Urbanization

policies

- Slum Upgrading: programs oriented to the betterment of the current conditions of slum dwellings and neighborhoods, often incremental; can give adequate housing solutions if inclusive and fair. - Housing: devising strategies to provide affordable and adequate housing for all must remain one of the top priorities for country governments. - Transportation: people will resettle farther away from the city given they have easy access to it. - Urban Planning and Planned City Extensions: one of the most effective ways to prevent the formation of slums is city planning, as it rationalizes urban space for future growth, promoting compact urban communities.

slums: 5 deprivations

- Slum household as 'a group of individuals living under the same roof lacking one or more of the following conditions: - (1) No access to clean water - (2) No access to sanitation facilities - (3) Overcrowding - (4) Poor structural quality/durability of dwellings - (5) No security of tenure

problems related to urbanization

- Slums - Suburbanization - Residential segregation - Homelessness - Urban/suburban poverty - Gentrification

causes of slums

- Slums sprout and continue for a combination of demographic, social, economic, and political reasons. - Common causes include: - Rural-to-urban migration and urbanization - Economic stagnation, unemployment and poverty - Lack of low cost affordable housing - Colonialism and segregation - Informal economy - Natural disasters - Wars and conflicts - Extreme poverty - Homelessness - Vulnerability to natural disasters - Unemployment and informal economy - Violence - Disease - Malnutrition and hunger

not all cities are growing

- Some cities have experienced population decline since 2000, most of which are located in low-fertility countries of Asia and Europe with stagnating or declining populations. - A few cities in Japan and South Korea (for example, Nagasaki and Busan) have experienced population decline between 2000 and 2014. - Several capital cities have seen their populations decline: Bratislava (Slovakia), Riga (Latvia), Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Yerevan (Armenia). - Emigration has also contributed to smaller population sizes in some of these cities. - Economic contraction and natural disasters have contributed to population loss in some cities. - In the US, Buffalo and Detroit each experienced net losses of population between 2000 and 2014, concurrent with a loss of industry and jobs in those cities. - New Orleans experienced population decline in the wake of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina.

measures: index of dissimilarity (D)

- The standard measure of segregation is the Index of Dissimilarity (D), which captures the degree to which two groups are evenly spread among census tracts (neighborhoods) in a given city. - Evenness is defined with respect to the racial composition of the city as a whole. - With values ranging from 0 to 100, D gives the percentage of one group who would have to move to achieve an even residential pattern - one where every tract replicates the group composition of the city. - For example, a D score of 60 for black-white segregation means that 60% of either group must move to a different neighborhood for the two groups to become equally distributed. - <30 - low level - 30 - 60 - moderate level - >60 - high level

urbanization: trends

- Today over half of the world's population (55%) lives in urban areas. - The continuing urbanization and overall growth of the world's population is projected to add 2.5 billion people to the urban population by 2050, with nearly 90% of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa. - Just three countries - India, China and Nigeria - together are expected to account for 35% of the growth in the world's urban population between 2018 and 2050. - The proportion of the world's population living in urban areas will reach 66% by 2050. - Close to half of urban dwellers reside in relatively small settlements of less than 500,000 inhabitants

largest mega-cities today

- Tokyo (38 million) - Delhi (29 million) - Shanghai (26 million) - Cairo (20.1 million) - Mumbai (20.0 million) - Beijing (19.6 million) - Dhaka (19.6 million) - Osaka (19.3 million) - Chongqing (14.8 million) - Calcutta (14.7 million) - Lagos (13.7 million) - Kinshasa (13.1 million)

new urbanism movement

- Walking is good for health - Driving has negative impact on health (asthma, car accidents, etc.) - Commuting has negative psychological effects - Transportation cost reduces disposable income - Driving has negative impact on the environment - Walkable cities have smaller environmental impact

are suburbs different from cities?

- Wirth's characteristics of a city - 1) Size - 2) Density - 3) Diversity - Suburbs lack all of them - Urban people living in non-urban conditions

level of urbanization by income

- middle income countries have the largest percentage of population residing in urban areas - low income countries have the least percentage

suburbanization

- the growth of areas on the fringes of cities. It is one of the many causes of the increase in urban sprawl. Many residents of metropolitan regions live in satellite communities called suburbs and commute to work in central cities via automobile or mass transit. - Federal government's policies: - Building of an efficient network of roads and highways - Underwriting of mortgages for suburban one-family homes - Demographic factors: - Baby boom - Racism - "White flight" - Redlining of urban neighborhoods

gentrification

- urban renewal, rebuilding and upgrading of inner city neighborhoods. - Pros: revived central cities - Cons: displacement of local residents

residential segregation

- (racial/ethnic or socio-economic) is the physical separation of two or more groups into different neighborhoods. - Consequences for education, socio-economic mobility, health, crime.

slums

- A slum is a densely populated urban informal settlement characterized by substandard housing and lack reliable sanitation services, supply of clean water, reliable electricity, timely law enforcement and other basic services. - The absolute number of people living in slums have been increasing. Currently, UN-Habitat estimates that the number of people living in slum conditions is over 1 billion. - The proportion of the urban population living in slums worldwide was 23.5% in 2018. It has been declining or stable over the past 20 years.

