Urbanization is the process of human migration from rural areas to towns and cities, thus rapid urbanization means that the rate at which the migration from rural to urban takes place is hurried that a country has no time to plan for their existence at the cities. The situation differs from country to country as the number of cities and rural areas in the countries are different. Another possible reason for the difference is the development nature of the countries; some countries are developed, others are developing while others are considered least developed. Urbanization in developed areas can be traced from the industrialization era when the populace migrated from the rural/ancestral home to towns in search of employment.
According to a report compiled by the University of Michigan, the percentage of the human global population living in cities in 1950 was less than 30% and by the year 2000, the figure stood at 47%. The study predicted that by 2025, the figure would be at 60% (World watch, 2011). Rapid migration is as a result of factors which induce the migrations from rural to urban; these factors have been categories into two broad groups- push and pull factors. Push factors are those factors that are influenced by the conditions of the rural areas thus making people move away into cities. Pull factors on the other hand are the incentives that attract people to the cities. Examples of push factors may be political instability of the rural area, insecurity, low standard of education, unemployment, and scarcity of resources. Pull factors are the promise of what is missing at the rural areas: employment, better education, better lifestyle, variety of resources, better health facilities, and a some what political stable...
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... Urbanization and mega Cities: The Need for Spatial Information Management.’ FIG REPORT publication No. 48, January 2010. Retrieved on March 9, 2011 from www.fig.net/pub/figpub/pub48/figpub48.pdf
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University of Michigan, ‘Urbanization and Global Change’ April 1, 2006. Retrieved on March 9, 2011 from http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/urban_gc/
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WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE. ‘Rapid Urbanization Catching Experts’ Attention.’ Vision for a Sustainable World, March 9, 2011. Retrieved on March 9, 2011 from http://www.worldwatch.org/node/64
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With urban population growth, both ecological and industrial consequences directly affect those in poverty and the urban poor. Slums usually develop in the worst types of terrain, and lead to flooding, landslides, and fires that destroy thousands of people’s homes. Yet population growth and the amounts of waste created by urban civilizations are also pushed on the hidden faces and locations of those on the outskirts of the cities. “If natural hazards are magnified by urban poverty, new and entirely artificial hazards are created by poverty’s interactions with toxic industries, anarchic traffic, and collapsing infrastructures” (Davis 128).
Chaffey, J. (1994). The challenge of urbanisation. In M. Naish & S. Warn (Eds.), Core geography (pp. 138-146). London: Longman.
At a global growth rate of 80 million people a year, the discussion about what precautions must be taken to combat urban sprawl and overpopulation have come into question (Growth). To determine the most appropriate means of combating this issue, it is important that we understand the points presented by both sides of the debate. Proponents to the issue push that there is a need to expand into suburbs in an attempt to accommodate the growing shortage of affordable housing. As availability of homes becomes smaller, people across the country have been forced to purchase housing at rates 56% higher then the construction cost, all due to a lack of enough houses to supply (CNBC). Opponents to the topic, however, stress the environmental repercussions caused by the expansion of suburbs.
Global Urbanization Urbanization for years has been associated with important economic and social transformations. These transformations have benefited geographic mobility, longer life expectancy rates as well as lower fertility. Both urban and rural areas have drastically reduced the development and poverty levels because they focus on government, national economic activities, and transportation and commerce, with important links between other rural areas, cities, and all across international borders. Urbanization is ideal because living in the city and suburban areas are associated with higher levels of education and literacy, great health with more social service options, as well as heightened opportunities for cultural and political participation. With all of these remarkable benefits, the rapid and unplanned growth of urban areas has become a threatening development for sustainability because the necessary planning of infrastructure was not developed and policies were not implemented before vast amounts of growth was underway.
The world where we live in is rapidly changing, our future is depend on what we do today and the nature of our intervention. Humans should not live in the moment, but should be considered for their future. As urban planners and policy makers, they want to plan a desired future condition, but the rapidly changing world is big challenges for them to achieve these goals. These challenges include expanding across multiple regions and scales including social and environmental conflicts, air pollution, climate change and inequitable allocation of resources. Furthermore, the challenges also include two main competing factors.
Urbanization (or urbanisation) is the increasing number of people that live in urban areas. Urbanization has been the result of economic growth for most countries. In fact, every developed nation in the world has gone through urbanization and this is no news to Chinese leaders. To turn the nation of China from being a developing nation to a developed nation, China encouraged the migration of citizens from the countryside to move to large cities and fuel the industrializing nation. Though urbanization has been a process many countries have gone through, China’s urbanization plans are very distinct compared to western examples. The main reason for China’s urbanization distinctions is its sheer magnitude and pace. In this paper, we will review this mass migration, the economic growth, China’s environmental concerns (specifically air pollution) due the urbanization and the focus on industrialization, and we will briefly see China’s newest seven year urbanization plan.
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 stimulates economic growth in many countries. However, it is possible that more expansion might leads to larger gap between rural and urban areas because the investment from the government and the private sector (i.e. establishment of many companies, development of infrastructure, transportation system, education, health and other amities) could potentially inadequate leaving others with poor public services and get struck in poverty and causing inequality.
On the other hand, urbanization in the developing countries differed from the process of urbanization in the West. In the Third World, throug...
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).
The rate of urbanization and its assistant influence change in areas across the globe. Asia holds almost half the world’s big cities and continues to urbanize quickly. Given its present annual growth rate, Asia’s urban population is nearly to double in less than 20 years. Urbanizations reveal more than demographic change. It is both driven by and extremely influences the context and development. It uses both direct and indirect compensation in the effort towards worldwide sustainability and individual development. The start of much global environmental harm associated to air and water pollution are located in urban areas.(Alam S 2010).
Urbanisation Urbanisation is the increase in the proportion of people who live in cities. The. There is a great increase in the rate of urbanisation all around the world. During the nineteenth century, urbanisation took place in the UK. However, in developed countries like the UK.
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.
However, the capacity of national and the local governments to cope with the increase of urbanisation has brought many concerns. Rural to urban migration especially in low-income nations is seen as contributing to shortages in the provision of adequate housing, scarcities of basic infrastructure and services, including overcrowding and congestion as well as increasing exposure to environmental threats. Moreover, rural-urban migration is considered as a silent killer in the city areas because this migration is stimulating problems such as pollution, congestion and overpopulation which gives rise to numerous socio-economic issues. The attraction to urban areas is high because people mostly think that they will obtain better opportunities to work there. Indeed, life becomes better and their living conditions improve for some of the migrants. However, it is undeniable fact that a lot of migrants end up in poverty because some cities are not capable to deal with the outsized arrival of new residents in a proper system. This resulted to the association of rural to urban migration with problems corresponding to urban poverty, inadequate sanitary conditions, sub-standard housing, development of slums and shanty towns, increasing waste and water pollution, congestion, crime or insecurity in the city centres. The problems are somewhat similar in every nation and have become more challenging now (Fischer,
Sassen, S. "The Global City: introducing a Concept." Brown Journal of World Affairs. 11.2 (2005): 40. Print.