with the negativity from a large section of AEK fans, Bajević resigned in 2004 after a match against Iraklis.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: In 2004, Demis Nikolaidis and other significant AEK followers formed a supporters' club Enosis 1924 (Union 1924) to motivate all AEK supporters into taking up the club's shares and governance. The project was not fully realised because, in the meantime, various businessmen decided to buy shares and invest money in the club. However, to this date, Enosis 1924's chairman is a member of the AEK FC board. The same year, Nikos Goumas Stadium, AEK's home stadium for over 70 years was demolished, because a big part of it was beaten from 1999 Athens earthquake.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: In 2004, on the back of strong AEK fan support, Nikolaidis, at the head of a consortium of businessmen, bought out the beleaguered club and became the new president. His primary task was to lead AEK out of its precarious financial position. The first success was an arrangement through the Greek judicial system to write off most of the massive debt that previous club administrators had amassed and to repay any remaining public debts in manageable instalments.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Securing the club's existence in the Alpha Ethniki, Nikolaidis then began a program to rebuild AEK to its former glory. He appointed experienced former player Ilija Ivić as technical director and brought back Fernando Santos as a coach. The AEK fans, emboldened by Nikolaidis' efforts, followed suit by buying season ticket packages in record numbers (over 17,000).


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK recruited promising young players to strengthen a depleted team. Led by the experienced Katsouranis and Liberopoulos, and featuring Brazilian Júlio César, the club made it to the Greek Cup final for the seventh time in 13 years but finished second in the Championship, and in the process, secured a place in the third qualifying round of the UEFA Champions League. For the 2006–07 season, former Real Betis coach Lorenzo Serra Ferrer was appointed to the coaching position after Fernando Santos' contract was not renewed.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: By beating Hearts over both legs (2–1 in Scotland and 3–0 in Greece), AEK progressed to the group stage of the Champions League. The club obtained a total of 8 points, having beaten AC Milan 1–0, Lille 1–0, and managing two draws with Anderlecht (1–1 in Greece and 2–2 in Belgium). AEK finished second in the Greek Super League, qualifying again for the third round in the UEFA Champions League.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: For the 2007–08 season AEK changed kit sponsors from Adidas to Puma. They played with Sevilla FC in the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round. The first leg was played on 15 August, away at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, where AEK was defeated by 2 goals, and the second leg played on 3 September, at the Athens Olympic Stadium where AEK lost again by 1–4.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK completed the signings of Brazilian legend Rivaldo, after he was let free from Olympiacos, Rodolfo Arruabarrena, Charis Pappas, and Argentine striker Ismael Blanco. Traianos Dellas was rewarded with a new contract, keeping him at the club until summer 2009. On 25 August, the Super League and EPO decided to postpone the opening season's games due to the fire disaster in the Peloponnese.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: After being eliminated from the UEFA Champions League, AEK were drawn to play against FC Salzburg for the UEFA Cup. On 20 September, in Athens, AEK defeated FC Salzburg 3–0. In the second leg, played in Salzburg on 4 October, AEK lost the match but still went through 3–1 on aggregate. On 9 October, AEK were drawn in Group C in the UEFA Cup group stage along with Villarreal, Fiorentina, Mladá Boleslav, and Elfsborg. On 25 October, AEK kicked off the group stage with a 1–1 draw away to Elfsborg. On 29 November, AEK again drew 1–1, this time at home to Fiorentina. On 5 December, AEK won Mladá Boleslav 1–0 away and on 20 December, AEK was home defeated 1–2 by Villarreal CF, but finally booked a place in the knockout stage of the UEFA Cup by finishing third in the group. They were then drawn against Getafe CF in the third round (phase of 32). AEK advanced to the third round of UEFA Cup for the second consecutive season.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: On 12 February, AEK parted company with Lorenzo Serra Ferrer after a poor run of form and unsuccessful signings and replaced him with former player Nikos Kostenoglou, on a caretaker basis. The team initially finished in first place in the league, but after the court case between Apollon Kalamarias and Olympiacos for the illegal usage of a player in the 1–0 Apollon Kalamarias win earlier in the season, Olympiacos was awarded 3 points, thus finishing 2 points ahead of AEK.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: President Demis Nikolaidis and several other managers and chairmen were angered with the court's decision, stating that the Hellenic Football Federation knew about the usage of the illegal player prior to the game and had indeed issued a registration (blue card), but didn't do anything about it. Panathinaikos also challenged the result at the Court of Arbitration in Sport (CAS) with no success, as the Hellenic Federation did not support the claim. Rivaldo had stated his intention to leave Greece if the ruling went in favour of Olympiacos and AEK were not declared champions. He stated, "a team that was not good enough to win the title on the pitch does not deserve the trophy".


