ASSIGNMENT # 2

Urban Geography
TOPIC:
"Major trends in urbanization and urban growth"

Urbanization: Urbanization, urbanization or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. Urbanization is closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can describe a specific condition at a set time, i.e. the proportion of total population or area in cities or towns, or the term can describe the increase of this proportion over time. So the term urbanization can represent the level of urban relative to overall population, or it can represent the rate at which the urban proportion is increasing. Movement: As more and more people leave villages and farms to live in cities, urban growth results. The rapid growth of cities like Chicago in the late 19th century and Mumbai a century later can be attributed largely to rural-urban migration. This kind of growth is especially commonplace in developing countries. This growth can also be attributed to new job opportunities. The rapid urbanization of the worlds population over the twentieth century is described in the 2005 Revision of the UN World Urbanization Prospects report. The global proportion of urban population rose dramatically from 13% (220 million) in 1900, to 29% (732 million) in 1950, to 49% (3.2 billion) in 2005. The same report projected that the figure is likely to rise to 60% (4.9 billion) by 2030.

Fig: Percentage of World Population: Urban vs. 1

According to the UN State of the World Population 2007 report, sometime in the middle of 2007, the majority of people worldwide will be living in towns or cities, for the first time in history; this is referred to as the arrival of the "Urban Millennium" or the 'tipping point'. In regard to future trends, it is estimated 93% of urban growth will occur in developing nations, with 80% of urban growth occurring in Asia and Africa. Urbanization rates vary between countries. The United States and United Kingdom have a far higher urbanization level than China, India, Swaziland or Niger, but a far slower annual urbanization rate, since much less of the population is living in a rural area. Urbanization in the United States never reached the Rocky Mountains in locations such as Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Telluride, Colorado; Taos, New Mexico; Douglas County, Colorado and Aspen, Colorado. The state of Vermont has also been affected, as has the coast of Florida, the Birmingham-Jefferson County, AL area, the Pacific Northwest and the barrier islands of North Carolina. In the United Kingdom, two major examples of new urbanization can be seen in Swindon, Wiltshire andMilton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.[8] These two towns show some of the quickest growth rates in Europe.

Causes of urbanization:

Urbanization occurs naturally from individual and corporate efforts to reduce time and expense in commuting and transportation while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to take advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition. People move into cities to seek economic opportunities. A major contributing factor is known as "rural flight". In rural areas, often on small family farms, it is difficult to improve one's standard of living beyond basic sustenance. Farm living is dependent on unpredictable environmental conditions, and in times of drought, flood or pestilence, survival becomes extremely problematic. In modern times, industrialization of agriculturehas negatively affected the economy of small and middle-sized farms and strongly reduced the size of the rural labor market. Cities, in contrast, are known to be places where money, services and wealth are centralized. Cities are where fortunes are made and where social mobility is possible. Businesses, which generate jobs and capital, are usually located in urban areas. Whether the source is trade or tourism, it is also through the cities that foreign money flows into a country. It is easy to see why someone living on a farm might wish to take their chance moving to the city and trying to make enough money to send back home to their struggling family. There are better basic services as well as other specialist services that aren't found in rural areas. There are more job opportunities and a greater variety of jobs. Health is another major factor. People, especially the elderly are often forced to move to cities where there are doctors and hospitals that can cater for their health needs. Other factors include a greater variety of entertainment (restaurants, movie theaters, theme parks, etc.) and a better quality of education, namely universities. Due to their high populations, urban areas can also have much more diverse social communities allowing others to find people like them when they might not be able to in rural areas. These conditions are heightened during times of change from a pre-industrial society to an industrial one. It is at this time that many new commercial enterprises are made possible, thus creating new jobs in cities. It is also a result of industrialization that farms become more mechanized, putting many labourers out of work. This is currently occurring fastest in India. Urbanization: Major trends and challenges Today there are around six billion inhabitants of our planet, half of whom live in cities. A third of these live in slums (one billion people). The trend is not to diminish, but rather, to increase. Within 40 years, seventy per cent of the worlds population will live in cities and this will imply an exponential rise in challenges involving a huge range of social players.

