Starting from 1900s, the percentage of urban population has been kept increasing, from 13% in 1900 to 29% in 1950, to 49% in 2005, and expected to increase to 60% in 2030 (United Nations, 2006). This process of increase in proportion of population living in urban areas is called urbanization, which means that more people will be engaged in industrial activities instead of agriculture (Pacione, 2009). When we look into the process of urbanization, it is not difficult for us to spot out some of the similarities and differences between First and Third World urbanization. In this essay, the characteristics of the urbanization process in the first and third world will be compared and contrasted. First and foremost, the population involved in urbanization will be examined. The growth of urban population in less developed region (LDR) is much higher than more developed region (MDR). According to the United Nations (2005), in the thirty largest urban agglomerations among the world, nineteen of them are MDR at 1950; while at 1980, only ten cities in the MDR remained in the list. At 2005, only seven cities in the MDR left on the list. One of the reasons for the rapid increase in urban population in LDR is natural increase. Before urbanization, majority of the population were engaged in agricultural production, which requires a huge amount of man-power. In traditional family thinking, more children means they got more man-power to help with production. Even though they are