Urbanization refers to the
population shift from rural to urban areas, "the gradual
increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas", and the ways
in which each society adapts to the change.[1] It is predominantly
the process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more
people begin living and working in central areas.[2] (Wikipedia)
Urbanization refers
to the process by which rural areas become urbanized as a result of economic
development and industrialization. Demographically, the term urbanization
denotes the redistribution of populations from rural to urban settlements over
time. However, it is important to acknowledge that the criteria for defining
what is urban may vary from country to country, which cautions us against a
strict comparison of urbanization cross-nationally. The fundamental difference
between urban and rural is
that urban
populations live in larger, denser, and more heterogeneous cities as opposed
to small, more
sparse, and less differentiated rural places. (httpwww.eolss.netsample-chaptersc04e6-147-18.pdf)
ISSUES
AND CONCERNS PERTAINING TO URBANIZATION
by Brian Gabriel
Urbanization is the shift from a
rural to an urban society, bringing a large concentration of people into towns
and cities. This process usually occurs when a nation is still developing. The
trend toward urbanization is a worldwide phenomena. The chief cause of global
urbanization is the new economic opportunities it brings to people and
governments; however, it has both positive and negative effects on society.
Economic
Causes
Workers move to urban centers to
find better economic opportunities. The Industrial Revolution and the
subsequent shift from agricultural jobs to factory jobs made it profitable for
companies to locate their factories in large cities with plenty of local
workers. There often is a severe lack of resources in rural areas, such as
medical technology, which further drives people to the cities. In developing
countries, such as those in Africa, natural population increases and migration
have been big factors in urbanization. People are driven out of rural poverty
and into urban areas as they are less able to care for their growing families;
cities offer employment, food, shelter and education.
Negative
Social Effects
Urbanization has many adverse
effects on the structure of society as gigantic concentrations of people
compete for limited resources. Rapid housing construction leads to overcrowding
and slums, which experience major problems such as poverty, poor sanitation,
unemployment and high crime rates. Additionally, strains on important natural
resources, such as water supply, leads to higher prices and general
environmental sustainability problems.
Negative
Psychological Effects
Urbanization makes people dependent
on others for basic necessities; urban-dwellers must rely on the rural
hinterland for agricultural production, for instance, because city residents do
not have enough land to grow their own food. Urban-dwellers suffer the
psychological degradation that comes from depending on other people to accomplish
the activities of daily life, from transportation to education to
entertainment. Writing in the "Anatolian Journal of Psychiatry" in
2008, M. Tayfun Turan and Asli Besirli found that the social problems
associated with urban societies, the traffic problems and the general anxiety
about the future contributed to an increase in mental health disorders.
Positive
Effects
Urbanization offers real economic
opportunities to people who would otherwise be destined to subsistence living
without hope for economic improvement. There is an overall growth in commercial
opportunities with urbanization, resulting in more profits and more jobs. As
the economy grows, all of society benefits from internal improvements, whether
through the wealthier tax base or from competition between private
organizations. Another benefit of urbanization is that the tight grouping of
people enables social and cultural integration on a level unavailable to
scattered populations in rural areas.
Urbanization: - is
the process of change from rural to urban population. Most
cities in
developing
countries are unplanned.
1. Economic Problems :
a. Over urbanization or the
uncontrolled urbanization in developing countries is due to large-scale
in-migration of rural people.
b. Decreasing employment
opportunities in the rural as well as smaller urban areas has caused large
scale rural to urban migration.
c. The huge migrant
population in urban areas creates stagnation and generates a pool of unskilled
and semi-skilled labour force.
d. Urban areas suffer from
shortage of housing, transport, health and civic amenities.
e. A large number of people live
in substandard housing i.e. slums and squatter settlements or on the streets.
f. Illegal settlements called squatter settlement are growing as
fast as the city.
2. Socio-cultural
Problems : Cities in the developing countries suffer from several social
ills.
a. Inadequate social
infrastructure and basic facilities is due to lack of financial resources and
over-population in the cities.
b. The available
educational and health facilities remain beyond the reach of the urban poor.
c. Cities suffer from poor health conditions.
d. Lack of employment and education tends to aggravate the crime
rates.
e. Male selective migration
to the urban areas distorts the sex ratio in these cities.
3. Environmental Problems :
a. The large urban
population in developing countries uses and disposes off a huge quantity of
water and all types of waste materials.
b. Many cities of the
developing countries do not provide the minimum required quantity of drinkable
water and water for domestic and industrial uses.
c. An improper sewerage system creates unhealthy conditions.
d. Massive use of
traditional fuel in the domestic as well as the industrial sector severely
pollutes the air.
e. The domestic and
industrial wastes are either let into the general sewerages or dumped without
treatment at unspecified locations.
f. Huge concrete structures of
buildings create heat in the city environment.
Source:
Suryaveer Singh, PGX_F_Participatory Development Planning
THE
FIVE HEARTHS OF URBANIZATION
The
five Hearths are the Nile River Valley in Egypt, Mesopotamia in Iraq, the Indus
River Valley in Pakistan, the Mayan in Central America and the Yellow River
Valley in China. No one has any idea of what the IQ’s of the dwellers of these
regions were at the time, but right now they
are Guatemala 79, Egypt 82, Pakistan 82.5, Iraq 87 and China 105 (I don’t
accept Richard Lynn’s phony 100 figure for China).
