Urbanization has become one of the defining demographic forces of the twenty-first century: cities now hold 45% of the global population, up from just 20% in 1950, and two-thirds of future population growth is projected to occur in urban areas. For traditional, indigenous, and tribal communities, this shift is rarely voluntary or neutral; it frequently arrives through state-led infrastructure projects, resource extraction, and administrative expansion that displace communities from ancestral land. This paper reviews recent peer-reviewed and institutional literature, prioritizing sources published between 2023 and 2026, to examine how urbanization affects traditional communities and what evidence exists regarding the scale, mechanisms, and outcomes of this impact. The review identifies four recurring dimensions of change: land dispossession and involuntary displacement, the transformation of subsistence-based economies into wage-based urban economies, the erosion of language and cultural practice, and the emergence of adaptive, hybrid forms of urban indigenous identity. Evidence from Indonesia, India, Canada, and Aotearoa/New Zealand shows both the depth of disruption traditional communities face and the resilience strategies they develop within cities. Major challenges to protecting traditional communities amid urbanization include weak enforcement of land and resource rights, exclusion from urban planning processes, and a persistent gap between stated government commitments and implementation on the ground. The paper concludes that urbanization's impact on traditional communities is not predetermined: it depends heavily on whether affected communities are treated as stakeholders in shaping urban futures or merely as populations to be absorbed by them.