URBANIZATION IN THIRD WORLD

URBANIZATION IN THIRD WORLD

Urbanization can be defined as the progressive concentration of people ( population) in urban areas. In other words, it’s a process in which a growing number of the population live in the urban area. Urbanization is the increasing number of people that live in urban area. It predominantly result in the physical growth of urban area, be it horizontal or vertical. It is closely linked to modernization, industrialization and sociological process of rationalization.

       The term urbanization can represent the level of urban development relative to over all population. It is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. Rural culture is characterized by common bloodlines, intimate relationships and communal behaviour whereas urban culture is characterized by distant bloodlines unfamiliar relations, and competitive behaviour. Urbanization is the concentration of human population into isolated areas, leading to transformation of land into residential, commercial, industrial and transportation purposes. Urbanization is the social process whereby cities grow and societies become more urbanized in nature.

       Research conducted in 2005, some world largest cities and their populations are:

1 New York city, USA 8,085,742 people

2 Cairo, Egypt 729,866 people

3 London, UK 7,172,036 people

4 Mexico city 8,591,309 people

China 868,900 people

According to BBC report in 2004, the largest mass migration in the history of the world is under way in China, and it s creating what some call the second industrial revolution. Hardoy (1992) identify three inaccurate assumptions about urbanization in third world which tend to be repeated..(1) He states that most of the problems and much of the urban population are in huge mega cities (2) The high concentration of population and production is a major cause of environmental problems (3) That the problems are accurately documented in the existing literature.

Primate cities are cities which are usually but necessarily both the capital and the main commercial centre predominates, contains anything up to a quarter of the entire population. The extreme case is the city-state Singapore 100% in urban. But Montevideo, capital of Uruguay, contains half the country’s population.

CAUSES OF URBANIZATION IN 3^RD WORLD COUNTRIES

1. Localization of industries/ employment opportunities
2. Educational institutions
3. Availability of social amenities
4. Governmental policies/ political reasons
5. Family reunifications
6. Security reasons
7. Religious activities.

PROBLEMS OF URBANIZATION

1. Over population or population explosion.

2 Unemployment/ underemployment

3 Heavy traffic jams

4 High pressure on social amenities- electricity, pipe borne water, hospital, educational institutions- primary, secondary and tertiary.

5 Housing problems –high cost of house rent

6 Poverty: This leads to crime, prostitution.

7 Disconnection from agricultural activities: this leads to food scarcity, increase in food prices.

8 Prestige based on overt status symbol.

9 Security problems

10 Pollution- water, air, noise pollutions.

11 Impersonality

12 Congestion of people in the urban areas leads to contraction of communicable diseases.

SOLUTION TO URBANIZATION PROBLEMS

1 Provision of adequate housing scheme by the government.

2 Provision of social amenities in the rural areas.

3 Localization of industries in the rural areas.

4 Encouragement of people to go into agricultural sector with better pay for their produce.

5 Building of overhead or flyover bridges to solve the problems of traffic jams.

6 More security personnel should be employed by the government the challenges posed by criminals in the urban centres.

7 Orientation and re-orientation of the urbanites not to convent another man’s wealth, in other words, they should work harder in order to achieve their own wealth. And every source of should be checkmated by the government in order to reduce corruption and suffering of the mass in the urban. Areas.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE URBANITES

1. High division of labour
2. Impersonality
3. Prestige based on overt status symbol
4. Orientation to the crowd.
5. Quick turnover.

EFFECTS OF URBANZATION

1. It causes negative effect on agriculture which leads to food insecurity
2. Separation of people from their family members which leads to broken family ties or bond
3. Negative effects on the aged in the society ( rural areas): This is because the young population who are supposed to take good care aged in society leave for cities in search of greener pastures, thereby subjecting them to unanticipated suffering by not meeting them at the basic points of their needs.
4. It causes competition in scarce resources: The means of survival is very difficult to achieve as resources natural resources that make life interesting are limited in supply.