urbanization in third world countries

Urbanization and its effect on third world living conditions

Urbanization is the spreading of cities into less populated agricultural areas. Most people would not think that this is necessarily a problem. They would say that it is good that the “developing countries” were becoming more developed. With urbanization comes factories and more jobs, so the people can make more money and be happier. Right? The problem is that these people must sacrifice their traditional lifestyles, for this new “Urbanism”(the way of life, attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior fostered by urban settings Knox 234). A lot of these people don’t choose this lifestyle- they are forced into it. Because there is a growing demand for natural resources in the core countries, the semi periphery and periphery countries (where many of the resources are) get exploited. The “civilized” world enters the other countries, buys land from the government and then forces the people who are on that land off of it. These people then move to the cities because they have nowhere else to go. Once they get to the city they are lucky to find a job. Sometimes these jobs pay as little as 80 American dollars a year and can barely support a family. As a result many turn to crime or prostitution to make ends meet. Our worst poverty is generally better than the average people in these third world cities.

The people in these cities lack not only those things that are necessary to sustain life- such as food, clean water and adequate sewage. But they also lack those things that we consider to be essential to life such as electricity, running water, and education, forget any of the things that we just have to enjoy, like cars clothes candy drugs television and entertainment. Eventually large slums develop around or inside of the cities, in these slums; large groups of poor and uneducated people end up living together in poverty. The World Bank met in 1999 to address these problems; in their report they write “ Hundreds of millions of urban poor in the developing and transitional world have few options but to live in squalid, unsafe environments where they face multiple threats to their health and security. Slums and squatter settlements lack the most basic infrastructure and services. Their populations are marginalized and largely disenfranchised. They are exposed to disease, c...

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...ople off of it. If people were not forced off the land, into the city, the cities would grow at a natural rate. When Urbanization occurs at a natural rate (the United States) Poverty is present but not as magnified.

Truth is that these problems cannot be fixed by anyone. If there are people that have a lot then there are going to be people who have a little. These rules are written in the very laws of nature. The governing powers (companies, world bank, tri-lateral commission) think that if they can just raise these people up to a little bit higher living standards than they will be o.k. But the more you give people, the more they want, it’s just human nature.

Bibliography

1.World Bank Group. “cities alliance for cities without slums, action plan for moving and upgrading slums”. Annual meeting.1999 No authors were given

2. United nations human settlements program. “ urbanization, facts and figures” New York, 6-8 of june 2001

3. another united nations human settlement report, no author no date