All but China are in what is the
lower half of the human IQ range. Since White nationalists are adamant that IQ
has remained unchanged in all of these places, and everywhere else for that
matter, in the past few thousand years, it behooves to ask how is it that these
dummies showed up Homo Superiorus in Europe anyway?
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/the-five-hearths-of-urbanization/
Of the five, Egypt was far and away the most advanced. The latest thinking is that the pyramids
were not built by slaves, but instead were built by relatively well-paid,
middle-class workers. Whole cities that housed these workers have been
uncovered near the pyramids. Egyptian cities are the oldest of all. I am not sure of
dates, but it looks like Egyptian cities go back 6,000 years or more (YBP =
years before present).
It’s odd that the
earliest cities were the best of them all. The majestic pyramids were
unsurpassed in the other Hearths. Although Mesopotamia had stone obelisks as
tall as a man, Egypt had incredible obelisks of solid stone up to an
unbelievable 100 feet tall. People to this day still wonder how the Egyptians
did it, and no one quite knows.
King Tut appointed
what seems to be the first, or one of the first, queens of a large society, so
this was a feminist breakthrough too, not that you would know it if you went to
Islamic and misogynistic Egypt today.
The next one along was Mesopotamia at 5,500 years ago. This is very, very early. They had art,
aqueducts and organized religion, but no pyramids or major architectural
accomplishments. There was a Great
Wall of Babylon, a beautiful structure fashioned of blue bricks.
They had obelisks and statues such as the Style of Hammurabi,
but that was only as tall as a man. Compare to the 100 foot obelisks of the
Egyptians – no contest. The Mesopotamians were already smelting metal – this
was the Bronze Age. Smelting metal is a serious advance in civilization, and
it’s amazing that anyone was smelting anything 4,900 years ago, when Mesopotamian smelting began. It appears
that Mesopotamia was influenced by the earlier civilization of the Egyptians.
The next is the great civilization of the Indus. This was in Pakistan, not in India as
idiot Indian nationalists claim. Not quite as impressive as the first two, it
did have very large cities with aqueducts for irrigation. However, they had no
pyramids or other great architecture, no art and no writing. They had big
cities and little else. The Indus Civilization vanished without a trace for
unknown reasons. The Indus was very old, 4,200 YBP.
The fourth Hearth was the Maya Civilization in Central America. This actually goes back a long ways, all
the way to 3,100 YBP at least and possibly earlier. It was
characterized by a writing system, mathematics, pyramids, art and advanced
astronomy. The Mayan pyramids were excellent structures. I am not sure how they
compare to the Egyptian pyramids, but it is fascinating that early peoples in
two completely different parts of the world both decided to build pyramids
(Why?).
The Mayans also
smelted metal and had a very early irrigation system.
What is odd is that
neither the Mayans nor the Aztecs who came much later never managed to invent
the wheel or to put it to good use. The wheel is absolutely essential for
advanced civilization, and discovering it is considered a profound breakthrough
for any culture.
What is even more strange is that the early Central
Americans did invent the wheel, but they
did not put it to good use. We have found children’s toys with wheels on them
from these cultures. On the other hand, there were no pack animals to be
domesticated in Central America, so it’s dubious what use you could put the
wheel to, although I guess you could make a rickshaw, a bicycle or a
wheelbarrow.
The early Central
Americans are derided, especially by White Nationalists, for being horribly,
even evilly cruel, especially in their mad, seemingly insane addiction to human
sacrifice. It’s true that the Central Americans did take human sacrifice to
frightfully vicious extremes, at times making it nearly an assembly line
operation.
However, many early cultures engaged in
human sacrifice, including Homo Superiorus over in Europe. Why, we
ask? Well, these were pre-scientific folks. They did have their Gods, but as
cruel and meaningless as fate often is, the Gods must have been crazy, to
paraphrase a movie title.
For instance, these
nutty and semi-wicked Gods would kill the hottest babe in the village along
with the handsomest, smartest guy to boot, for no darn reason at all, while
leaving alive the village dirtbag, who barely even deserved to be kept alive
one more minute. None of it made sense. Human life is a caprice, so cruel a
caprice that it can almost seem like folly or the blackest of jokes.
These Gods were
clearly nuts, but they ruled our lives nevertheless. What to do? Appease the
crazy bastards.
This was the meaning
of human sacrifice and the more humane later animal sacrifice, taken to insane
lengths of folly by the Jews of the Temple Period, where an assembly line of
animals stretched for up to a mile or so, and animals were killed all day in a
9-5 operation, such that blood flowed from the Temple like a river. This is the
mad period that the most fanatical Zionists wish to recreate.
Anyway, the way to
appease a powerful, crazy person is to humor him, be nice to him or even bring
him gifts. This was the idea behind the human sacrifices, to try to
semi-rationalize the ferocious whimsy of the Gods.
The fifth Hearth is the Yellow River Valley of China. Actually, yo can’t say that anymore, as
the PC-idiots take offense. Guess why? Yellow River sounds like yellow
skin. Chinese are said to have yellow skins, but that’s racist
and you can’t say that. So forget the Yellow River.