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Giorgos Donis was appointed head coach of AEK on 14 May. His reign at the club did not go well. It all began when AEK failed to surpass AC Omonia in the UEFA Cup second qualifying round, which meant their elimination from European competitions for the season. Rivaldo asked to leave the club to sign for Bunyodkor on 27 August.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: The league campaign started very well after a win over rivals Panathinaikos in the opening game of the season, but poor performances and results from then on left AEK in a difficult situation. Head coach Donis was eager to leave the club, but president Nikolaidis did not allow him to leave. Nevertheless, Nikolaidis left due to disappointing results and after a controversy with the club's supporters, Original 21, leaving the presidency temporarily to the members of the board of directors, Nikos Koulis, and Takis Kanellopoulos.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: However, the series of disappointing results continued, bringing anger and insecure situations for everyone on the team. The first to be hit by this wave of disappointment and upset with the team council was coach Donis, who was asked to leave the team. On 21 November 2008, AEK hired Dušan Bajević as head coach for third time. However, after a while, Takis Kanellopoulos left the club, as he sparked a rivalry with Bajević.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: On 4 February 2009, Nikos Thanopoulos was elected as the 41st president of AEK FC. Bajević brought some much-needed stability to the club, and performances on the pitch improved vastly towards the end of the season, culminating in AEK's progression to the Greek Cup final against Olympiacos which was played on 2 May 2009, at Athens Olympic Stadium. AEK lost in the final 14–15 on penalties. AEK finished the regular season in fourth position, thus qualifying for the season's playoffs, in which they eventually finished second, just missing out on UEFA Champions League qualification.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: In the summer transfer period of 2010, AEK, despite being low on budget, managed to reinforce its ranks with many notable players. Club idols Nikos Liberopoulos and Traianos Dellas signed the last one-year contracts of their careers, and many new and experienced players signed to AEK, the most notable of whom were Papa Bouba Diop, Cristian Nasuti, and Christos Patsatzoglou. AEK qualified for the 2010–11 Europa League group stage after defeating Dundee United 2–1 on aggregate.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: To compensate for the departures of Nacho Scocco, Papa Bouba Diop, Sebastián Saja, and Ismael Blanco in the summer of 2011, AEK signed the captain of Iceland Eiður Guðjohnsen, and Colombian international Fabián Vargas. Due to financial problems, on 25 June 2012, AEK's legend Thomas Mavros took the club's management and on 1 August 2012, became president in an effort to save the club from financial disaster. Many other former AEK players like Vasilis Tsiartas, Mimis Papaioannou, Kostas Nestoridis, Christos Kostis, Vangelis Vlachos, Christos Arvanitis, and Giorgos Karafeskos were hired to help the club return to its previous glory days. Due to bad results, on 30 September 2012, Vangelis Vlachos was fired and Ewald Lienen hired as AEK's head coach. On 9 April 2013, Lienen was fired after disappointing results and AEK hired Traianos Dellas as head coach with Vasilis Borbokis and Akis Zikos for assistants.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: On 19 April 2013, a Super League disciplinary committee voted to remove 3 points from AEK and award Panthrakikos a 3–0 win, after fans stormed the pitch and chased players from the field during the AEK–Panthrakikos match on 14 April 2013. As a result, AEK were relegated from the Super League to the second-tier Football League for the first time in their history. In addition, AEK were to start their Football League campaign with minus 2 points.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: On 7 June 2013, during an AEK council, it was decided that AEK FC would become an amateur football club and would not participate in the Football League division for the 2013–14 season, preferring instead, to self-relegate and participate in the Football League 2 division and start from scratch. On the same day Dimitris Melissanidis, the former president of the club, became administrative leader of the club, under the supervision of Amateur AEK, with the aim of saving the club. Along with other notable AEK fans and old players, they went on to create the non-profit association Independent Union of Friends of AEK (; "Anexártiti Énosi Fίlon AEK") which took the majority stake of the football club.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK began its revival by signing Traianos Dellas as their new head coach. Dellas led AEK to first place in the third national division with a record of 23 wins, 3 draws, and only one defeat. The following year AEK participated in the 2014–15 Football League, finishing first and undefeated in the regular season standings. AEK successfully finished first in the playoffs and gained promotion back to the top tier, the Greek Super League. The biggest transfer in the club after returning to the Greek Super League was the Argentinian star Diego Buonanotte, who only stayed at the club for a year.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: On 20 October 2015, Traianos Dellas was forced to resign as a result of a dispute with the board, and a heavy 4–0 away loss to Olympiacos. Stelios Manolas was named interim coach and later Gus Poyet was appointed as new head coach. On 19 April, Poyet was fired by AEK Athens after being accused by the board for revealing private club conversations. Stelios Manolas took charge as interim coach once again. Manolas managed to guide AEK to a 3rd-place finish in the league qualifying for the playoff round and also to their first piece of silverware since the 2010–11 season by lifting the Greek Cup, defeating Olympiacos in the final 2–1. With the postponement of the final on two separate occasions and the congested fixture list of the playoff round, it meant AEK were to play a fixture every three days, which evidently took its toll on the players, but they finished third in the playoffs and qualified for the 2016–17 UEFA Europa League Third Qualifying Round. The first season back in the top flight was considered a success with a trophy and qualification for European football next season, a return after a five-year hiatus.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: The new season started with high expectations by AEK Athens fans as the club signed Dmytro Chyhrynskyi, Hugo Almeida and Joleon Lescott, announcing three of the biggest transfers in their history. Unfortunately, the 34-year-old English defender suffered a knee detached cartilage while cycling in his apartment. The injury ruled Lescott out for the remainder of the season. The player refused to get help from the team's doctors and insisted on completing his rehabilitation in the United Kingdom. The board did not agree to the player's wishes and additional demands, which resulted in his contract being terminated. This outcome led what it until then seemed to be a powerful defending duo to a midsummer night's nightmare. In addition, a 0–1 aggregate loss to AS Saint-Étienne in the Europa League qualifiers brought disappointment to fans' dreams of European participation. Nevertheless, AEK defeated Xanthi 4–1 in the first match of the season raising hopes for national distinction. However, the decision was made to replace Temur Ketsbaia with José Morais; the decision was based on the team's stuttering start to the season, 3 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses, and poor displays. José's arrival, however, did not improve the team's results or performances, winning only three of his fourteen matches as manager. On 19 January 2017 former manager Manolo Jiménez was appointed as manager for the second time following José's resignation. Upon his appointment he got the team from 7th place up to a 4th-place finish, and first place in the European Playoffs, claiming second place in the league overall and qualifying for the UEFA Champions League Third qualifying round. Jiménez also guided the team to a second consecutive Greek Cup final where they faced PAOK in a controversial game marred by pre-match violence between the two sets of fans and a winning goal from an offside position.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: The third season back in the top flight began with a tough draw in the Champions League Third qualifying round versus CSKA Moscow losing 3–0 on aggregate. The loss meant AEK were demoted to the Europa League play-off round where they were pitted versus Belgians Club Brugge. A 0–0 draw in Brugge in the first leg and a 3–0 win in the return in Athens meant that AEK qualified for the group stages of a major European competition for the first time in 6 years. They were seeded in pot 4 and were drawn along with AC Milan, HNK Rijeka and Austria Wien. AEK would go on to qualify for the round of 32 undefeated, a statement that solidified their return as one of Europe's elite teams, with a record of 1 win and 5 draws, the most notable being the two back-to-back 0–0 draws versus AC Milan. In the Round of 32 AEK were drawn against Ukrainian giants Dynamo Kyiv. AEK were better than their opponents, but also were unlucky and lost after two draws and on away goal rule. The first match took place in Athens, with a 1–1 draw and the second game in Kyiv, finished 0–0. In April, AEK won their 12th Greek championship, by recording a 2–0 home win against Levadiakos in front of 60,000 fans. This was their first championship after 24 years. AEK were crowned champions in front of 14,500 of their fans in the last matchday against Apollon Smyrnis at Georgios Kamaras Stadium.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: 2018–19 season was the season that AEK returned to the groups of the UEFA Champions League, for the 5th time in the club's history after eliminating Celtic (3–2 on aggregate) and MOL Vidi (3–2 on aggregate) in the qualifying stages.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Led by former Panathinaikos' manager, Marinos Ouzounidis, AEK were drawn in Group E against Bayern Munich, Benfica and Ajax but failed to make an impact after losing in all six occasions.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Key-players Jakob Johansson, Lazaros Christodoulopoulos, Sergio Araujo and Ognjen Vranješ as well as manager Manolo Jiménez that were essential to the 2017–18 triumphant season left the club and most transfers failed to add up to the team. Greek international Marios Oikonomou and Argentine striker Ezequiel Ponce were the only newcomers that managed to make an impact on an overall disappointing season (3rd place, 23 points behind 1st PAOK and 18 points behind 2nd Olympiacos – third consecutive cup final loss from PAOK, 1–0).


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: 2017–18 season's champions, Ognjen Vranješ and Sergio Araujo returned to Athens, and some other notable additions are Portuguese international Nélson Oliveira and Serbian midfielder Nenad Krstičić. The 2019–20 season started catastrophically, with an early Europa League elimination from the Turkish side Trabzonspor (1–3 in Athens, 0–2 in Trabzon, 3–3 on aggregate) and disappointing domestic results. New manager, Miguel Cardoso was sacked quickly to be replaced with the club's veteran player and manager, Nikos Kostenoglou who was also later replaced by Italian manager, Massimo Carrera.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Under Carrera, AEK regained the confidence lost from the previous 1,5 years of bad results. Before the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, AEK was 3rd in the regular season and in the semi-finals of the Greek Cup (2–1 home victory against Aris in the first leg). Afterwards going on to make it to the final for the fifth time in a row. However, they lost the final 1–0 to Olympiacos.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: After the draw for the Europa League third qualifying round, AEK Athens got VfL Wolfsburg at the Play-off round they won 2–1 at the Athens Olympic Stadium getting in the Group stage.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: However, AEK's campaign results in the Europa League as well as the first half of the domestic Superleague were lacklustre, the European campaign being one of their worst ever, only recording 1 win in the group stages. In December, Massimo Carrera was relieved of his duties and replaced by Manolo Jiménez, previous Super League and Greek Cup winner with AEK – his fourth term at the club.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Hoping to rebuild, AEK acquired the services of Vladan Milojevic. However, his tenure ended early, with AEK Athens being disqualified on penalties by Bosnia and Herzegovina club Velež Mostar in the 2021–22 Europa Conference League second qualifying round.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: The newly built stadium is located in the place where the old Nikos Goumas stadium was situated, at Nea Filadelfeia. The Agia Sophia stadium, also known as OPAP Arena for sponsoring reasons, is a category 4 UEFA stadium and can host 30,500 spectators. The net construction cost is estimated around € 81,700,000. The administrative region of Attica funded the stadium with the amount of € 20,000,000. The stadium's opening ceremony took place on 30 September 2022. AEK Athens won Ionikos Nikaias 4–1 in their new stadium opening game on 3 October 2022, a game conducted for the sixth fixture of the 2022–23 Greek Super League. An interesting fact about the last goal scored in the old stadium and the first goal scored in the new stadium emerged after ten minutes of play in the Agia Sofia stadium. In the last game played in the demolished Nikos Goumas stadium, a Serbian midfielder called Ilija Ivić scored the last goal against Aris in a 4–0 win in favour of AEK Athens. This time a Serbian midfielder called Mijat Gaćinović scored the first goal in the opening game of the newly built stadium against Ionikos Nikaias in a 4–1 win in favour of AEK Athens.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: In the summer transfer window of the 2022–23 season, AEK Athens announced the signing of two famous football players who played as opponents in the 2018 FIFA World Cup final in Russia. The first player was the Croatian centre-back Domagoj Vida who previously played for Süper Lig side Beşiktaş, and the second player was the French right-back Djibril Sidibé who lastly played for Ligue 1 club Monaco. The latter is the most valuable player to have ever arrived at the club with a market value of € 8,000,000, surpassing the previous player Juanfran by € 2,000,000. Djibril Sidibé is also the fifth player to have won the FIFA World Cup that arrived in the Greek Superleague, after the French star Christian Karembeu and the Brazilian stars Rivaldo, Gilberto Silva and Denilson.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: In 1924, AEK adopted the image of a double-headed eagle (; Dikéfalos Aetós) as their emblem. Created by Greek refugees from Constantinople in the years following the Greco-Turkish War and subsequent population exchange, the emblem and colours (yellow and black) of AEK were chosen as a reminder of lost homelands; they represent the club's historical ties to Constantinople. The double-headed eagle is featured in the flag of the Greek Orthodox Church, whose headquarters are in Constantinople, and served as Imperial emblem under the Palaiologos dynasty, which was the last one to rule the Byzantine Empire.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK's main emblem underwent numerous minor changes between 1924 and 1982. The design of the eagle on the shirt badge was often not identical to the design of the eagle depicted on official club correspondence, merchandise, and promotional material. All designs were considered "official" (in the broadest sense of the word), however, it was not until 1982 that an identifiable, copyrighted design was established as the club's official, and shirt badge. The emblem design was changed in 1989, again in 1993, and again in 2013 to the current design.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: The colours of yellow/gold and black were adopted from AEK's connections with Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK have always worn predominantly gold or yellow shirts and black shorts. An exception has been the unusual, but notable and popular among the fans, Kappa kits of the '90s which featured a big two-headed eagle motif across the kit.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK's traditional away colours are all-black or all-white; on a few occasions, the club has introduced as a third kit a light blue, a silver, and even a dark red, or a tyrian purple ("porphyra"), a type of reddish purple, inspired by the war Byzantine flag and used also by the imperial dynasties of the Byzantine empire (Eastern Roman empire).