The massive influx into the cities over the next two generations will involve an exodus from rural areas and into urban areas which in many cases are already near saturation point. The urbanization of the worlds population is more likely than not to increase the poverty burden, spread diseases and send crime rates skyrocketing. While the cities experiencing the first wave of this phenomenon will be the developing countries, a plausible knock-on effect could be a second wave hitting the cities of the more developed nations. The information is released by the United Nations Organizations World Health Organization, which on world health day (April 7) launched the alert that urbanization and poverty go hand in hand and that there are serious health issues to be addressed. Multiple challenges The main problem of this future trend is the multiplicity of the nature of the strains and stresses on society caused by a further 20 per cent increase in urbanized populations over 40 years, or two generations. Exodus The reasons for the flow from countryside areas to the city are well documented and are nothing new. Job opportunities, the chance to grow, the need to break out of more conservative family and social constraints, to find something more challenging and more in line with increased levels of education have taken a growing ratio of young people from their birthplace to the cities over many decades. Influx The problems start to arise downstream, not upstream. And the more people that pour into the cities, the worse the situation may become, unless a great number of measures are taken. Congestion leads to an increase in health problems and also to issues arising from crowding: traffic injuries are the leading cause of death in the 15-24 age group in cities and the second highest among the 10-14s. As a result of increased pressure on public services, the rendering of healthcare and social problems is placed under increased risk and furthermore, rapid migration rates lead towards exponential rises in slum dwelling, involving other social vectors with potentially explosive results. This in turn creates a triple health threat: infectious and contagious diseases spread through insufficient sanitation and living conditions; chronic and non-communicable health problems caused by depression, manifested in substance abuse; an interaction among several vectors creating issues involving violence and crime, road accidents, disrespect for human integrity and for property.

Solutions

The UNO has decided to launch a campaign called 1,000 cities, 1,000 lives which will incentivate municipalities to create conditions which can make a difference, channeling new residents into socially acceptable professions and living conditions, and making sure that their offspring are socialized for the recognized and established education system. "Urbanization Trends in 2020"

Mega Cities and Smart Cities Built on a Vision of Sustainability

With more than 60 percent of the world population expected to live in urban cities by 2025, urbanization as a trend will have diverging impacts and influences on future personal lives and mobility. Rapid expansion of city borders, driven by increase in population and infrastructure development, would force city borders to expand outward and engulf the surrounding daughter cities to form mega cities, each with a population of more than 10 million. By 2023, there will be 30 mega cities globally, with 55 percent in developing economies of India, China, Russia and Latin America. The mega cities from emerging economies will witness a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 4.4 percent in GDP (PPP) from 2009 to 2025, as compared to a CAGR of 1.63 percent for the same period in the mega cities from developed economies. Convergence of two or more closely located mega cities will lead to the formation huge mega regions. For example, by 2020, Johannesburg and Pretoria in South Africa will converge to form one big mega region called Jo-Toria. Another trend of urbanization will be the evolution of mega corridors. Infrastructure development, particularly transport corridors interconnecting two or more mega cities or regions, will lead to the expansion of these corridors. For example, the Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Guangzhou corridor in China is expected to house 120 million people by 2025. The explosive population growth and dynamic shift in urban sprawl, coupled with the economic growth of mega cities in the emerging economies, will pose a variety of opportunities for companies operating in different sectors. The mega cities from the emerging economies will become the largest markets for existing premium products and technologies, while their developed counterparts will witness a trend of sustainable measures. This will also lead to the evolution of smart cities with eight smart features, including Smart Economy, Smart Buildings, Smart Mobility, Smart Energy, Smart Information Communication and Technology, Smart Planning, Smart Citizen and Smart Governance. There will be about 40 smart cities globally by 2025. Frost & Sullivan has analyzed the top 20 mega cities of the future and ranked them based on population and economic growth factors.

