Urban Challenges in Emerging Cities (Edexcel IGCSE Geography)

Urban Challenges in Emerging Cities

Housing Issues

• Availability and affordability of housing cannot keep up with the rate at which the urban population is increasing in developing and emerging countries

• This leads to people building their own homes on any vacant land using scrap materials like cardboard, corrugated iron and plastic

• They are unplanned and unregulated housing (informal settlements) with little sanitary facilities, freshwater or reliable energy supply

• Usually on land not owned by them and found:

  • In areas of no economic value

  • On the urban edges or fringes

  • Along main roads or railways

  • Clinging onto the side of steep slopes

• Depending on the country, these informal settlements or squatter settlements are also called:

  • Favelas in Brazil

  • Shanty towns in the West Indies and Canada

  • Bustees on the Indian subcontinent

  • Skid row in the USA

  • Townships in South Africa

• In developing countries, about a quarter of urban inhabitants (1.6 billion) live in these impoverished squatter settlements and by 2030 the UN estimates that 1 in 4 people on the planet will live in some form of informal settlement

• Some cities have 'mega-slums', these are very large overcrowded areas usually within megacities

  • The largest are found:

    • Nairobi, Kenya with a population of 1.5 million crowded into 3 sprawling slums of mud huts and tin shacks - Kibera being the largest of the 3

    • Neza, Mexico City, Mexico with a population of 1.1 million people 

    • Dharavi, Mumbai, India with 1 million people in a warren of narrow lanes, interconnected shacks and single-room living spaces that double as factories

    • Orangi Town, Karachi, Pakistan with an estimated population of 2.4 million people across 8000 acres of concrete block homes with 8-10 people sharing two or three rooms

    • Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa with a population of 400,000 in iron and wooden shacks

• These unregulated housing present serious risks such as fire, flooding and landslides

• Squatter settlements typically suffer from:

  • Poor, overcrowded, small housing, built very close together using inadequate material and with uncertain electricity supplies

  • They have restricted access to water supplies

  • Little to no sanitation facilities and no solid waste disposal, which leads to a polluted and degraded local environment

  • There are inadequate health facilities which, along with poor living conditions, increase sickness and death rates

  • The population in these areas have insecure living conditions as they may be forcibly removed by landowners or other authorities

Informal Economy

Issues of the Informal Economy

• Megacities have rapidly growing populations and job creation cannot match the pace of growth

• As a result, unemployment and underemployment are not unusual 

• People will often work on street corners doing informal work like shining shoes, giving haircuts, taxing, selling water or food 

• These jobs are often unskilled and labour-intensive and require little money to set up 

• The informal economy leaves cities without revenue to provide adequate services as workers pay no taxes

• It also makes wages and working conditions difficult to regulate

Urban Pollution

Urban Pollution

• Energy supplies:

  • Electricity supplies are often inadequate and unreliable in megacities resulting in frequent blackouts and brownouts

  • Power outages reduce foreign investment and quality of living for residents

  • Power theft is also rampant in megacities

  • Without electricity for cooking, biomass (such as wood or dung) is often used by the poorest households contributing to low air quality and greater household fire risk

• Sanitation and water supplies

  • The UN estimates that 1 billion people do not have access to adequate supplies of fresh, clean drinking water and 2 billion do not have adequate access to sanitation facilities, organised sewage disposal or waste collection

  • The lack of safe water means that people have to find alternative sources which may lead some people to drink from pools of water on the ground 

  • This poses a serious health risk, as these conditions make it a perfect breeding ground for disease such as cholera, and accounts for 2 million deaths each year worldwide

  • Open water attracts mosquitoes which may lead to the spread of malaria

  • Open defecation and industrial waste pollute water sources

• Transportation

  • Roads in developing and emerging cities were never designed to take large volumes of traffic

  • A drop in the rate of extreme poverty around the world, makes vehicle ownership possible and consequently worsens congestion and pollution

  • Two features add to the problem:

    • Firstly, the type of vehicle can restrict movement

      • It is not uncommon for 2-stroke engine taxis (such as auto-rickshaws or "tuk tuks"), cycle rickshaws, bullocks, elephants, motorcycles, cars, buses and trucks to all share the same roads

      • Because these forms of transport move at different speeds and with different manoeuvrability they often block each other's flow, creating congestion and pollution (noise and air)

    • Secondly, traffic is also hampered by a culture of "unstandardized" driver training

      • Without a significant culture of road rules, traffic becomes more gridlocked

      • Further adding to pollution through exhaust emissions (smog)

• Air pollution through using old, un-serviced vehicles that emit dirty and harmful fumes add to serious health problems such as asthma and bronchitis

• Unregulated factory emissions pollute not only the air, but water sources as well

Quality of Life

Cycle of Poverty

• Developing cities have high levels of inequality

• Many low-income families are 'pulled' to informal settlements around towns and cities looking for a sense of 'belonging' with others in the same situation