Instead, it’s the
Huang He River, which I think means yellow in Chinese, but since mostly only
Chinese know Chinese, there’s nothing to get offended about, since Chinese
equating Chinese = yellow is not offensive, but if Caucasians do it, it’s mean
and evil and racist. Whatever.
Anyway, the Yellow
River civilization was about 2,200 YBP. I don’t know much about it except that
they did have large cities and irrigation. They also had writing.
One might reasonably ask what these five Hearths had in common.We can say that they were near the Equator,
but not too near. That seems
crucial. They were all in the Northern Hemisphere, but I doubt if that is
meaningful, except that there seem to be more humans and more land mass
in the north. And, with the exception of the Mayas, they
were all in lush river valleys. The Mayas are odd man out in
the jungle.
The question of YBP comes up. I don’t mind the term. Originally we had B.C. (Before
Christ), and as a Christian, that’s just fine for me. Well, some folks got rid
of that a while back and replaced it with BCE, (Before Christian Era), which
always struck me as a cheap anti-Christian shot.
I figure Jews probably
had a hand in this, since Jesus isn’t exactly their favorite guy, nor is
Christianity exactly their favorite religion. The atheists and scientist types
must have had a hand in it too. It surely so infuriated these poor atheist
souls to have to say and write that horrible word “Christ” over and over.
Non-Christians all over the world probably nodded in approval or chimed in.
YBP seems a good
compromise. Neither Christocentric nor a slap in the face of Christianity, it
just avoids the whole issue of Jesus and religion altogether and goes by a nice
secular calendar.
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/the-five-hearths-of-urbanization/
EARLY
URBANIZATION AND THE THEORY BEHIND IT
Theories
on urbanization have been around for such a long time that they have blended
into and
intersect with theories that also pertain to cities, industrialization, and
more
recently,
globalization. At the risk of being subjective and circumvent, we introduce and
discuss
four such theories, which provide both earlier and recent explanations for why
and how
urbanization occurs.
First, there is what may be labeled the theory on self-generated or endogenous
urbanization. This
theory suggests that urbanization requires
two separate prerequisites—the generation of surplus products that sustain people in non-agricultural activities (Childe, 1950; Harvey, 1973)
and the achievement of a level of social development that allows
large communities to be socially viable and stable (Lampard,
1965). From a long temporal perspective, these changes took place
simultaneously
in the Neolithic period when the first cities emerged in the Middle East
(Wheatley,
1971) as mentioned earlier. A much later period in which these two preconditions
interacted strongly was the late eighteenth century when the rise of industrial
capitalism led to the emergence of urban societies in Great Britain, North-West
Europe and North America (Pred, 1977).
In a
demographic sense, this theory focuses
on the rural-urban population shift as the foundation of urbanization but
it identifies industrialization as the basic driver behind
the
movement of rural population to urban areas for factory jobs. The historical evidence
undoubtedly bears this out. Before the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, no
society could be described as urban or
urbanized. And all countries, primarily in the West, that began to
industrialize rapidly after Great Britain became highly urbanized by the
mid-twentieth century, which was followed by accelerated industrialization and urbanization
in the rest of the world through the last century and into the present. If we
focus on cities instead of urbanization, this theory accounts for the
endogenous conditions that facilitate the transition from pre-industrial to
industrial cities, first in the West and then in the rest of the world, in an
uneven manner. Perhaps the first theoretical perspective that remains relevant
today in light of the close relationship between industrialization and
urbanization, it suffers from the drawback of focusing narrowly on the
rural-urban shift within countries as the key to urbanization. Besides the
authors cited above, this theoretical
tradition was enriched by scholars like Kinsley Davis in the 1950s through the
1970s (Davis, 1951, 1965, 1969, 1972).
The second theory on urbanization actually
emerged from a broader theoretical school known as the modernization theory that became prevalent and influential from
the 1950s through the 1970s. While overlapping with the first theory in the
timing of development, modernization theory had a wider set of assumptions and
scope of influence (see So, 1990 for a comprehensive critique of modernization
theory). Looking at urbanization through the lens of modernization, first, the
present state of urbanization in any given society is set by its initial state
at the onset of modernization. Secondly, technology is fundamentally more
important than a society’s social organization in shaping urbanization.
Finally, the path and pattern of urbanization within and between developed and
developing countries are most likely to converge through cultural
diffusion, despite breeding inevitable social
disequilibria (Kasarda and Crenshaw, 1991).
We could
trace the intellectual underpinning of the modernization view on urbanization
in
developing countries to an even earlier theoretical paradigm, namely, human
ecology.
While
developed to describe the structure and evolution of the American city,
primarily
Chicago
in the 1920s-1930s by Robert Park and others, human ecology is based on
strong
assumptions about the interactive role of population dynamics, market competition,
material technology (e.g., transport infrastructure), and the built environment
in making and remaking urban life (Hawley, 1981; Orum and Chen, 2003).
These
assumptions became the predictive elements in how modernization theory would
view
subsequent developing-country urbanization as being driven by
industrialization,
technological
progress, information penetration, and cultural diffusion. This optimistic
prospective
view was very developmentalist in heralding the more positive outcomes of
accelerated
urbanization in the developing world, but only to be challenged by the more
depressing
reality of economic and spatial inequalities, as well as other social problems
from
urbanization in poor countries (Smith, 1996).
