Megacities usually do not represent one political-administrative unit, instead of dividing the city into parts such as with Mexico City, which is made up of one primary core district Distrito Federal and more than 20 outlying municipalities, where differing planning, construction, tax, and environmental laws are carried out than in the core district.
Two critical causes behind city growth are high rates of immigration as well as growing birth numbers. People move to the city with the hope of a more prosperous life and leave the country in search of brighter prospects. Without careful planning and infrastructure in place, this road can often lead to another poverty trap. As cities grow, so too do the unplanned and underserved areas, the so-called slums. In some regions of the world, more than 50 percent of urban populations live in slums.
In parts of Africa south of the Sahara, that number jumps to around 70 percent. In , a reported one billion people lived in slums, and by , that figure could grow to 1. Gated communities are also on the rise. These are fenced and well-monitored communities in which affluent members live, further driving the trend towards separation among urban populations.
These central business districts CBD are often siloed off from the central part of the city and migrate, along with the gated communities, towards the outskirts of town, as is the case in Pudong, Shanghai, and Beijing. For the most part, urban planning is based on the needs of the consumer and culture-oriented upper classes and economic growth sectors, with the result being that the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. Such fragmented cities are a fragile entity in which conflicts are inevitable.
Because most people on the planet are city-dwellers, questions are starting to be asked about how to develop and design urbanization and urban migration in a sustainable way. Urban residents, the world over, require good air to breathe, clean drinking water, access to proper healthcare, sanitary facilities, and reliable energy supply. The current situation in cities in developing countries can be precarious: the air is thick enough to touch; sewage treatment plants, if any, are overloaded, and industrial factories secrete virtually unregulated highly toxic waste and wastewater.
Also, climate change will likely hit more impoverished cities harder. However, cities in the developed countries have to deal with environmental challenges in the areas of transport, energy and waste and wastewater.
On an international level, there are countless efforts currently being undertaken to support sustainable urban development. Many urban problems can be explained not only at the city level, but must be regarded as results of political disorder and economic instability on a global and national level — and that this is where the solutions lie! One of the major problems that cities face is deteriorating areas, high crime, homelessness, and poverty.
As noted in the urban models, many lower-income people live near the city, but lack the job skills to compete for employment within the city. This often results in a variety of social and economic problems. Census data shows that 80 percent of children living in inner cities only have one parent.
Because childcare services are limited in the city, single parents struggle to meet the demands of childcare and employment. Problems associated with lower-income areas are often violent crime assault, murder, rape , prostitution, drug distribution, and abuse, homelessness, and food deserts. The United Nations defines slums as overcrowded, inadequate, informal forms of housing that lack reasonable access to clean drinking water and sanitary facilities and deprive residents of power of the land.
Above all, slums are an architectural and spatial expression of lack of housing and growing urban poverty. The well-known symbols of this are makeshift huts, such as the favelas in Brazil, but also desolate and overcrowded apartment buildings in major Chinese cities where the growing army of migrant workers and workers find makeshift accommodation.
Slums are densely populated urban informal settlements consisting of poor, inadequate living standards. Most slums lack proper sanitation services, access to clean drinking water, law enforcement, or other necessities of living in an urban area.
A shantytown, also known as a squatter , is a slum settlement that usually consists of building material made from plywood sheets of plastic, cardboard boxes, and other cheap material. They are typically found on the periphery of cities or near rivers, lagoons, or city trash dumps.
The reasons so many of these cities are poor include underemployment and insufficient pay as well as low productivity within the informal sector. Around half the people in megacities that lie in the southern hemisphere are employed in the informal sector, many of whom are coerced into accepting any employment.
They sell various products — cigarettes, drinks, food, bits, and pieces — simple services like shoe cleaning and letter writing as well as smuggling goods or ending up in prostitution. Exploitation is, at times, rife in slum settings due to insecure residences, lack of legal protection, poor sanitation, and unstable acquisition conditions.
When residents in a neighborhood lack the money, political, organizational skills, or the motivation to protect themselves from disamenities , defined as drawbacks or disadvantages, especially about location, significant neighborhood degradation is possible.
Poor people of all ethnicities can rarely afford to live in neighborhoods that have outstanding schools, parks, and air quality. So they are often able to afford to live only in the most dangerous, toxic, degraded neighborhoods. Racism is undoubtedly a common variable in the poverty equation, but it is rarely the only one.
As a way for city officials to deal with inner-city problems, there has been a push recently to renovate cities, a process called gentrification. Middle-class families are drawn to city life because housing is cheaper, yet can be fixed up and improved, whereas suburban housing prices continue to rise.
Some cities also offer tax breaks and affordable loans to families who move into the city to help pay for a renovation. Also, city houses tend to have more cultural style and design compared to quickly made suburban homes. Transportation tends to be cheaper and more convenient, so that commuters do not spend hours a day traveling to work. Couples without children are drawn to city living because of the social aspects of theaters, clubs, restaurants, bars, and recreational facilities.
However, there has also been a backlash against gentrification because some view it as a tax break for the middle and upper class rather than spending much-needed money on social programs for low-income families. It could also be argued that improving lower-class households would also increase tax revenue because funding could go toward job skill training, childcare services, and reducing drug use and crime.
The FHA was part of a grand scheme to stimulate the housing sector of the economy during the Great Depression, but also to provide government help and oversight to the home loan industry. By , there will be more than A world city is a globally important city, like London or Tokyo, which has an economic or cultural status that is recognised above other cities.
The population of cities changes in one of two ways:. More and more people are leaving rural areas and moving to cities. This is called rural to urban migration. People move because of push and pull factors. Push factors are things that make people want to leave rural areas and pull factors are the things that attract people to the city.
These include:. Many LIDCs have cities growing rapidly as a result of inward migration and natural population increase. Cities like Accra in Ghana are experiencing rapid urbanisation.
This process impacts on all aspects of the settlement:. The megacities of the world differ not only according to whether they lie in the southern or northern hemisphere, but also by country, climatic and political conditions. Megacities can be rich, poor, organised or chaotic. Paris and London are megacities but it's difficult to compare them demographically or economically with Jakarta or Lagos. Rich megacities tend to stretch out further than their poorer counterparts: Los Angeles' settlement area is four times as big as Mumbai's despite its population being smaller.
Rich city inhabitants have a much higher rate of land consumption for apartments, transport, business and industry. The situation is similar in terms of water and energy consumption, which is much higher in affluent cities.
Cairo and Dhaka are without doubt 'monster cities' in terms of their population size, spatial and urban planning. But they are also "resourceful cities," home to millions of people with few resources. The high population levels in megacities and mega urban spaces are leading to a host of problems such as guaranteeing all residents a supply of basic foods , drinking water and electricity.
Related to this are concerns about sanitaion and disposal of sewage and waste. There isn't enough living space for incoming residents, leading to an increase in informal settlements and slums.
Many urban residents get around via bus, truck or motorised bicycles, leading to chaos on the streets and CO2 emissions leaking into the air. The faster a city develops, the more critical these issues become. Due to their rapid growth, megacities in developing countries and in the southern hemisphere have to battle in order to provide for their inhabitants. Between and , cities in the north have grown an average of 2.
In the south they've grown more than 7 fold over the same period. Bronger Lack of financial resources and sparse coordination between stakeholders at different levels intensify the problems. Two key causes behind city growth are high rates of immigration as well as growing birth numbers.
People move to the city with the hope of a more prosperous life and leave the country in search of brighter prospects. Without careful planning and infrastructure in place, this road can often lead to another poverty trap.
As cities grow, so too do the unplanned and underserved areas, the so-called slums.
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