The speed of urban development progresses almost synchronically with human civilization. In agricultural society, only few and limited-scale cities are needed (or can be provided). Even thousands of years later, after human entered agricultural society, the proportion of cities in human’s living area was still small. Cities with population of a hundred thousand are considered rare, and even the largest scale cities can only nearly reach population of a million. Though the population in big cities goes up and down dramatically, possibly from a million to a hundred thousand people, the continuing increase in city population has become a trend.

     According to historical record, the first time big cities’ population grew over one million people was in the Europe after industrialization. For instance, in the beginning of 19^th century, the population in London had reached a million, and by the end of 19^th century, the population almost reached five million. Only after industrialization does the logistics support system of human’s living sources (ex. food supply) become highly developed, which is able to support the drastically growing population in cities. In the U.S. and European countries, as the big cities turned well-developed, small and medium cities sprung up like mushrooms. In the initial 20^th century, city population finally took part over half of total human population. Before long, the percentage of city population became 70% and even 80%, and urbanization society thus arose. Under the trend of the time, city population continuously increased all over the world, and the spatial concentration of non-agricultural activities also became phenomenal. This type of development naturally spread from the U.S. and European countries to the rest of the world. In consequence, the degree of urbanization is considered as one of the indexes of a society’s modernization degree.

     As for China, early in the beginning of 19^th century, its cities had been in a significant place in the world. According to conservative statistics, at the time, there were 31 large cities with population over 200 thousand, and among them, 15 cities were located in China. Moreover, the population in China’s capital city, Beijing, had grown over one million, which was rare at the time. Even so, the percentage of China’s city population didn’t increase year by year, and the highest percentage in record was merely 10%. Until mid-19^th century, due to the ascendance of western powers to China, modern cities started to emerge in the concessions in China. In spite of the still limited urbanization of China at the time, some treaty ports with dramatic increase in population had made a breakthrough in traditional population scale and become very different from Taiwan at the time. At the end of 19^th century, although there were modernized facilities introduced to Taiwan’s capital, the actual development of urbanization didn’t start until the Japanese colonial period. Governor-General of Taiwan actively established city system, which had become the foundation of cities’ development after the nationalist government retreated to Taiwan. After 1960, Taiwan’s city system progressed as the economy rapidly developed, and that was time when Taiwan really stepped into urbanization period.