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Since 1 June 2021, AEK's kit has been manufactured by Nike. Previous manufacturers have been Adidas (1974–75, 1977–83 and 2005–07), Zita Hellas (1983–89), Diadora (1989–93), Basic (1993–95), Kappa (1995–2000), Puma (1975–77 and 2007–15) and Capelli (2018–21).


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Starting in 2015, the club's main shirt sponsors are OPAP, which also sponsored them in 2010–14. Previous shirt sponsors have been Citizen (1982–83), Nissan (1983–85), Ethniki Asfalistiki (1985–93 and 1995–96), Phoenix Asfaleies (1993–95), Geniki Bank (1996–98), Firestone (1999), Marfin Investment Group (1999–2001), Alpha Digital (2001–02), Piraeus Bank (2002–04), TIM (2004–06), LG (2006–08), Diners Club (2009–10), and Jeep (2014–15).


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Loukas Barlos, a successful bauxite Mine Owner, was also owner and president since 1974, and was in charge when Greek football turned professional in 1979. In 1981, due to health problems, he passed his shares to Andreas Zafeiropoulos. In 1982 the business shipping magnate Michalis Arkadis became president, aiming to reinforce financial support, with Zafeiropoulos holding the majority stake. In 1988, Zafeiropoulos placed Efstratios Gidopoulos in the presidency, and AEK managed to win their first championship in ten years.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: On 17 June 1992, the club passed to new owners. The business shipping magnate and oil tycoon Dimitris Melissanidis, together with Giannis Karras, took the majority stake and continued the successful and champion seasons.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: After an unsuccessful season, in 1995, they passed their shares to Michalis Trochanas, and with his turn a percentage to ENIC Group investment company. In 1999, NETMED, a Dutch media company, took over management of the club. A crisis period followed with mismanagement and many changes in the presidency. In 2004, ex-AEK player Demis Nikolaidis made a plan to progress with the reorganization and financial consolidation, and together with other investors (such as Nicholas X. Notias, Gikas Goumas, Takis Kanellopoulos, a shareholder of Titan Cement, and others) took the majority stake.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: The plan initially seemed to work, but the downfall continued. The team was relegated after the 2012–13 season for the first time in its history. In an effort to discharge the immense debt created by years of mismanagement, its directors chose for the team to compete in the third tier. On the same day Dimitris Melissanidis, the old president of the club, became administrative leader of AEK, under the supervision of the amateur AEK Later, together with other notable AEK fans and old players, they created the non-profit association "Union Friends of AEK" ("Enosi Filon AEK") which took the majority stake of the football club.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: In March 2015, AEK FC became the first Greek company that was listed in the Elite programme of the London Stock Exchange, a pan-European programme for ambitious high-growth businesses that was launched in 2012 at Borsa Italiana and following its success was rolled out in the UK in 2014, and the first Greek football club quoted on a stock exchange. Raffaele Jerusalmi, executive director of the board of directors of LSEG, stated: "We are delighted to welcome AEK to Elite programme". On 27 April 2015, AEK FC was selected for the honor of opening a session of the London Stock Exchange.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Nikos Goumas Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium in Nea Filadelfeia (""New Philadelphia""), a northwestern suburb of Athens, Greece. It was used mostly for football matches and was the home stadium of AEK FC. It was named after one-time club president, Nicholas Goumas, who contributed to its building and later upgrading. It served as AEK's home ground since 1930. The Nikos Goumas Stadium had severe damages from 1999's earthquake and in 2003 was demolished with the prospect to build a new stadium for AEK FC. Unfortunately, prolonged obstruction, legal issues and tight deadlines lapsed this prospect until recently. The club now plays its home games in the 70,000-capacity "Spyros Louis" (Athens Olympic Stadium) in Athens and currently builds its new stadium in the same place where Nikos Goumas Stadium used to stand. The Olympic Athletic Center of Athens, also known as OAKA, is one of the most complete European athletic complexes.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: The Olympic Athletic Center of Athens hosted the Mediterranean Games in 1991, the World Championship in Athletics in 1997, the 1994 and 2007 UEFA Champions League Finals, as well as other important athletic and cultural events, the most significant of which remains the Summer Olympics in 2004.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Construction on an all-new purpose-built stadium began on 28 July 2017 in the site of the old Nikos Goumas stadium. It was completed in 2022 and the opening took place on 30th September 2022. The stadium has capacity of approximately 32,500 fans and features a unique underground road system that the teams will use to enter the stadium. Construction has suffered from major delays due to the local authorities taking too long on confirming certain proposals concerning the stadium's road system but construction of the system has finally begun as of March 2020.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: The stadium's opening ceremony took place on 30 September 2022. AEK Athens won Ionikos Nikaias 4–1 in their new stadium opening game on 3 October 2022, a game conducted for the sixth fixture of the 2022–23 Greek Super League.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Since December 2010, AEK has been using state-of-the-art facilities in an area of 144 acres in the Mazareko area in Spata. Previously owned by Nicholas X. Notias, it is the most expensive (with a total cost around €25m) and one of the biggest training centers in Greece. These facilities include two lawns with natural turf and one with plastic for the needs of the Academies (which was created in 2013 with a viewing platform for spectators) and all the necessary and well-equipped areas for the preparation of a team with modern instruments. A standard football studio, one of the most complete in Greece. The main building of the centre hosts offices of the club, a press room, and the players' rooms. The training ground is used by the first team and youth teams. The Spata Training Centre includes state-of-the-art facilities, a fitness and health centre with weight-training and fitness rooms, a cryotherapy centre and more. There are also plans for an AEK Museum, hotel, aquatic centre and two more soccer fields. From 2013 and on, AEK training centre services have been upgraded dramatically. The players of the teamwork daily in an environment with all the necessary infrastructure, while in the last few months they have at their disposal in the basement of the building a treatment centre with the most modern means. Even the young athletes of the Academies work in facilities that very few Academies have in Greece. But the outlook is even more impressive. Since 2014, the official name of the ground is "OPAP Sports Centre". On 4 July 2018, the Sports Centre came to auction which was bought by Dimitrios Melissanidis for a price of €3.5m and then donated it to AEK. Alongside the Sports Centre, Melissanidis also bought 70 hectares for an extra €5.5m which were added to the wider area of the existing training center and there will be additional stadiums along with the necessary additional facilities for the preparation of the team and for the hospitality of the players.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK Athens has a large fan base across all of Greece and is the third most popular Greek football team in relation to their fan base. According to Sky Sports AEK have around 32% of all Greek football fans. AEK's fan base in Greece is believed to be over 2 million with various researches suggesting AEK have an estimated fan base between 2.5 – 2.7 million fans in Greece. AEK Athens traditional fanbase comes from the area of Nea Filadelfeia, where the club is based, as well as a good part of the rest of the Athens area.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK have a strong following in the Greek diaspora especially in Cyprus where the club has a large following with a recent fan poll from Kerkida.net having AEK as the second most popular Greek supported team in Cyprus behind Panathinaikos (34%) but ahead of Olympiacos (23%) with AEK having 27% of Cypriot football fans supporting the club. One of the main reasons AEK's popularity in Cyprus is large making them ahead of Olympiacos the most popular Greek team in Greece is due to the fact AEK are a refugee club which many Greek Cypriots are after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and due to this many Greek Cypriots can relate to the similar history of AEKs being a refugee club. AEK have also a strong following in Australia, the US, Uk, Germany and France.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: The most hardcore supporters of AEK are Original 21, which is the largest group fan organisation of the club and are known for their loyal and passionate support.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: A so-called "triangle of brotherhood" has developed between the largest left-wing fan clubs of AEK, Marseille and Livorno. The connection is mostly an ideological one.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Also, AEK's and St. Pauli's left-wing fans, have a strong friendship and their connection is mostly for ideological reasons.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK's club anthem, Embrós tis AEK Palikária (Advance AEK's Lads), was composed by Stelios Kazantzidis. The lyrics were written by Christos Kolokotronis. The most-popular version of the anthem is sung by ex-football player Mimis Papaioannou.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Against their city neighbours Panathinaikos, they contest the Athens local football derby. The rivalry started not only because of both competing for the major titles, but also because of the refugee ancestry of a big part of AEK fans and, by contrast, that Panathinaikos was considered in general the representative of the Athenian high-class society.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: The rivalry with Piraeus based club Olympiacos stems from the rivalry between two of the most successful Greek football clubs. The rivalry was particularly inflamed after 1996, when AEK former star player and then-manager Dušan Bajević moved to Olympiacos, and most recently after the controversial 2007–08 Super League which was awarded to Olympiacos.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK has a remarkable tradition in strikers and goal-scoring players. 14 different teams' players, 24 times overall, have finished the season as the top scorer in the Super League.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: AEK, through its history, has highlighted some of the greatest Greek players in the history of Greece football, who contributed also to the Greece national team (Papaioannou, Nestoridis, Mavros, Tsiartas, Nikolaidis, etc.).