africa

- Africa remains mostly rural, with just over 40% of its population living in urban areas in 2018, while Asia is now approximating 50% rural. - But Africa and Asia are urbanizing more rapidly than other regions of the world.

rural population

- Approximately 3.4 billion people (45% of the world's population) currently live in rural areas around the world. - The rural population of the world has grown slowly since 1950 and is expected to reach its peak soon. - Sometime after 2020, the world's rural population will start to decline. - Africa and Asia is home today to nearly 90% of the world's rural population - India and China have the largest rural populations (in absolute numbers). - In Africa, the largest rural populations are located in Nigeria and Ethiopia.

segregation: trends

- Black-white residential segregation peaked around 1960 or 1970. - Between 1980 and 2010 it declined at a slow pace. - Hispanics and Asians are considerably less segregated than African Americans, and their segregation levels have remained steady since 1980. - Since both these groups are growing (Hispanics and Asians) through immigration, these groups live in more isolated settings now than they did in 2000, continuing a trend seen since 1980.

why did segregation decrease?

- Broader population changes - Changing overall racial composition of the cities: - Economic restructuring and recession - Out-migration from North Eastern states - Continuing immigration - Increased ethno-racial diversity - Urban renewal (gentrification) - Changing public policies: - Improved housing voucher policies - "Moving to Opportunity" and other relocation projects - Mixed income housing

importance of cities

- Cities are important drivers of development and poverty reduction in both urban and rural areas, as they concentrate much of the national economic activity, government, commerce and transportation, and provide crucial links with rural areas, between cities, and across international borders. - Urban living is now associated with higher levels of literacy and education, better health, greater access to social services, and enhanced opportunities for cultural and political participation.

consequences of segregation

- Concentrated poverty and intergenerational transmission of poverty - Lack of opportunities and resources: - no local jobs - no transportation to places where jobs are - no grocery stores - police & fire protection - parks and other public spaces •schools - Lack of social control: - role models and supervision - unemployment - crime/incarceration

why does racial segregation continue?

- Continuing discrimination in housing - Closely linked to socio-economic inequality - Policy failures: - Reduction of poverty - Public housing

cities

- Definitions and criteria to delimit cities and urban areas vary across countries. That is why it is often challenging to compare urban development and growth in different countries. - "Urban agglomeration" refers to a contiguous territory inhabited at urban levels of residential density. - "Metropolitan area" comprises an urban agglomeration and surrounding areas at a lower settlement density but with strong economic and social linkages to the central city.

suburbanization 2

- Environmental impact: - Pollution - Increased consumption of water and energy (high CO2emission) - Health impact: - Obesity - Community impact: -Decline of central city neighborhoods - Increased segregation - Decreased diversity of suburban neighborhoods

least and most urbanized countries

- Least urbanized countries (less than 20% urban, population 10+ million): - Burundi, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda and South Sudan in Africa - Nepal and Sri Lanka in Asia - Papua New Guinea in Oceania - Most urbanized countries: - Belgium (98%), Japan (93%), Argentina (92%) and the Netherlands (92%) - By 2050, 101 countries are expected to have more than 80% of their population reside in urban areas. - Future increases in the world's urban population are expected to be highly concentrated in just a few countries. - China, India and Nigeria are projected to account for just over 1/3 of the projected increase of nearly 2.5 billion people in the urban population by 2050

megacities

- Megacity - a city with more than 10 million inhabitants - In 1990 there were 10 megacities and they represented 7% of the global urban population - Today there are 33 megacities, the population they contain now account for about 13% of the world's urban dwellers. - By 2030, the world is projected to have 43 megacities, most of them in developing regions - The term metacity has been used to describe metropolitan conglomerations containing over 20 million people

urban growth

- Natural increase: results from an excess of births over deaths in urban areas. - Women living in urban areas typically have lower fertility (greater access to education and modern methods of family planning), but infant and maternal mortality is lower as well, so the natural increase is higher - Migration: to cities from rural areas or from abroad contributes to urban growth whenever the number of in-migrants exceeds the number of out-migrants (positive net migration to urban areas). - Migrants are often younger, which contributes to younger age structure of urban areas. - Reclassification: contributes to urban growth by enlarging the size of urban areas. - When cities grow in area, they incorporate neighboring settlements and their populations, which were formerly classified as rural.

challenges of urbanization

- Rapid and unplanned urban growth threatens sustainable development when the necessary infrastructure is not built or when policies are not implemented to ensure that the benefits of city life are equitably shared. - Despite the comparative advantage of cities, urban areas are more unequal than rural areas and hundreds of millions of the world's urban poor live in sub-standard conditions. - Unplanned or inadequately managed urban expansion leads to rapid sprawl, pollution, and environmental degradation, together with unsustainable production and consumption patterns.

urbanization

is a population shift from rural to urban areas, the increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas, and the ways in which each society adapts to the change. It predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas.