as in to civilize
to accustom to the ways of the city every September the city of Boston urbanizes a new crop of college students from small towns across the country

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of urbanize When Margarita Lugo de Castillo first started selling food from an outdoor stall here in 1945, this area had just begun to urbanize. Jorge Valencia Mariano Fernandez, New York Times, 14 Nov. 2023 But more Chinese people are frequently swapping soup and noodle dishes for salads and sandwiches as the country urbanizes and growing numbers find employment in the private sector. Lyric Li, Washington Post, 21 June 2023 South Korea, for example, has urbanized at blistering speed, with the percentage of people living in and around cities doubling between 1966 and 1986, from 33 to 67 percent. Monica Das Gupta, Scientific American, 1 Sep. 2017 And so most countries around the world will need to urbanize to move their populations out of energy poverty, a great transformation that is already taking place at an unprecedented rate. Ted Nordhaus, Foreign Affairs, 30 Aug. 2016 See All Example Sentences for urbanize
Recent Examples of Synonyms for urbanize
civilize
Verb
  • Practically speaking, if your checklist is mostly phones and a CPAP, a mid-size electric battery station is civilized: quiet, indoor-safe and instantly useful.
    Jennifer Jolly, USA Today, 4 Sep. 2025
  • In this view, other European immigrants were unsuitable for civilizing the frontier—Southern Europeans were effete and decadent while Eastern European Jews were hapless in the woods and better-suited to urban, commercial spaces.
    Livia Gershon, JSTOR Daily, 5 June 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Urbanize.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/urbanize. Accessed 17 Sep. 2025.

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