What are the Benefits and Problems Associated with Urbanisation?
In the years following the Industrial Revolution, the practice of urbanisation became much more prevalent. Urbanisation has lead to an increase in the population of cities while leading to a decline in rural population. The effects of Urbanisation can be both positive and negative, whether it is on the peoples, the society or the environment. The practice of urbanisation has brought with it, many arguments as to whether it is a positive or negative phenomena. Throughout the course of this discussion we will look deeper in to what urbanisation really is. We will also analyse the arguments, and we will begin to unpack how urbanisation positively effects the environment as well as its people, but also the problems that it inevitably brings about. From the discussion we will then be able to make some conclusions about the nature of urbanisation and its effects on the surrounding environments.
What is Urbanisation?
Long describes urbanisation as: “the process by which large numbers of people become permanently concentrated in relatively small areas, forming cities. A country is considered to urbanised when over 50 per cent of its population live in the urban areas” (Long 1998). He continues to state that Urban generally means non-agricultural and also that an urban area can be defined by many criteria including: population size, space, density, and economic organization. Usually, however, urban is simply defined by some base line size, like 20 000 people (Long, 1998).
Peter Hall states that urbanisation can be looked at from a few different angles, firstly in a physical sense it refers to the use of land for urban purposes and secondly from a functional sense which ...
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* Urban Professional^s recognition of the increased variability, robustness, and interest in both the urban area and their work. * Conservation Activist^s commendation of the lower consumption of resources, and reduced pressure on sensitive environment areas, suggestive of a reduction in urban sprawl. * The Development Industry^s equations of profit established through better and higher levels of land use. Essentially urban consolidation proposes an increase of either population or dwellings in an existing defined urban area (Roseth,1991). Furthermore, the suburban village seeks to establish this intensification within a more specific agenda, in which community is to be centred by public transport nodes, and housing choice is to be widened with increased diversity of housing type (Jackson,1998).
City life is an entire different way of living than life outside of the city. Living in the heart of a major metropolitan city, I travel over 30 miles to work that some say is located in the middle of the Midwest cornfields. Life in the city moves at a faster pace. I find people often are walking quicker steps, seemingly to always be on a mission to get somewhere, usually in a hurry. Shopping at one of my city’s local big box food store, I find that most people are pleasant enough, but do not go out of their way to speak. They typically appear to be in their own world, in a hurry to purchase their good, so they can get to somewhere else. The store worker’s rarely make eye contact and sometimes tracking an employee down for assistance can be non-existent. On one recent visit, it took the store over 10 minutes to find an employee to assist me with acquiring an object in a locked cabinet.
When urban planners sit at a table, and they are deciding what actions to take, they look at location as a primary source for putting cities together, with the development of houses, industries, and places for market goods to be sold while always trying to increase the supply and demand. In order to get from one place to the next, transportation methods were created to combat city growth and create valuable mechanisms of transporting goods and services within a market. Individuals determined to make things work within a given city constantly recreate, and challenge the laws of nature to make it fit their vision, because entrepuners want to bring character to cities by making them viable places to reside, consequences such as poverty , death, and poorly developed cities arose. Urban planning for city development is a constant battle between losers in winners in the struggle to manage population growth and the need for its current and future sustainability.
Steve Johnson makes arguments for urbanization and the positive impact they have overall, despite some of the health problems they have created. His main argument is relating to the environment and urbanization. Johnson argues that while cities are usually viewed in a negative light, they do not offer negative impact on the environment. He discusses how urbanized cities are a necessary trend for the future of global relations. “The sheer magnitude of such of a footprint has been invoked as part of anti-urban environmental arguments, but the primary objection is in fact industrialization not
Again, this section will give a working definition of the “urban question’. To fully compare the political economy and ecological perspectives a description of the “urban question” allows the reader to better understand the divergent schools of thought. For Social Science scholars, from a variety of disciplines, the “urban question” asks how space and the urban or city are related (The City Reader, 2009). The perspective that guides the ecological and the social spatial-dialect schools of thought asks the “urban question” in separate distinct terminology. Respected scholars from the ecological mode of thinking, like Burgess, Wirth and others view society and space from the rationale that geographical scope determines society (The City Reader, 2009). The “urban question” that results from the ecological paradigm sees the relationship between the city (space) as influencing the behaviors of individuals or society in the city. On the other hand...
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The Negative Effects of Urbanization on People and their Environment As our world becomes increasingly globalized, numerous people travel to urban areas in search of economic prosperity. As a consequence of this, cities in periphery countries expand at rates of 4 to 7 percent annually. Many cities offer entrepreneurs the potential for resources, labor, and resources. With prosperity, cities also allow the freedom of a diversity of ways of life and manners (Knox & Marston, 2012). However, in the quest to be prosperous, increasing burdens are placed on our health and the condition of our environment.
Urbanization is the movement from a rural society to an urban society, and involves a growth in the number of people in urban areas. Urban growth is increasing in both the developed but mostly in the developing countries. Urbanization is associated with the problems of unemployment, poverty, bad health, poor cleanliness, urban slums environmental deprivation. This causes a very big problem for these developing countries and who are some of poorest countries. Africa urbanization is not as big as most developing countries but is on the rise for it outbursts in city growth lately. (Saundry, 2008).
Because of the population explosion, rural areas have been hard-pressed to grow enough food for domestic consumption, and the standard of living in rural areas has declined drastically since the 1950’s in many developing countries, as there are simply too many mouths to feed (Gottdiener & Hutchison, 2011, p. 288). Due to this inability of rural agricultural efforts to grow enough food for consumption, many decide to flee to the cities. Another huge difference between Third World countries and First World countries is that in many of these developing nations there is an unbalanced pattern of urbanization that places such as the United States just doesn’t have. Developed nations have a much more even distribution of urbanization and don’t have things like primate cities. According to Gottdiener and Hutchison (2011), primate cities are, “…over urbanized, excessively populated, and is the center for most investment and economic growth, while retaining a relatively under urbanized interior with no large cities” (Pg.
Many villagers and small town dwellers want a living in big cities. With some expectations, they make a movement from villages to big cities. This migration from rural areas to big cities is called urbanization.
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Global cities are cities with substantial economic power, controlling the concentration and accumulation of capital and global investments. Despite this, global cities are the sites of increasing disparities in occupation and income. This is as a result of large in-migration and growing income inequality together with capacity and resource constraints, and inadequate Government policies.
We all know the urbanization rate is an index to value the development of a country. However, though urbanization provides great convenience to some individuals, it also brings about negative effects. Problems such as pollution, overcrowded and the high unemployment appear during the process of urbanization and they are hard to cope with. In face of the sequence of problems, a new way of development ----sustainable development was put forward. Just like its literal meaning, the word sustainability has something to do with continuity. It was used since 1980s and first appeared in Britain law in 1993. Sustainable development can help solve parts of the problem caused by urbanization, including environmental damage, overuse of resources, and natural disasters.