As
modernization theory failed to account for both the conditions and consequences
of
urbanization
in developing countries, it opened the door to a compelling theoretical alternative—the
dependency/world-system perspective on urbanization. Advanced by
Frank
(1969) and Wallerstein (1979), as well as others like Goldfrank (1979), dependency/world-system theory links recent changes in the roles and
organizations of the economies of
developing countries to the growth and extension of capitalism in the capitalism world system. From this
world-systemic perspective, urbanization can be seen as an internal locational response to global economy. First,
dependency theorists assume that a uniquely capitalist development pattern
exists, asserting that capitalism is a unique form of social organization.
Second, capitalism requires a certain social structure, which is characterized
by unequal exchange, uneven development, individual social inequality,
core-periphery hierarchies, and dominance structure. Finally, dependency theory
models social organization, technology and population dynamics as endogenous
factors in development and urbanization that are constrained by exogenous forces
(Timberlake, 1987). The spread of capitalism to and its entrenchment in the developing
world is the most recent stage in the development of capitalism as a world economic
system (Chase-Dunn, 1989). It is a result of changes in the ways in which wealth
is accumulated, and the evolution of the world-system of nations (see Table 1).
Dependency theory also suggests that underdevelopment is a result of the
plunder and exploitation of peripheral economies by economic and political
groups in core areas (Hette, 1990).
View from
the dependency/world-system perspective, urbanization in developing countries,
to the extent it occurs and at what speed, is a major spatial outcome of global
capitalism
and its own spatial organization. This is an inherently uneven process leading
to
geographic disparities between urban and rural areas and between cities,
particularly
so if
taking into account the unequal conditions at the start of urbanization.
Empirical
studies,
whether explicitly from this theoretical perspective or not, have borne out the
serious
undesirable consequences of rapid urbanization in developing countries such as
rural-urban
imbalance, lopsided city hierarchy, housing segregation, and income inequality
both within and across nations (Chen and Parish, 1996; Findley, 1993; Linn,
1982;
Smith and London, 1990; Todaro, 1981). Besides challenging directly the basic
assumptions
and predictions of modernization theory for urbanization, the dependency/world-system
theory goes a long way in accentuating the external, and often negative, impact
of the capitalist global economy on domestic urbanization in developing
countries. This powerful insight from the 1970s laid the ground work for a
more
systematic global perspective on urbanization, especially on the rise of networked
world or
global cities in the 1990s and beyond.
As the
debate between modernization and dependency/world-system theories on urbanization
continued from the 1970s into the 1980s, world-wide urbanization itself began
to take on the striking feature of a growing number of megacities becoming more
functionally
influential and structurally linked. This prompted geographer John Friedmann to
advance a research agenda for world cities in the early-mid 1980s (Friedmann,
1986; Friedmann and Wolff, 1982), suggesting that world cities are a small
number of
massive urban regions at the apex of the global urban hierarchy that exercise
worldwide
control over production and market expansion. With their global control functions
directly reflected in the structure of their production sectors and employment,
world
cities also are major sites for the concentration and accumulation of
international capital. This new focus on world cities marked a theoretical
extension from the world-system perspective by highlighting the study of
individual or a network of cities for understanding broader urbanization trends
and tendencies. The globalization of urbanization theories didn’t stop there.
Sociologist Saskia Sassen, with the publication of the book The Global City:
New York, London, and Tokyo in 1991, brought a definitive touch to
the study of the global city through a sharp conceptualization and a systematic
comparison of three such cities. According to Sassen, global cities function as
1) highly concentrated command points in the organization of the world economy;
2) key locations for finance and specialized services, which have replaced
manufacturing as the leading industries; 3) innovative sites of production in these
leading industries; and 4) markets for the products and innovations of these industries.
From
Sassen’s perspective, the hallmark of a global city is the growth and extent of
its
producer
services, which include accounting, banking, financial services, legal
services,
insurance,
real estate, computer and information processing, etc. While not a theory on urbanization
in the same sense as the other theories, the global city perspective has moved
the theorizing of urbanization both backward and forward to explicating the historical
and contemporary relationship between industrialization (and now deindustrialization
in the West), urbanization, and globalization. In sharpening this relationship
further, Soja and Kanai (2007) contend that globalization leads to a different
round of urban-industrialization and thus to a new global geography of economic
development. Testing this line of argument is a growing stream of rigorous empirical
studies that use network analysis to uncover the complex structure of both hierarchical
and horizontal ties among world cities (see Carroll, 2007).
Individually,
each of the four theories reviewed here, selective as it is, offers a distinctive
perspective on urbanization during different times that were conducive to the gestation
and evolution of each theory. To a large extent, each theory has transcended these
times in either sustaining or losing its applicability to countries (cases)
that have experienced urbanization differently. While the so-called theory on
self-generated or endogenous urbanization uncovered its important general
conditions, it does little to account for the recent urbanization of developing
countries. Besides failing on the same score, modernization theory does not
stress class relations or capitalism per se, but rather the inevitable tensions
created by the shifts in social organization encouraged by industrialism
(Kasarda and Crenshaw, 1991). Dependency/world-system theory is stronger in
suggesting the association rather than proving a causal relationship between urbanization
and capitalist development.