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: A total of 112 players of AEK had played for the Greece national football team up to 20 November 2022.


title: AEK Athens F.C.

text: Only competitive matches are counted. Wins, losses and draws are results at the final whistle; the results of penalty shootouts are not counted.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and the prevention of crime in Greater London. In addition, the Metropolitan Police is also responsible for some specialised matters throughout the United Kingdom; these responsibilities include co-ordinating and leading national counter-terrorism measures and the personal safety of specific individuals, such as the Monarch and other members of the Royal Family, members of the Government, and other officials (such as the Leader of the Opposition).


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The main geographical area of responsibilities of the Metropolitan Police District consists of the 32 London boroughs, but does not include the City of London proper — that is, the central financial district also known as the "Square Mile" — which is policed by a separate force, the City of London Police. As the force responsible for a police area that is also the capital of the United Kingdom, the Met has significant unique responsibilities and challenges, such as protecting 164 foreign embassies and High Commissions, policing London City and Heathrow Airports, policing and protecting the Palace of Westminster, and dealing with significantly more protests and events than any other force in the country, with 3,500 such events in 2016.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The force, by officer numbers, is the largest in the United Kingdom by a significant margin, and one of the biggest in the world. Leaving its national responsibilities aside, the Met has the eighth-smallest police area (primary geographic area of responsibility) of the territorial police forces in the United Kingdom.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The force is led by the Commissioner, whose formal title is the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. The Commissioner is answerable, responsible and accountable to The King, the Home Office and the Mayor of London, through the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime. The post of Commissioner was first held jointly by Sir Charles Rowan and Sir Richard Mayne. Sir Mark Rowley is the current Commissioner; he succeeded Acting Commissioner Sir Stephen House in July 2022.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: A number of informal names and abbreviations are applied to the Metropolitan Police Service, the most common being "The Met". The Met is also referred to as Scotland Yard after the location of its original headquarters in a road called Great Scotland Yard in Whitehall. The Met's current headquarters is New Scotland Yard, situated on the Victoria Embankment.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Metropolitan Police Service was founded in 1829 by Robert Peel under the Metropolitan Police Act 1829 and on 29 September of that year, the first constables of the service appeared on the streets of London. Ten years later, Metropolitan Police Act 1839 consolidated policing within London by expanding the Metropolitan Police District and either abolishing or amalgamating the various other law enforcement entities within London into the Metropolitan Police such as the Thames River Police and the Bow Street Runners.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: Since January 2012, the Mayor of London is responsible for the governance of the Metropolitan Police through the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). The mayor is able to appoint someone to act on his behalf. , the office-holder is Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Sophie Linden. The work of MOPAC is scrutinised by the Police and Crime Committee (also known as a police and crime panel) of the London Assembly. These structures were created by the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 and replaced the Metropolitan Police Authority-appointed board created in 2000 by Greater London Authority Act 1999.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The area policed by the Metropolitan Police Service is known as the Metropolitan Police District (MPD). The Met was divided into 32 Borough Operational Command Units that directly aligned with the 32 London boroughs covered. This situation has changed since 2017, as the Met has attempted to save money due to cuts in funding. The MPD is now divided into 12 Basic Command Units (BCUs) made up of two, three or four boroughs. There is criticism of these changes. The City of London (which is not a London borough) is a separate police area and is the responsibility of the separate City of London Police.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Ministry of Defence Police is responsible for policing of Ministry of Defence property throughout the United Kingdom, including its headquarters in Whitehall and other MoD establishments across the MPD.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The British Transport Police are responsible for policing of the rail network in the United Kingdom, including London. Within London, they are also responsible for the policing of the London Underground, London Trams, the London Cable Car and the Docklands Light Railway.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The English part of the Royal Parks Constabulary, which patrolled a number of Greater London's major parks, was merged with the Metropolitan Police in 2004, and those parks are now policed by the Royal Parks Operational Command Unit. There is also a small park police force, the Kew Constabulary, responsible for the Royal Botanic Gardens, whose officers have full police powers within the park. A few local authorities maintain their own borough park constabularies, including Wandsworth Parks and Events Police, Kensington and Chelsea Parks Police, Havering Parks Constabulary and the Hampstead Heath Constabulary. All of these enjoy powers of arrest without warrant as constables, however the officers of the latter have full police powers, much like officers of the Metropolitan Police on the Heath. The other parks police primarily focus on by-law enforcement.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: Metropolitan Police officers have legal jurisdiction throughout all of England and Wales, including areas that have their own special police forces, such as the Ministry of Defence, as do all police officers of territorial police forces. Officers also have limited powers in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Within the MPD, the Met will take over the investigation of any serious crime from the Ministry of Defence Police and to a lesser degree BTP, if it is deemed appropriate. Terrorist incidents and complex murder enquiries will almost always be investigated by the Met, with the assistance of any relevant specialist force, even if they are committed on Ministry of Defence or railway property. A minor incursion into the normal jurisdiction of territorial police officers in England and Wales is that Met officers involved in the protection duties of the Royal Family and other VIPs have full police powers in Scotland and Northern Ireland in connection with those duties.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: Each is overseen by an Assistant Commissioner or, in the case of administrative departments, a director of police staff, which is the equivalent civilian staff grade. The management board is made up of the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, Assistant Commissioners and Directors.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Metropolitan Police Service uses the standard British police ranks, indicated by epaulettes, up to chief superintendent, but uniquely has five ranks above that level instead of the standard three; namely commander, deputy assistant commissioner, assistant commissioner, deputy commissioner and commissioner. All senior officers of the rank of Commander and above are chief police officers of NPCC (previously ACPO) rank.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Met approved the use of name badges in October 2003, with new recruits wearing the Velcro badges from September 2004. The badge consists of the wearer's rank, followed by their surname. All officers are assigned a unique identification number which includes a two-letter BCU (Basic Command Unit) code.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: Following controversy over assaults by uniformed officers with concealed shoulder identification numbers during the G20 summit, Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said, "the public has a right to be able to identify any uniformed officer whilst performing their duty" by their shoulder identification numbers.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Met also has several active Volunteer Police Cadet units, which maintain their own internal rank structure. The Metropolitan Special Constabulary is a contingent of part-time volunteer police officers and is attached to most Borough Operational Command Units. The Metropolitan Special Constabulary Ranks are as follows:


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The prefix "woman" in front of female officers' ranks has been obsolete since 1999. Members of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) up to and including the rank of chief superintendent prefix their ranks with "detective". Detective ranks are equivalent in rank to their uniform counterparts. Other departments, such as Special Branch and Child Protection, award non-detectives "branch detective" status, allowing them to use the "Detective" prefix. None of these detective ranks confer on the holder any extra pay or supervisory authority compared to their uniformed colleagues.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The following is the current released workforce data for the ranks. The chief officers rank covers all senior ranks as well as special constables covering all special constable ranks.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Metropolitan Police Service is composed of Police Officers and Police Staff (civilians who are non-warranted). Police Officers include full-time, paid officers known as 'regulars', and part-time, voluntary officers from the Metropolitan Special Constabulary. Both regulars and specials enjoy full police powers, wear the same uniform, and carry the same kit. Police Staff include Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), Designated Detention Officers (DDOs), and many other civilian roles. The Met was the first constabulary to introduce PCSOs. Unlike civilian Police Staff, Police Officers in the Met (as elsewhere in the UK) are not employees, but rather Crown servants, and holders of the Office of Constable.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: Funding for the Metropolitan Police has been cut due to austerity. Changes in the way the government pays for police pensions will lead to further cuts.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Met operates and maintains a fleet of nearly 5,000 vehicles. In 2018, the fleet covered . The fleet comprises numerous vehicles, including:


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The majority of vehicles have a service life of three to five years; the Met replaces or upgrades between 800 and 1,000 vehicles each year. By 2012 the Met was marking all new marked vehicles with Battenburg markings, a highly-reflective material on the side of the vehicles, chequered blue and yellow for the police, and in other colours for other services. The old livery was an orange stripe through the vehicle, with the force's logo.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The following table shows the percentage detection rates for the Metropolitan Police by offence group for 2010/11.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Metropolitan Police Service "screened out" 34,164 crimes the day they were reported in 2017 and did not investigate them further. This compares to 13,019 the previous year. 18,093 crimes were closed in 24 hours during the first 5 months of 2018 making it likely that the 2017 total will be exceeded. Crimes not being investigated include sexual assaults and arson, burglaries, thefts and assaults. Some critics believe this shows the effect of austerity on the force's ability to carry out its responsibilities.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: In addition to the headquarters at New Scotland Yard, there are many police stations in London. These range from large borough headquarters staffed around the clock every day to smaller stations, which may be open to the public only during normal business hours, or on certain days of the week. In 2017, there were 73 working front counters open to the public in London.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: Most police stations can easily be identified from one or more blue lamps located outside the entrance, which were introduced in 1861.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The oldest Metropolitan police station, which opened in Bow Street in 1881, closed in 1992 and the adjoining Bow Street Magistrates' Court heard its last case on 14 July 2006. One of the oldest operational police station in London is in Wapping, which opened in 1908. It is the headquarters of the marine policing unit (formerly known as Thames Division), which is responsible for policing the River Thames. It also houses a mortuary and the River Police Museum.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: Paddington Green Police Station, which is no longer operational, received much publicity for its housing of terrorism suspects in an underground complex prior to its closure in 2017.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: In 2004, there was a call from the Institute for Public Policy Research for more imaginative planning of police stations to aid in improving relations between police forces and the wider community.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Police Roll of Honour Trust lists and commemorates all British police officers killed in the line of duty.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: In 2005, police shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian man who had wrongly been identified as a perpetrator of the attempted terrorist bombings the day before.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the Metropolitan police were found to be 2.17 times as likely to issue fines to black people for lockdown breaches, relative to the general population.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: The Met said: "In total, more white people received FPNs [fixed penalty notices] or were arrested than other individual ethnic groups. However, when compared with the composition of the resident population, higher proportions of those in black and minority ethnic (BAME) groups were issued with FPNs or arrested across London as a whole. The reasons for this are likely to be complex and reflect a range of factors. This includes interactions between the areas subject to significant proactive policing activity targeting crime hotspots and both the variation in the age profile and geographical distribution of ethnic groups in London."


title: Metropolitan Police

text: In 2021, the MPS have attracted media coverage for approaches to policing in high-profile cases such as the murder of Sarah Everard, the murders of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry and the handling of internal sexual assault allegations. Women's rights groups have called for an enquiry into misogyny in the force.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: In March 2021, Wayne Couzens, a serving Metropolitan Police officer with the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection unit, was arrested and later charged with the kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard. Couzens was later sentenced to life without the possibility of release. There were renewed calls for high level resignations following public outcry over the Met's response to the Everard case. In March 2022, two serving Met police constables and one ex-officer were charged with sharing offensive messages with Wayne Couzens.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: In April 2021 an early-career Metropolitan police officer, Ben Hannam, was found guilty of being a member of a banned terrorist group.


title: Metropolitan Police

text: In December 2021, an inquest jury ruled that the deaths in 20142015 of serial killer Stephen Port's final three victims was due in part to the Met Police's failings. The inquest found that the Met "failed to carry out basic checks, send evidence to be forensically examined, and exercise professional curiosity while Port was embarking on his killing spree".


title: Metropolitan Police

text: At the beginning of February 2022, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) reported on the conduct of officers based in the main at Charing Cross police station. Their investigation found evidence of highly sexualized, violent and discriminatory messages sent as part of WhatsApp group involving 17 officers. The regional director of the IOPC, Sal Naseem, said: "The behaviour we uncovered was disgraceful and fell well below the standards expected of the officers involved. While these officers predominantly worked in teams in Westminster, which have since been disbanded, we know from other recent cases that these issues are not isolated or historic."


title: Metropolitan Police

text: In March 2022 it was revealed that a 15-year old black girl, referred to as Child Q, was strip-searched by police in school without an adult present after wrongly being suspected of being in possession of Cannabis. An independent safeguarding report concluded the incident was unjustified and racism was likely a factor. Child Q is now suing the Metropolitan Police and pursuing civil action against her school. The two police officers who carried out the strip search have been removed from front line duties. Two years before the Child Q incident there were complaints that many strip searches of children were unjustified. In 2019 it was found that strip searches were disproportionately done to black and ethnic minority suspects. Inspectors found the number, “higher than we normally see”, and involved, “many children and a significantly higher proportion of black and minority ethnic detainees”. Metropolitan Police have strip searched 5,279 children during the three years up to 2022 and 75% (3,939) were from ethnically diverse backgrounds according to the LBC. Sixteen children strip searched were between ten and twelve years old. Statistics only cover children strip searched following arrest and the actual figures are likely to be higher. On 24 June 2022 Metropolitan police referred itself to the IOPC for investigation of 8 strip-searches of youngsters under 18. Reforms will be introduced including that an inspector will have to approve a strip-search of a child, an appropriate adult will have to be present and there will have to be a report. The Met stated “We have reviewed the policy for ‘further searches’ for those aged under 18 and made changes. This is to assure ourselves the policy is appropriate {...} and that it recognises the fact a child in these circumstances may well be a vulnerable victim of exploitation by others involved in gangs, county lines and drug dealing.” Between 2018 and 2020 there were 650 strip-searches of children, 23% were without an appropriate adult. 58% of boys searched were black. Rachel de Souza said "I am not reassured that what happened to Child Q was an isolated issue, but instead believe it may be a particularly concerning example of a more systemic problem around child protection within the Metropolitan Police. I remain unconvinced that the Metropolitan Police is consistently considering children's welfare and wellbeing." The majority of children strip-searched were innocent. De Souza said “This low level of successful searches arguably indicates that this intrusive practice may well not be justified or necessary in all cases.” (95%) of youngsters strip-searched were boys, and a quarter were under 16. De Souza said “I am also extremely concerned by the ethnic disproportionality shown in these figures, particularly given that ethnicity was determined to be such a key factor in the Child Q case. I am not reassured that what happened to Child Q was an isolated issue, but instead believe it may be a particularly concerning example of a more systemic problem around child protection within the Metropolitan police. I remain unconvinced that the Metropolitan police is consistently considering children’s welfare and wellbeing.”


title: Metropolitan Police

text: In June 2022 the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said that there was evidence of "systemic sexism, racism, homophobia, discrimination, misogyny" in the Met; he accepted that there are "dedicated, decent, brave officers" as well. Khan said he felt that the new Police Commissioner would need to restore confidence in London police. Khan accepted that London crime figures are going down. The Met has been put into special measures by H M Inspectorate of Constabulary. The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, said the Met was not getting "the basics right. (...) The process to recruit a new commissioner is well under way and I have made clear that the successful candidate must demonstrate sustained improvements in the Met Police in order to regain public trust both in London and across the country. The new commissioner will need to deliver on the public's priorities for the police - making our streets safer, bearing down on crime and bringing more criminals to justice, while continuing to recruit thousands of new officers to protect local communities." The Inspectorate has "systemic concerns" over the Met, including its inadequate response to emergency calls, "barely adequate" recording of crime and child abuse referrals developing a backlog. A letter from the watchdog to the Met said failures worsened due to the young and inexperienced recruits brought in as an element of the national move to replace thousands of experienced officers cut as part of austerity measures. Matt Parr of the Inspectorate wrote to Sir Stephen House that the inspectors had had "substantial and persistent concerns" about the Met "for a considerable time". The concerns included the Met’s approach to tackling corruption which the letter said was "fundamentally flawed" and "not fit for purpose".


title: Metropolitan Police

text: In August 2022, the Met started legal proceedings against Parm Sandhu, a former senior officer who has published a book including allegations of 'racial and gender discrimination' against her by the Met. The Met’s claim is that Sandhu has breached a non-disclosure agreement which was part of a settlement agreement between Sandhu and the Met.


title: Urbanization

text: Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly the process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more people begin living and working in central areas.


title: Urbanization

text: Although the two concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, urbanization should be distinguished from urban growth. Urbanization refers to the "proportion" of the total national population living in areas classified as urban, whereas urban growth strictly refers to the "absolute" number of people living in those areas. It is predicted that by 2050 about 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized. That is equivalent to approximately 3 billion urbanites by 2050, much of which will occur in Africa and Asia. Notably, the United Nations has also recently projected that nearly all global population growth from 2017 to 2030 will be by cities, with about 1.1 billion new urbanites over the next 10 years.


title: Urbanization

text: Urbanization is relevant to a range of disciplines, including urban planning, geography, sociology, architecture, economics, education, statistics and public health. The phenomenon has been closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can be seen as a specific condition at a set time (e.g. the proportion of total population or area in cities or towns), or as an increase in that condition over time. Therefore, urbanization can be quantified either in terms of the level of urban development relative to the overall population, or as the rate at which the urban proportion of the population is increasing. Urbanization creates enormous social, economic and environmental changes, which provide an opportunity for sustainability with the "potential to use resources more efficiently, to create more sustainable land use and to protect the biodiversity of natural ecosystems." Developing urban resilience and urban sustainability in the face of increased urbanization is at the center of international policy in Sustainable Development Goal 11 "Sustainable cities and communities."


title: Urbanization

text: Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. The first major change in settlement patterns was the accumulation of hunter-gatherers into villages many thousands of years ago. Village culture is characterized by common bloodlines, intimate relationships, and communal behaviour, whereas urban culture is characterized by distant bloodlines, unfamiliar relations, and competitive behaviour. This unprecedented movement of people is forecast to continue and intensify during the next few decades, mushrooming cities to sizes unthinkable only a century ago. As a result, the world urban population growth curve has up till recently followed a quadratic-hyperbolic pattern.