URBAN TRENDS: URBANIZATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH No matter the path of economic development a country has chosen, urbanization remains an inevitable outcome of this effort across the world, says UNHABITATs report, State of the World Cities 2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide. The urban transition occurs at different times and with diverse growth patterns but the real challenge remains for governments to take actions that allow residents to make the most of living in cities. Already half the worlds population is urban. Currently, the less urbanized regions are Asia and Africa, but they are expected to reach their respective tipping points that is when their populations are more urban than rural in 2023 and 2030. From 2025 to 2030, average annual global growth is expected at 1.5% meaning that by the middle of the century (2050) their urban populations are due to reach 61.8%. In analyzing global trends, the report argues that the degree of a countrys urbanization is now an indicator of wealth. The more urbanized a country, the higher the individual incomes. However, the authors nd that the reverse is true for countries ravaged by civil war. In Liberia, for example, individual incomes declined as rural populations ed to towns in search of safety. Extreme inequalities, inadequate or ineffective policies can also block development or, at least, set back progress substantially. Recent research shows a positive link between economic development and urbanization in most countries in Africa. In Asia it is clear that urbanization is

the major factor behind economic growth, contributing to an overall reduction in poverty rates. In Latin America, however, economic development and urbanization have been linked through industrialization and modernization yet the result has been high degrees of inequality between and within countries. The link between urbanization and economic growth also occurs in regions within individual countries. This is the case in Chinas eastern seaboard; the Northern Capital Region in the Philippines; the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam; the Southern Region of Mozambique and the capital of that country, Maputo. It is also so for northern Moroccos Tangier-Tetouan area. Those regions with stronger economies are more urbanized and have urban population growth rates about twice or three times the national average. The solid link between economic growth and urbanization is also noticeable when countries are aggregated by income level. High-income countries have the highest GDPs per capita and urbanization levels; lower income countries are at the other end of the spectrum. The same is true for regions. The only exception in the developing world is sub-Saharan Africa. Here, while countries are generally more urbanized than in Southern Asia, their GDP per capital is lower: 36% and US $601 in sub-Saharan Africa compared with 29% and $647 in Southern Asia. Urban growth: Urban growth is the rate of growth of an urban population. It is different to urbanization which is the process by which there is an increase in proportion of a population living in places classified as urban: the movement from a rural to urbanarea. Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to lowdensity and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses (e.g. stores and residential), and various design features that encourage car dependency.

Urban growth in Pakistan:

STATUS AND TRENDS IN URBANIZATION: Overall some 37 per cent of the people of the Asian and Pacific Region live in urban areas (United Nations 1998), although there is considerable range in the extent of the urbanization, both across and within the sub-regions. For example, the higher degree of urbanization in Australia and New Zealand contrast markedly with the much less urbanized Pacific Island countries and is sufficiently high to ensure that the South Pacific sub-region is on average the most urbanized in the region, whilst South Asia is the least urbanized followed by Southeast and Northeast Asia (ESCAP 1999). The diversity of countries in the region in terms of levels of economic development has resulted in even greater variation in the level of urbanization. For example, urbanization ranges from a minimum of seven percent in Bhutan to 100 percent in Singapore. It is projected that some of the big countries of the region like Peoples Republic of China, Indonesia and Pakistan where current urbanization levels are well below 50 per cent, will cross this figure by the next quarter of the century, whilst Indias urbanization level will also approach 50 per cent by the year 2030. Degree and Growth of Urbanization Each of the eight highly urbanized (75 percent and above) countries are industrially advanced nations, (with the sole exception of BruneI Darussalam, which is very rich in oil resources) whilst the eight with low urbanization (25 per cent and below) comprise countries where the levels of economic development and per capita income are low.