Week 15 — Population, Urbanization & Social Change
Why this matters
A city planner choosing where a new school goes and a tenants' group pressing for repairs both meet this week's ideas.
In plain language
Every society is always changing: people are born, people die, people move, cities spread, and groups organize to push for something new. This week you study those changes. You will learn demography (the study of how populations grow, shrink, and move) and read a real figure on how many children women around the world have. You will see how cities grow and what city life does to relationships. Then you will tell a passing crowd from a social movement (an organized, lasting effort to bring about or resist change), sort movements by what they want, and ask why some of them rise and last.
- Already covered: Weeks 1 to 14 built the perspectives, the data questions, and the institutions.
- This week: births, deaths, and moves; the fertility rate; cities; movements; and social change.
- How they connect: Week 1's rates and Week 2's four questions read a real world figure.
Focus
How do populations grow and move, how do cities spread, and how does a society change?
By the end of this module, you should be able to:
- [ ] read a birth, death, or fertility rate as a rate, not a count
- [ ] explain population momentum and the demographic transition
- [ ] tell a crowd from a movement and sort movements by aim
- [ ] read one change through the three lenses
To-do
Plan your week
- Read Chapter 15 (about 45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
- Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
- Do the Sociology in Action Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
- Take the quiz.
This week's checkpoint: explain why a falling birth rate is not a falling population.
You've got this
This is the last module. Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if you get stuck.
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