title: Urbanization

text: From the development of the earliest cities in Indus valley civilization, Mesopotamia and Egypt until the 18th century, an equilibrium existed between the vast majority of the population who were engaged in subsistence agriculture in a rural context, and small centres of populations in the towns where economic activity consisted primarily of trade at markets and manufactures on a small scale. Due to the primitive and relatively stagnant state of agriculture throughout this period, the ratio of rural to urban population remained at a fixed equilibrium. However, a significant increase in the percentage of the global urban population can be traced in the 1st millennium BCE.


title: Urbanization

text: With the onset of the British agricultural and industrial revolution in the late 18th century, this relationship was finally broken and an unprecedented growth in urban population took place over the course of the 19th century, both through continued migration from the countryside and due to the tremendous demographic expansion that occurred at that time. In England and Wales, the proportion of the population living in cities with more than 20,000 people jumped from 17% in 1801 to 54% in 1891. Moreover, and adopting a broader definition of urbanization, while the urbanized population in England and Wales represented 72% of the total in 1891, for other countries the figure was 37% in France, 41% in Prussia and 28% in the United States.


title: Urbanization

text: As labourers were freed up from working the land due to higher agricultural productivity they converged on the new industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham which were experiencing a boom in commerce, trade, and industry. Growing trade around the world also allowed cereals to be imported from North America and refrigerated meat from Australasia and South America. Spatially, cities also expanded due to the development of public transport systems, which facilitated commutes of longer distances to the city centre for the working class.


title: Urbanization

text: Urbanization rapidly spread across the Western world and, since the 1950s, it has begun to take hold in the developing world as well. At the turn of the 20th century, just 15% of the world population lived in cities. According to the UN, the year 2007 witnessed the turning point when more than 50% of the world population were living in cities, for the first time in human history.


title: Urbanization

text: Yale University in June 2016 published urbanization data from the time period 3700 BC to 2000 AD, the data was used to make a video showing the development of cities on the world during the time period. The origins and spread of urban centers around the world were also mapped by archaeologists.


title: Urbanization

text: Urbanization occurs either organically or planned as a result of individual, collective and state action. Living in a city can be culturally and economically beneficial since it can provide greater opportunities for access to the labour market, better education, housing, and safety conditions, and reduce the time and expense of commuting and transportation. Conditions like density, proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition are elements of an urban environment that deemed beneficial. However, there are also harmful social phenomena that arise: alienation, stress, increased cost of living, and mass marginalization that are connected to an urban way of living. Suburbanization, which is happening in the cities of the largest developing countries, may be regarded as an attempt to balance these harmful aspects of urban life while still allowing access to the large extent of shared resources.


title: Urbanization

text: In cities, money, services, wealth and opportunities are centralized. Many rural inhabitants come to the city to seek their fortune and alter their social position. Businesses, which provide jobs and exchange capital, are more concentrated in urban areas. Whether the source is trade or tourism, it is also through the ports or banking systems, commonly located in cities, that foreign money flows into a country.


title: Urbanization

text: Many people move into cities for economic opportunities, but this does not fully explain the very high recent urbanization rates in places like China and India. Rural flight is a contributing factor to urbanization. In rural areas, often on small family farms or collective farms in villages, it has historically been difficult to access manufactured goods, though the relative overall quality of life is very subjective, and may certainly surpass that of the city. Farm living has always been susceptible to unpredictable environmental conditions, and in times of drought, flood or pestilence, survival may become extremely problematic.


title: Urbanization

text: In a New York Times article concerning the acute migration away from farming in Thailand, life as a farmer was described as "hot and exhausting". "Everyone says the farmer works the hardest but gets the least amount of money". In an effort to counter this impression, the Agriculture Department of Thailand is seeking to promote the impression that farming is "honorable and secure".


title: Urbanization

text: However, in Thailand, urbanization has also resulted in massive increases in problems such as obesity. Shifting from a rural environment to an urbanized community also caused a transition to a diet that was mainly carbohydrate-based to a diet higher in fat and sugar, consequently causing a rise in obesity. City life, especially in modern urban slums of the developing world, is certainly hardly immune to pestilence or climatic disturbances such as floods, yet continues to strongly attract migrants. Examples of this were the 2011 Thailand floods and 2007 Jakarta flood. Urban areas are also far more prone to violence, drugs, and other urban social problems. In the United States, industrialization of agriculture has negatively affected the economy of small and middle-sized farms and strongly reduced the size of the rural labour market.


title: Urbanization

text: Particularly in the developing world, conflict over land rights due to the effects of globalization has led to less politically powerful groups, such as farmers, losing or forfeiting their land, resulting in obligatory migration into cities. In China, where land acquisition measures are forceful, there has been far more extensive and rapid urbanization (54%) than in India (36%), where peasants form militant groups (e.g. Naxalites) to oppose such efforts. Obligatory and unplanned migration often results in the rapid growth of slums.


title: Urbanization

text: This is also similar to areas of violent conflict, where people are driven off their land due to violence.


title: Urbanization

text: Cities offer a larger variety of services, including specialist services not found in rural areas. These services require workers, resulting in more numerous and varied job opportunities. Elderly people may be forced to move to cities where there are doctors and hospitals that can cater to their health needs. Varied and high-quality educational opportunities are another factor in urban migration, as well as the opportunity to join, develop, and seek out social communities.


title: Urbanization

text: Urbanization also creates opportunities for women that are not available in rural areas. This creates a gender-related transformation where women are engaged in paid employment and have access to education. This may cause fertility to decline. However, women are sometimes still at a disadvantage due to their unequal position in the labour market, their inability to secure assets independently from male relatives and exposure to violence.


title: Urbanization

text: People in cities are more productive than in rural areas. An important question is whether this is due to agglomeration effects or whether cities simply attract those who are more productive. Urban geographers have shown that there exists a large productivity gain due to locating in dense agglomerations. It is thus possible that agents locate in cities in order to benefit from these agglomeration effects.


title: Urbanization

text: The dominant conurbation(s) of a country can benefit to a greater extent from the same things cities offer, making them magnets for not just the non-urban population, but also urban and suburban population from other cities. Dominant conurbations are quite often primate cities, but do not have to be. For instance Greater Manila is rather a conurbation than a city: its 20 million overall population (over 20% national population) make it very much a primate city, but Quezon City (2.7 million), the largest municipality in Greater Manila, and Manila (1.6 million), the capital, are not. A conurbation's dominance can be measured by output, wealth, and especially population, each expressed as a percentage of an entire country. Greater Seoul is one conurbation with massive dominance over South Korea, it is home to 50% of the entire national population.


title: Urbanization

text: Though Greater Busan-Ulsan (15%, 8 million) and Greater Osaka (14%, 18 million) exhibit strong dominance in their respective countries, they are losing population to their even more dominant rivals, Seoul and Tokyo respectively.


title: Urbanization

text: As cities develop, effects can include a dramatic increase and change in costs, often pricing the local working class out of the market, including such functionaries as employees of the local municipalities. For example, Eric Hobsbawm's book "The age of revolution: 1789–1848" (published 1962 and 2005) chapter 11, stated "Urban development in our period was a gigantic process of class segregation, which pushed the new labouring poor into great morasses of misery outside the centres of government, business, and the newly specialized residential areas of the bourgeoisie. The almost universal European division into a 'good' west end and a 'poor' east end of large cities developed in this period." This is likely due to the prevailing south-west wind which carries coal smoke and other airborne pollutants downwind, making the western edges of towns preferable to the eastern ones.


title: Urbanization

text: Similar problems now affect the developing world, rising inequality resulting from rapid urbanization trends. The drive for rapid urban growth and often efficiency can lead to less equitable urban development. Think tanks such as the Overseas Development Institute have proposed policies that encourage labor-intensive growth as a means of absorbing the influx of low-skilled and unskilled labour. One problem these migrant workers are involved with is the growth of slums. In many cases, the rural-urban low skilled or unskilled migrant workers, attracted by economic opportunities in urban areas, cannot find a job and afford housing in cities and have to dwell in slums.


title: Urbanization

text: Urban problems, along with infrastructure developments, are also fuelling suburbanization trends in developing nations, though the trend for core cities in said nations tends to continue to become ever denser. Urbanization is often viewed as a negative trend, but there are positives in the reduction of expenses in commuting and transportation while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to take advantage of the opportunities of proximity and diversity. While cities have a greater variety of markets and goods than rural areas, infrastructure congestion, monopolization, high overhead costs, and the inconvenience of cross-town trips frequently combine to make marketplace competition harsher in cities than in rural areas.


title: Urbanization

text: In many developing countries where economies are growing, the growth is often erratic and based on a small number of industries. For young people in these countries, barriers exist such as lack of access to financial services and business advisory services, difficulty in obtaining credit to start a business, and lack of entrepreneurial skills, in order for them to access opportunities in these industries. Investment in human capital so that young people have access to quality education and infrastructure to enable access to educational facilities is imperative to overcoming economic barriers.