ORIGIN
OF URBANIZATION
To locate
the origin of urbanization today, we go back in time to identity the earliest
form of
urban life as beginning in the Middle and Near East—near what is today
Iraq—around
3,500 BC. In other words, the oldest urban communities known in history
began
approximately 6,000 years ago and later emerged with the Maya culture in
Mexico
and in the river basins of China and India. By as early as the thirteenth
century,
the
largest cities in the world were the Chinese cities of Chang’an (Xi’an today)
and
Hangzhou,
which had over one million people. And London didn’t reach one million
people
until the 1700s. However, until the nineteenth century, constrained by the
limits
of food
supply and the nature of transportation, both the size and share of the world’s
urban
population remained very low, with less than three percent of the world’s
population
living in urban places around 1800 (Clark, 1998).
Sparse
and often ambiguous archeological and historical record (Grauman, 1976)
indicates
that the urban population fluctuated between four and seven percent of total
population
from the beginning of the Christian era until about 1850. In that year, out of
a world
population of between 1.2 and 1.3 billion persons, about 80 million or 6.5
percent
lived in urban places. While 80 million was a large number then, they were
dispersed
over hundreds of urban places worldwide. In 1850, only three cities, London,
Beijing,
and Paris, had more than a million inhabitants; perhaps 110 cities had more
than
100,000 inhabitants (Golden, 1981). Of the 25 largest cities then, 11 were in
Europe,
eight in East Asia, four in South Asia, and only two in North America.
During
the century 1850-1950, there was, for the first time in human history, a major
shift in
the urban/rural balance. In his classic work The Growth of Cities in the
Nineteenth
Century (1899), A. Weber provided a historical account for the limited
level
of
urbanization at the global scale. Only three regions in Great Britain,
North-West
Europe,
and the USA were more than 20 percent urban in 1890. Urbanization in the first
half of
the twentieth century occurred most rapidly and extensively in Europe, the
Americas,
and Australia. The number of large cities (city has more than 100,000
inhabitants)
in the world increased to 946, and the largest city – New York—had a
population
of 2.3 million in 1950, while urbanization proceeded very slowly in much of
the rest
of the world. Although only a quarter of the world’s total population lived in
urban
places in 1950, urbanization in the developed countries had largely reached its
peak
(Davis, 1965).
The
acceleration of world urbanization since 1850 partly reflects a corresponding
acceleration
of world population growth; but urbanization is not merely an increase in
the
average density of human settlement (Lowry, 1990). For example, in 1960, nearly
all less
urbanized regions of the world had low rates of rural out-migration – under 1
percent
annually – and high rates of urban immigration – 1.5 to 3.2 percent annually
(Lowry,
1990). With a few exceptions, urban and rural rates of natural increases were
about the
same, yet urban growth rates were two to five time above rural growth rates,
reflecting
the strong effect of rural-to-urban migration in regions with relatively small
urban
sectors.
The
urbanization of the developing world began to accelerate in late twentieth
century
(Timberlake,
1987), although there was no clear trend in overall urban growth in less
developed
countries due to inconsistent definition of urban and the lack of quality in
their
census data. According to the United Nations, the levels of urbanization in
1995
were high
across the Americas, most of Europe, parts of western Asia and Australia.
South
America was the most urban continent with the population in all but one of its
countries
(Guyana) being more urban than rural. More than 80 percent of the population
lived in
towns and cities in Venezuela, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina. Levels of urban
development
were low throughout most of Africa, South and East Asia. Less than one
person in
three in sub-Saharan Africa was an urban dweller. The figure was below 20
percent
in Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Rwanda and Burundi. An estimated
40
percent of China’s 1.2 billion people and 29 percent of India’s 0.96 billion
lived in
cities
and towns. The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan was reckoned to be the world’s
most
rural sovereign state, with only six percent of its population living in urban
places.
The
transition from the twentieth to the present century marked a new and more
striking
era of
global urbanization. In 2008 the world crossed that long-awaited demographic
watershed
of half of the people on earth living in urban areas. Further acceleration of
urbanization
going forward is likely to raise the share of the world’s urban population to
75
percent by 2050, significantly higher than the mere 10 percent in 1900. While
the
USA,
Britain, and Germany have already surpassed 75 percent urban and won’t exceed
90
percent by 2050, newly industrializing countries like South Korea and Mexico,
which
were half-way urbanized at 50 percent in 1950, are likely to pass 75 percent by
2030.
Moving along a steeper upward trajectory, China will urbanize from 20 percent
in
1980 to
over 60 percent around 2030. China’s urbanization from the 1980s on reflects
the
global shift of the world’s urban population from developed to developing
countries,
which
will account for about 80 percent of the world’s urbanites by 2030 doubling
from
40
percent in 1950 (Soja and Kanai, 2007).
Another
salient aspect of this intensified urbanization is the accelerated growth of
million-plus
cities, which grew from only two (London and Beijing) around 1800 to 16
around
1900 to roughly 70 in 1950, to approximately 180 by 1975, and then soared to
over 450
in 2005. Of this number, China claimed almost 100, India about 40, while the
USA and
Europe had 40 respectively, and so did the African continent, with 57
million-plus
cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. While London was the first and
only
megacity of 10 million people around 1900, the list expanded to over 20 in
2005.
In addition,
while only three of the world’s largest cities with five million or more
people
were in developing countries, eight of the 10 largest cities and 15 of the 20
megacities
of 10 million people in 2005 were in developing countries (Soja and Kanai,
2007).
