The shifting gravity of the urban

Andrew Gardner

Chapter 5 in Handbook of Research on Migration, COVID-19 and Cities, 2025, pp 73-87 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Abstract After a brief review of cities and their emergence in human history, I suggest a set of new conceptual tools for grappling with the urbanization process and urban growth. I describe and define centripetal forces, or those forces that draw humans to the city, and contrast them with centrifugal forces, as those forces that push or expel inhabitants from a given city. After developing these conceptual tools, I explicate the history of Doha, Qatar, and the urbanization process. With these tools and this reading of history in place, I suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a tectonic change in the “gravity of the urban” milieux. As a result, the human future looks less urban and more decentralized than current theory suggests. Changes in the human propensity to build and inhabit dense urban agglomerations have significant implications for the flow of transnational labor migrants to the Arabian Peninsula.

Keywords: Transnational Labor Migration; Urbanization; Doha; Arabian Peninsula; Urban Futures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035301225
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