title: Urbanization

text: Furthermore, urbanization improves environmental eminence through superior facilities and standards in urban areas as compared to rural areas. Lastly, urbanization curbs pollution emissions by increasing innovations. In his book "Whole Earth Discipline", Stewart Brand argues that the effects of urbanization are primarily positive for the environment. First, the birth rate of new urban dwellers falls immediately to replacement rate and keeps falling, reducing environmental stresses caused by population growth. Secondly, emigration from rural areas reduces destructive subsistence farming techniques, such as improperly implemented slash and burn agriculture. Alex Steffen also speaks of the environmental benefits of increasing the urbanization level in "Carbon Zero: Imagining Cities that can save the planet", .


title: Urbanization

text: However, existing infrastructure and city planning practices are not sustainable. In July 2013 a report issued by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs warned that with 2.4 billion more people by 2050, the amount of food produced will have to increase by 70%, straining food resources, especially in countries already facing food insecurity due to changing environmental conditions. The mix of changing environmental conditions and the growing population of urban regions, according to UN experts, will strain basic sanitation systems and health care, and potentially cause a humanitarian and environmental disaster.


title: Urbanization

text: The existence of urban heat islands has become a growing concern over the years. An urban heat island is formed when industrial and urban areas produce and retain heat. Much of the solar energy that reaches rural areas is consumed by evaporation of water from vegetation and soil. In cities, where there are less vegetation and exposed soil, most of the sun's energy is instead absorbed by buildings and asphalt; leading to higher surface temperatures. Vehicles, factories, and industrial and domestic heating and cooling units release even more heat. As a result, cities are often 1 to 3 °C (1.8 to 5.4 °F) warmer than surrounding landscapes. Impacts also include reducing soil moisture and a reduction in reabsorption of carbon dioxide emissions.


title: Urbanization

text: The occurrence of eutrophication in bodies of water is another effect large urban populations have on the environment. When rain occurs in these large cities, the rain filters down the pollutants such as CO and other greenhouse gases in the air onto the ground below. Then, those chemicals are washed directly into rivers, streams, and oceans, causing a decline in water quality and damaging marine ecosystems.


title: Urbanization

text: Eutrophication is a process which causes hypoxic water conditions and algal blooms that may be detrimental to the survival of aquatic life. Harmful algal blooms, which produce dangerous toxins, thrive in eutrophic environments that are also rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. In these ideal conditions, they overtake surface water, making it difficult for other organisms to receive sunlight and nutrients. Overgrowth of algal blooms causes a decrease in overall water quality and disrupts the natural balance of aquatic ecosystems. Furthermore, as algal blooms die, CO is produced, causing a more acidic environment, a process known as acidification.


title: Urbanization

text: The ocean's surface also has the ability to absorb CO from the earth's atmosphere as emissions increase with the rise in urbanization. In fact, it is reported that the ocean absorbs a quarter of the CO produced by humans. This has been useful to the environment by decreasing the harmful effects of greenhouse gases, but also further perpetuates acidification. Changes in pH inhibit the proper formation of calcium carbonate, a crucial component for many marine organisms to maintain shells or skeletons. This is especially true for many species of molluscs and coral. Regardless, some species have been able to instead adapt or thrive in a more acidic environment


title: Urbanization

text: Rapid growth of communities create new challenges in the developed world and one such challenge is an increase in food waste also known as urban food waste. Food waste is the disposal of food products that can no longer be used due to unused products, expiration, or spoilage. The increase of food waste can raise environmental concerns such as increase production of methane gases and attraction of disease vectors. Landfills are the third leading cause of the release of methane, causing a concern on its impact to our ozone and on the health of individuals. Accumulation of food waste causes increased fermentation, which increases the risk of rodent and bug migration. An increase in migration of disease vectors creates greater potential of disease spreading to humans.


title: Urbanization

text: Waste management systems vary on all scales from global to local and can also be influenced by lifestyle. Waste management was not a primary concern until after the Industrial Revolution. As urban areas continued to grow along with the human population, proper management of solid waste became an apparent concern. To address these concerns, local governments sought solutions with the lowest economic impacts which meant implementing technical solutions at the very last stage of the process. Current waste management reflects these economically motivated solutions, such as incineration or unregulated landfills. Yet, a growing increase for addressing other areas of life cycle consumption has occurred from initial stage reduction to heat recovery and recycling of materials. For example, concerns for mass consumption and fast fashion have moved to the forefront of the urban consumers’ priorities. Aside from environmental concerns (e.g. climate change effects), other urban concerns for waste management are public health and land access.


title: Urbanization

text: Urbanization can have a large effect on biodiversity by causing a division of habitats and thereby alienation of species, a process known as habitat fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation does not destroy the habitat, as seen in habitat loss, but rather breaks it apart with things like roads and railways This change may affect a species ability to sustain life by separating it from the environment in which it is able to easily access food, and find areas that they may hide from predation With proper planning and management, fragmentation can be avoided by adding corridors that aid in the connection of areas and allow for easier movement around urbanized regions.


title: Urbanization

text: Depending on the various factors, such as level of urbanization, both increases or decreases in "species richness" can be seen. This means that urbanization may be detrimental to one species but also help facilitate the growth of others. In instances of housing and building development, many times vegetation is completely removed immediately in order to make it easier and less expensive for construction to occur, thereby obliterating any native species in that area. Habitat fragmentation can filter species with limited dispersal capacity. For example, aquatic insects are found to have lower species richness in urban landscapes. The more urbanized the surrounding of habitat is, the fewer species can reach the habitat. Other times, such as with birds, urbanization may allow for an increase in richness when organisms are able to adapt to the new environment. This can be seen in species that may find food while scavenging developed areas or vegetation that has been added after urbanization has occurred i.e. planted trees in city areas


title: Urbanization

text: In the developing world, urbanization does not translate into a significant increase in life expectancy. Rapid urbanization has led to increased mortality from non-communicable diseases associated with lifestyle, including cancer and heart disease. Differences in mortality from contagious diseases vary depending on the particular disease and location.


title: Urbanization

text: Urban health levels are on average better in comparison to rural areas. However, residents in poor urban areas such as slums and informal settlements suffer "disproportionately from disease, injury, premature death, and the combination of ill-health and poverty entrenches disadvantage over time." Many of the urban poor have difficulty accessing health services due to their inability to pay for them; so they resort to less qualified and unregulated providers.


title: Urbanization

text: While urbanization is associated with improvements in public hygiene, sanitation and access to health care, it also entails changes in occupational, dietary, and exercise patterns. It can have mixed effects on health patterns, alleviating some problems, and accentuating others.


title: Urbanization

text: One such effect is the formation of food deserts. Nearly 23.5 million people in the United States lack access to supermarkets within one mile of their home. Several studies suggest that long distances to a grocery store are associated with higher rates of obesity and other health disparities.


title: Urbanization

text: Food deserts in developed countries often correspond to areas with a high-density of fast food chains and convenience stores that offer little to no fresh food. Urbanization has been shown to be associated with the consumption of less fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and a higher consumption of processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages. Poor access to healthy food and high intakes of fat, sugar and salt are associated with a greater risk for obesity, diabetes and related chronic disease. Overall, body mass index and cholesterol levels increase sharply with national income and the degree of urbanization.[40]


title: Urbanization

text: Food deserts in the United States are most commonly found in low-income and predominately African American neighbourhoods. One study on food deserts in Denver, Colorado found that, in addition to minorities, the affected neighbourhoods also had a high proportion of children and new births. In children, urbanization is associated with a lower risk of under-nutrition but a higher risk of being overweight.


title: Urbanization

text: Urbanization has also been associated with an increased risk of asthma as well. Throughout the world, as communities transition from rural to more urban societies, the number of people affected by asthma increases. The odds of reduced rates of hospitalization and death from asthmas has decreased for children and young adults in urbanized municipalities in Brazil. This finding indicates that urbanization may have a negative impact on population health particularly affecting people's susceptibility to asthma.


title: Urbanization

text: In low and middle income countries many factors contribute to the high numbers of people with asthma. Similar to areas in the United States with increasing urbanization, people living in growing cities in low income countries experience high exposure to air pollution, which increases the prevalence and severity of asthma among these populations. Links have been found between exposure to traffic-related air pollution and allergic diseases. Children living in poor, urban areas in the United States now have an increased risk of morbidity due to asthma in comparison to other low-income children in the United States. In addition, children with croup living in urban areas have higher hazard ratios for asthma than similar children living in rural areas. Researchers suggest that this difference in hazard ratios is due to the higher levels of air pollution and exposure to environmental allergens found in urban areas.


title: Urbanization

text: Exposure to elevated levels of ambient air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers (PM), can cause DNA methylation of CpG sites in immune cells, which increases children's risk of developing asthma. Studies have shown a positive correlation between "Foxp3" methylation and children's exposure to NO, CO, and PM. Furthermore, any amount of exposure to high levels of air pollution have shown long term effects on the "Foxp3" region.


title: Urbanization

text: Despite the increase in access to health services that usually accompanies urbanization, the rise in population density negatively affects air quality ultimately mitigating the positive value of health resources as more children and young adults develop asthma due to high pollution rates. However, urban planning, as well as emission control, can lessen the effects of traffic-related air pollution on allergic diseases such as asthma.


title: Urbanization

text: Historically, crime and urbanization have gone hand in hand. The simplest explanation is that areas with a higher population density are surrounded by greater availability of goods. Committing crimes in urbanized areas is also more feasible. Modernization has led to more crime as well, as the modern media has raised greater awareness of the income gap between the rich and the poor. This leads to feelings of deprivation, which in turn can lead to crime. In some regions where urbanization happens in wealthier areas, a rise in property crime and a decrease in violent crime is seen.


title: Urbanization

text: Data shows that there is an increase in crime in urbanized areas. Some factors include per capita income, income inequality, and overall population size. There is also a smaller association between unemployment rate, police expenditures and crime. The presence of crime also has the ability to produce more crime. These areas have less social cohesion and therefore less social control. This is evident in the geographical regions that crime occurs in. As most crime tends to cluster in city centers, the further the distance from the center of the city, the lower the occurrence of crimes are.


title: Urbanization

text: Migration is also a factor that can increase crime in urbanized areas. People from one area are displaced and forced to move into an urbanized society. Here they are in a new environment with new norms and social values. This can lead to less social cohesion and more crime.


title: Urbanization

text: Although urbanization tends to produce more negative effects, one positive effect that urbanization has impacted is an increase in physical activity in comparison to rural areas. Residents of rural areas and communities in the United States have higher rates of obesity and engage in less physical activity than urban residents. Rural residents consume a higher percent of fat calories and are less likely to meet the guidelines for physical activity and more likely to be physically inactive. In comparison to regions within the United States, the west has the lowest prevalence of physical "inactivity" and the south has the highest prevalence of physical "inactivity". Metropolitan and large urban areas across all regions have the highest prevalence of physical activity among residents.


title: Urbanization

text: Barriers such as geographic isolation, busy and unsafe roads, and social stigmas lead to decreased physical activity in rural environments. Faster speed limits on rural roads prohibits the ability to have bike lanes, sidewalks, footpaths, and shoulders along the side of the roads. Less developed open spaces in rural areas, like parks and trails, suggest that there is lower walkability in these areas in comparison to urban areas. Many residents in rural settings have to travel long distances to utilize exercise facilities, taking up too much time in the day and deterring residents from using recreational facilities to obtain physical activity. Additionally, residents of rural communities are traveling further for work, decreasing the amount of time that can be spent on leisure physical activity and significantly decreases the opportunity to partake in active transportation to work.


title: Urbanization

text: Neighbourhoods and communities with nearby fitness venues, a common feature of urbanization, have residents that partake in increased amounts of physical activity. Communities with sidewalks, street lights, and traffic signals have residents participating in more physical activity than communities without those features. Having a variety of destinations close to where people live, increases the use of active transportation, such as walking and biking. Active transportation is also enhanced in urban communities where there is easy access to public transportation due to residents walking or biking to transportation stops.


title: Urbanization

text: In a study comparing different regions in the United States, opinions across all areas were shared that environmental characteristics like access to sidewalks, safe roads, recreational facilities, and enjoyable scenery are positively associated with participation in leisure physical activity. Perceiving that resources are nearby for physical activity increases the likelihood that residents of all communities will meet the guidelines and recommendations for appropriate physical activity. Specific to rural residents, the safety of outdoor developed spaces and convenient availability to recreational facilities matters most when making decisions on increasing physical activity. In order to combat the levels of inactivity in rural residents, more convenient recreational features, such as the ones discussed in this paragraph, need to be implemented into rural communities and societies.


title: Urbanization

text: Urbanization factors that contribute to mental health can be thought of as factors that affect the individual and factors that affect the larger social group. At the macro, social group level, changes related to urbanization are thought to contribute to social disintegration and disorganization. These macro factors contribute to social disparities which affect individuals by creating perceived insecurity. Perceived insecurity can be due problems with the physical environment, such as issues with personal safety, or problems with the social environment, such as a loss of positive self-concepts from negative events. Increased stress is a common individual psychological stressor that accompanies urbanization and is thought to be due to perceived insecurity. Changes in social organization, a consequence of urbanization, are thought to lead to reduced social support, increased violence, and overcrowding. It is these factors that are thought to contribute to increased stress. It is important to note that urbanization or population density alone does not cause mental health problems. It is the combination of urbanization with physical and social risk factors that contribute to mental health problems. As cities continue to expand it is important to consider and account for mental health along with other public health measures that accompany urbanization.


title: Urbanization

text: Different forms of urbanization can be classified depending on the style of architecture and planning methods as well as the historic growth of areas.


title: Urbanization

text: In cities of the developed world urbanization traditionally exhibited a concentration of human activities and settlements around the downtown area, the so-called "in-migration". In-migration refers to migration from former colonies and similar places. The fact that many immigrants settle in impoverished city centres led to the notion of the "peripheralization of the core", which simply describes that people who used to be at the periphery of the former empires now live right in the centre.


title: Urbanization

text: Recent developments, such as inner-city redevelopment schemes, mean that new arrivals in cities no longer necessarily settle in the centre. In some developed regions, the reverse effect, originally called counter urbanization has occurred, with cities losing population to rural areas, and is particularly common for richer families. This has been possible because of improved communications and has been caused by factors such as the fear of crime and poor urban environments. It has contributed to the phenomenon of shrinking cities experienced by some parts of the industrialized world.


title: Urbanization

text: Rural migrants are attracted by the possibilities that cities can offer, but often settle in shanty towns and experience extreme poverty. The inability of countries to provide adequate housing for these rural migrants is related to overurbanization, a phenomenon in which the rate of urbanization grows more rapidly than the rate of economic development, leading to high unemployment and high demand for resources. In the 1980s, this was attempted to be tackled with the urban bias theory which was promoted by Michael Lipton.


title: Urbanization

text: Most of the urban poor in developing countries unable to find work can spend their lives in insecure, poorly paid jobs. According to research by the Overseas Development Institute pro-poor urbanization will require labour-intensive growth, supported by labour protection, flexible land use regulation and investments in basic services.'


title: Urbanization

text: When the residential area shifts outward, this is called suburbanization. A number of researchers and writers suggest that suburbanization has gone so far to form new points of concentration outside the downtown both in developed and developing countries such as India. This networked, poly-centric form of concentration is considered by some emerging pattern of urbanization. It is called variously edge city (Garreau, 1991), network city (Batten, 1995), postmodern city (Dear, 2000), or exurb, though the latter term now refers to a less dense area beyond the suburbs. Los Angeles is the best-known example of this type of urbanization. In the United States, this process has reversed as of 2011, with "re-urbanization" occurring as "suburban flight" due to chronically high transport costs.


title: Urbanization

text: Urbanization can be planned urbanization or organic. Planned urbanization, i.e.: planned community or the garden city movement, is based on an advance plan, which can be prepared for military, aesthetic, economic or urban design reasons. Examples can be seen in many ancient cities; although with exploration came the collision of nations, which meant that many invaded cities took on the desired planned characteristics of their occupiers. Many ancient organic cities experienced redevelopment for military and economic purposes, new roads carved through the cities, and new parcels of land were cordoned off serving various planned purposes giving cities distinctive geometric designs. UN agencies prefer to see urban infrastructure installed before urbanization occurs. Landscape planners are responsible for landscape infrastructure (public parks, sustainable urban drainage systems, greenways etc.) which can be planned before urbanization takes place, or afterwards to revitalize an area and create greater livability within a region. Concepts of control of the urban expansion are considered in the American Institute of Planners.


title: Urbanization

text: As population continues to grow and urbanize at unprecedented rates, new urbanism and smart growth techniques are implemented to create a transition into developing environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable cities. Additionally, a more well-rounded approach articulates the importance to promote participation of non-state actors, which could include businesses, research and non-profit organizations and, most importantly, local citizens. Smart Growth and New Urbanism's principles include walkability, mixed-use development, comfortable high-density design, land conservation, social equity, and economic diversity. Mixed-use communities work to fight gentrification with affordable housing to promote social equity, decrease automobile dependency to lower use of fossil fuels, and promote a localized economy. Walkable communities have a 38% higher average GDP per capita than less walkable urban metros (Leinberger, Lynch). By combining economic, environmental, and social sustainability, cities will become equitable, resilient, and more appealing than urban sprawl that overuses land, promotes automobile use, and segregates the population economically.


title: Urbanization

text: Presently, most countries in the world are urbanized, with the global urbanization average numbering 56.2% in 2020. However, there are great differences between some regions; the nations of Europe, the Middle East and the Americas are predominantly urbanized. Meanwhile, two large belts (from central to eastern Africa, and from central to southeast Asia) of very lowly urbanized countries exist, as seen on the map here. These labeled countries are among the least urbanized.


title: Urbanization

text: As of 2020, urbanization rates are over 80% in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and South Korea. South America is the most urbanized continent in the world, accounting for more than 80% of its total population living in urban areas. It is also the only continent where the urbanization rate is over 80%.


title: Company (military unit)

text: A company is a military unit, typically consisting of 80–250 soldiers and usually commanded by a major or a captain. Most companies are formed of three to seven platoons, although the exact number may vary by country, unit type, and structure.