The trend of mega-urbanization will become stronger in developing countries,
especially
India and China, which is expected to have more than 220 million-plus cities
and 25
cities with five million people by 2025 (www.chinabusinessservices.com/blog,
April 6,
2008).
While
urbanization has intensified in terms of the growing megacities, the overall
rate
of urban
growth has consistently declined in most world regions in the past half century
and
probably in the coming several decades (see Figure 1). Therefore, the rapid
rates of urban population growth are no longer the most pressing concern but
the absolute
population size
of the huge urban centers, especially those in Asia and Africa.
Source: httpwww.eolss.netsample-chaptersc04e6-147-18.pdf
MEASURES
OF URBANIZATION
DENSITY
- Population density (=concentration of the
human population in reference to space)
Megacities show the highest density of
inhabitants, industrial assets and production, social and technical
infrastructure. Metropolitan areas and especially megacities become more and
more the centres and junctions of the global economy. With their important role
as centres of political and economic decisions they are promoters of national
and international developments. Furthermore in these areas lots of highly
qualified and “inexpensive” skilled labour are available and also the
concentration of capital stock make them attractive for investments. Urban
agglomerations and megacities generate a lot of income and their local economies
have an importance for their rural surroundings.
Dynamism of growth
Important “growth” indicators:
- Society: Population growth
rate
- Economy: Real GDP growth
rate
-
Land: Suburbanization rate, land sealing rate
Megacities are characterized by the highest
dynamics in the fields of spatial and demographic growth, change of land use
and consumption of land for settlement purposes that mostly takes place in
absence of urban planning. Also the formal and informal urban economic sectors
are on a high dynamic level. The local, regional and global market and the
connection with the international economic circulation induce various
increasing economic activities, so that megacities have the economic potentials
and power to initiate economic growth also in the regions around the urban
areas.
Settlement, infrastructure and land tenure
Important urban indicators:
- Number and dimension of informal
settlements (=residential area occupied by formal settlements)
- Change of land use (contaminated land,
derelict land, new developments, loss of protected sites etc.)
- Quality/quantity of urban infrastructure
In the most agglomerations and megacities urban
planning and public infrastructure can only partially guide the urban
development in order to achieve a proper sustainable structure. The extension
of cities is always in advance of urban development work and the provision of
public facilities. Different to conventional urban planning the development in
megacities proceeds outside the law with absence of land use planning. Especially
the informal housing areas and in many times also illegal housing areas
(squatters) that are build up by the migrants themselves lead to an extensive
settlement structure. The illegality of those residential areas results mainly
from the land tenure system. In many cases the infrastructure, public and
private transportation, garbage removal and sewage systems with waste water
purification are not efficient or not available. Most urban dwellers have no
sanitation facilities and the rainwater drainage systems are totally
inadequate. This situation has serious consequences on the environment and
public health.
Cost
and Energy Saving Facilities and Innovative Transport Systems
The provision of infrastructure for the
purposes of transport, communications, energy, drinking water, sewage
purification and sold waste treatment contribute the economic development, make
the territorial areas more competitive and attractive and promote regional economic
integration and social cohesion. But the developing countries cannot support
their cities in this fundamental tasks, because they have to cope with severe,
long-term budgetary problems. That’s why there will be a widening gap between
the growing demand and the current provisioning of water and sanitation in the
megacities with serious problems for the health of the residents. The current
financial gap is estimated to be US $ 16 billion a year. Especially
public-private partnerships can bring efficiency gains and cost-effectiveness in
the water sector. To influence city-dwellers' living conditions and economic
development the public authorities have to be involved in producing and
managing technical urban infrastructure facilities and services such as roads,
transport, electricity, telecommunications, water, sanitation and waste
treatment and also social facilities and services in the strategic fields of education
and health. In megacities and agglomerations of the developing world there is considerable
leeway to be made up and it will take a long time to achieve this with the 200 billion
dollars invested each year by developing countries (4 % of their national
product). E.g. only the needs of India have been estimated at 50 billion US $
per year. The main problem is to mobilise new external resources to finance
gradual improvements of the urban infrastructure. Funds for new infrastructure
are required and also for the maintenance and rehabilitation of existing
infrastructure to avoid deficiencies. In this fields priorities must be given:
Financing and management of existing facilities or investments in future
facilities? The systematic extension of public transport systems into the
surrounding is necessary to slow down the migration from the rural areas. A
rail transit network with different speed and high capacities, passenger
transit pivots and parking lots are important elements of an efficient mass
public transport system. E.g. Shanghai has designed an urban transportation plan
which consists of high speed rail lines, urban metro lines and urban light railways
in order to limit the quantum of cars, motorcycles and powered bicycles. By
means of high-tech, the research and development of intelligence transit
systems should be forced. This is at the same time a policy reduce energy
demand and also the emission of greenhouse gas. But in many cases efficient
public mass transport systems are inevitable for these cities.
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Long-term
Land Use and Land Management Strategies
A long-term land use and land management
strategies need reliable economic conditions and authoritative legal
regulations. Therefore the reform of land tax must be discussed considering
land policy, fiscal, social and ecological aspects. A sustainable urban development
requires to prevent land fragmentation and also social fragmentation. Considering
the rapid growth and that 60 to 70 % of the urbanisation are uncontrolled a comprehensive
urban planning has to be developed and monitoring system must be established.
Therefore the designation and mobilisation of building land is one of the
longterm tasks to be addressed by the local authorities. To improve the housing
situation at long-term, first the problems of land management and land use have
to be solved. This requires legal instruments for more secure access to land
and planning techniques for urban development and facilities. This frame must
be provided at the national level by the State on the national level. If an
adequate political, legal and institutional frame has been established, civil
society can play an enabling role to implement the land policy and land
administration.
In practice the greatest challenge is not
elaborating a comprehensive plan of the city or regional development, but
providing sufficient urban land for housing and other purposes at a reasonable
price and also the indispensable technical infrastructure. Urban land manager
must be capable of evolving a coherent vision of the cities future and also
mobilising private investment both for housing and for urban facilities and
services.
Source: PS2 Plenary
Session 2 – Risk and Disaster Prevention and Management
Theo Kötter PS2.2
Risks and Opportunities of Urbanisation and Megacities
FIG Working Week 2004
Athens, Greece, May 22-27, 2004
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Socio-economic
disparities
Important
socio-economic indicators:
-
Poverty Rate
-
Unemployment rate
(= average of unemployed men
and women during the year)
-
Mortality rate
In megacities we can recognize a wide range
of social standards and social fragmentation as well as social-cultural conflicts
because of the different backgrounds of the immigrants. A great number of urban
poor are badly provided with public facilities and infrastructure and their
housing areas are often edged out by stronger economic purposes and land use.
The development and extension of cities is accompanied with rising urban
poverty. Roughly a quarter of the population of the developing countries (1.2
billion people) are living in situations of absolute poverty on less than one
dollar per day (cf. World Bank: World Development Report 2005). A resident in a
poorer housing area in Chicago has better living conditions than about 80 % of
the megacity-dwellers in the developing countries. E.g. in Calcutta, Madras,
Bombay and Delhi more than 50 % of the inhabitants are living in informal
settlements. The growing socio-economic disparity within the megacities and the
lack of social cohesion is the most serious explosive charge (cf. UN-Habitat
2004).
Models
of Sustainable Development
The development of megacities and
sustainability seems to be contrasts, that cannot go together at the same time.
The high rates of land and energy consumption, the severe pollution of air,
water and soil at present and the ongoing social fragmentation are not in compliance
with the aims of a sustainable development. To cope this risks and challenges, considering
the undamped growth, a spatial concept with a decentralized structure should be
underlied that includes the urban and the surrounding rural areas. In the past,
different model of sustainable development have been discussed, but there is no
general admitted structure, that solves the risks of megacities. With view on
megacities and agglomerations a regional settlement structure has to be
designed which set up on the elements density, mixing of different land uses,
polycentrality and capacity of public mass transport systems and public facilities.
These are the prerequisites for achieving the ecological, social and economic
targets of sustainability.
The priority must be to slow down the urban
growth. Therefore the living conditions and the economic basis in the rural
areas must be strengthened, to prompt the inhabitants to stay there. Therefore
it’s a vital necessity to promote new forms of cooperation between cities and between
the cities and the villages at the regional level.
Strategies
of Urban Development
To achieve a proper development of
agglomerations and megacities a comprehensive plan is indispensable, that
provides guidelines and principle goals for the urban development as well as
for the development of the and that also provides the basis for construction
immediate plans for economic and social development, area plans, district
plans, detailed plans etc. In accordance with the sustainability, the
integration and coordination of urban and rural areas with the central city
should be a main principle. This requires a “multi-center”, “multi-axis” and
“multi-level” urban spatial structure. For example the comprehensive plan of
Shanghai (1999 – 2020) lines out five levels that refers to five scales. The
urban system is composed of the Central City, New Cities, Central Towns and the
Ordinary Towns and Central Villages.
In case of the urban development of
megacities a shift of urban policy and also of planning strategies is
fundamental. This includes a legalisation and registration of informal
settlements slums and squatters. Furthermore considerable social improvements
and an access to schools and other educational institutions are necessary.
Self-help housing improvements must be strengthened combined with the access to
land to enhance the living condition, the identification with the quarter and
at least the engagement for the (local) community.
The final declaration of the Heads of State
and Government and the official delegations from the countries attending the
2nd United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Habitat 11, held in June
1996 in Istanbul, proclaimed the “right to adequate shelter for all” as one of the
key themes of the conference. A billion people are today without a decent home
and a hundred million are completely homeless. This gives a measure of the
needs and the singular importance of the housing problem. Access to housing is
now recognized as being central to social cohesion and a key factor for
development.
Source: PS2 Plenary Session 2 – Risk and
Disaster Prevention and Management Theo Kötter PS2.2 Risks and Opportunities of
Urbanisation and Megacities FIG Working Week 2004 Athens, Greece, May 22-27,
2004
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RISKS AND
VULNERABILITY
Important disaster risk indicators:
-
Risk of mortality
-
Risk of economic loss
-
Vulnerability rate, identified for each hazard type
Megacities
are highly vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters:
Most of them are concentrated in
disaster-prone areas where floods, earthquakes, landslides etc. are most likely
to happen (Wisner 2003, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
2005). It is obvious that the major part of the damage will take place in developing
countries with a dramatic impact on poor people and ethnic minorities.
Countries with low human development account for 53 percent of recorded deaths
from disasters even though they are home to only 11 percent of the people exposed
to natural hazards worldwide (UNDP 2004, p.10). Primarily the unplanned urban
growth causes a lot of different ecological, economic and social problems and
risks. Considering the high density and the large number of inhabitants
combined with the accelerated urban development, megacities run highest risk in
cases of disasters. It is expected that the vulnerability of the society and
the human environment as well as the threat by disasters will intensify
continuously in the future.
Due to the fact that worldwide the loss
potential from natural catastrophes is increasingly dominated by megacities, the
insurance company Munich Re has developed a megacity risk index to make risks
and loss potentials transparent and to allow a comparison between the cities
(Munich Re 2004).
Urban Governance
Urban/good governance characteristics:
- Participation, rule of law, transparency,
responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity, effectiveness, efficiency, and
accountability
-
Indicators: i.e. corruption index
Urban Governance includes the state, but
transcends it by taking in the private sector and civil society. So it means
both, government responsibility and civic engagement (cf. UNFPA 2007, p. 67).
One of the greatest challenges of megacities is their governability and one can
recognize a crisis of urban government in this. The experiences show that the
possibilities of solely orientated forms of centralized governance with top
down strategies are restricted because of the extension, highly dynamic and
highly complex interactions within the megacities and also with their
surroundings. In the case of spatial planning, decentralization and innovative
planning processes with intensive participation of the population are necessary
(cf. Magel/Wehrmann 2001). Especially the characteristics of good governance
are a precondition for sustainable development and effective disaster risk
reduction (cf. Magel/Wehrmann 2001). In addition, good governance can be seen
as an effective instrument for poverty alleviation and to achieve the UN Millennium
Development Goals.
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With the ongoing growth of urban
agglomerations and megacities, good governance within the cities become highly
complex. One of the main problems in governing megacities and agglomerations is
their big extension and high population. These cities have to co-ordinate their
activities through local units. To shape policy in a local way it will be
necessary to divide megacities and agglomerations in manageable territorial
areas and to decentralize some responsibilities to the local actors and
initiatives. At the same time it is important to ensure and to organise
solidarity between all urban territorial areas and the rural surroundings and
the central government. But there is still a need for city or even regional
bodies responsible for city-wide or region-wide tasks like mass transit, waste
disposal or structural planning.
In many countries decentralisation of urban
government is in progress and forced with heavy emphasis. The aim of this
comprehensive movement is to improve urban living conditions by addressing
needs as directly as possible and to enable city-dwellers to participate in
city matters. It is a question of efficiency of administration and also of
political strategies that involves reorganising the political authorities and
administration responsibilities between the central and the local authorities.
In the decentralising process, a balance must be found between internal
socio-political concerns and the common development strategy of the megacity.
But decentralisation by its own is not yet a
guarantee for good governance. Decentralization requires also capacity building
for an efficient local urban management. Inadequate mobilization of local
resources is a major obstacle for managers in the performance of their tasks.
Local tax levying capacities are poor owing to the lack of any organized
collection and control system. Taxation methods are often discretionary and do
not encourage taxpayers to comply. House and land tax legislation and tax of
urban economic activities tend to be unproductive because they have not kept
pace with economic and social development. This strategy is largely determined
by the objectives and requirements of city-economic and budgetary balances, by
the land use planning strategy, the financial policy, credit regulations, education
and health policy, land and tax legislation. No foreign model of
decentralisation is transferable and it is possible for countries to be enriched
by other experiences and best practices, but they have to develop their own
appropriate model.
Source: PS2 Plenary Session 2 – Risk and
Disaster Prevention and Management Theo Kötter PS2.2 Risks and Opportunities of
Urbanisation and Megacities FIG Working Week 2004 Athens, Greece, May 22-27,
2004
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Indicator-based
Checklist for Megacities
Social indicators
􀂃 Population
growth rate
􀂃 Population
density
􀂃 Life
expectancy rate
􀂃 Migration
rate (migration from rural areas and immigration)
􀂃
At-risk-of-poverty rate
􀂃 Social
polarization rate
􀂃 Inequality
rate of income distribution
􀂃 Crime rate
􀂃 Dimension
of housing shortages; ghettos, slums, squatters
􀂃
Unemployment rate
􀂃 Rate of
people with unhealthy living conditions
Economic indicators
􀂃
Development of the local economy/economic structure
􀂃 Real GDP
growth rate
􀂃
Unemployment rate
􀂃
Accessibility of public transportation infrastructure
􀂃 Quality of
transportation network
􀂃
Infrastructure deficiencies; overtaxed infrastructures
􀂃 Risk of
economic loss in case of a disaster
Ecological indicators
􀂃 Air
pollution from vehicle emissions, industry etc.; smog
􀂃
Groundwater and drinking water pollution
􀂃 Quality of
sewage treatment
􀂃 Capacities
of waste collection and disposal services
􀂃 Land
sealing rate
􀂃
Suburbanization (urban sprawl) rate
􀂃 Number and
dimension of brownfields
􀂃
Destruction of original vegetation; deforestation; damage to
flora, fauna,
biodiversity per year
􀂃 Risks to
natural disasters or industrial accidents
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