• For others without a strong social network or cities with recently arrived large populations, high levels of crime, begging and petty theft are more common

• Overall, this creates urban poverty that degrades both the physical and social environment around that area

• This makes it difficult for people to escape from poverty and they fall victim to the vicious 'cycle of poverty’  and urban poverty becomes ingrained within the city

• Combined with a lack of suitable work, housing, water supply, sewerage, solid waste disposal and pollution, the quality of life for people in emerging and developing cities is low

Deprivation 

• Deprivation is connected with poverty and occurs when a person’s well-being falls below an acceptable minimum standard

• The minimum standard, varies from country to country and applies to several different aspects of daily life

• In the UK, there is a multiple deprivation index (MDI)

• The UK MDI has 7 different indicators:

  • Income

  • Employment

  • Health

  • Education

  • Access to housing and services

  • Crime

  • Living environment

• It is more than just not having enough money

Quality of Life Index

• The Quality of Life Index (QLI) looks at the availability of eight different variables:

  • Political and economic stability

  • Legal system and civil rights

  • Health and medical services

  • Safety

  • Climate

  • Costs and incomes

  • Education

• The Index reflects the differences between emerging, developing and developed countries

• The higher the index number the better the quality of living in that area

Low Quality of Life

• Poverty and deprivation are passed on from one generation to the next

• Children will tend to get less parental support and usually have to attend inadequate schools

• They also tend to leave school early with few qualifications

• Lack of qualifications means they cannot find well-paid employment and rely on social handouts

• Children they have will be born into this cycle and so families remain ‘trapped’ and unable to improve their circumstances

• This feeds into a lower quality of life

Example Case Study of Rio de Janeiro & Nairobi

A Developing City - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Background

• Brazil is an important agricultural and industrial power, with the strongest economy in Latin America with Brasilia as its capital

• In 1950, Rio de Janeiro (Rio) was the capital of Brazil with a population of 3 million 

• Today it is the second largest city in Brazil (after São Paulo) with a population of over 12.5 million

• Rio is a major trading port, with oil refining and shipbuilding industries

• Main exports are iron, steel and crude petroleum

• Rio is also a major tourist destination and hosted the 2016 summer Olympics and Paralympics

Migration

• Rapid growth from rural to urban migration in search of jobs

• Despite having a large agricultural base, there is no land ownership and few opportunities for advancement

• It is difficult and unprofitable farming, with low wages and huge wealth disparities

• There is a lack of social amenities and the area is prone to natural hazards 

• For many internal migrants, the city offers better job opportunities and higher wages

• Along with better schooling and healthcare and the potential for a higher quality of life

Housing

• Inward migration has put pressure on services and amenities which has led to a housing shortage

• Most rural migrants begin life in the favelas, of which Rocinha is the largest, most developed informal settlement, just south of Rio

• Over 20 per cent of the population live in around 1000 favelas in and around the city

• Found mainly on the edges of the city, on poor quality land that is not suitable for urban development

• People have no legal rights to the land they occupy

• Many of the favelas in Rio are now well-established

• 95% of favela homes are built of solid materials, such as brick, with 75% having a tiled floor

• Some have electricity, running water, televisions, computers and access to the Internet

• The newer and less well-established neighbourhoods are overcrowded, consisting of shelters made from materials like timber and corrugated iron and cling to the side of the mountain

Transport

• Rapid expansion of Rio from the 1950s was not supported with the necessary urban infrastructure planning

• Rio de Janeiro’s roads are seriously congested

• Rail services are limited  

• Private bus services are the main means of public transport

• The number of cars in the city is increasing as the population rises and people become wealthier

• Underground rail services is efficient but with limited stops along its network

Education

• Children start school at 4 years old

• School days typically last between 3 and 4 hours, due to lack of space in the classrooms

• There is no strict national curriculum in Brazil, but teachers follow national guidelines for the state (county) that are teaching in

• Education is often low quality, due to Brazil investing late in its education system

• Many of Rio's public schools are in desperate need of repair adding to poor educational attainment

• Rio has the highest rate of non attendance in school, teenage pregnancy and lack of opportunities for further education

• Violence can be a barrier to education as in some neighbourhoods it is not always safe for children to travel to school

Crime Rates

• These have increased as the city has grown

• This is due in part to high unemployment rates and petty crime such as pickpocketing

• Rio has a problem with youth crime and gang violence within the favelas

• Many residents feel unsafe in their homes as the gangs control the streets with guns, and trade in drugs

Environmental challenges

• The majority of the favela's residents illegally tap into the main electrical grid, making electricity poles in the street unsafe with several households connecting to the one pole

• Many households in Rio do not have access to safe, running water as many of the main water pipes are damaged and are leaking  

• Very few houses in the favelas have water directly to their houses

• Access to doctors and healthcare varies across the city with poor access to those in the favelas, raising the risk of spreading diseases such as cholera and typhoid

• Urban sprawl is an issue as the city continues to grow rapidly, encroaching on surrounding rural (countryside) areas

• Air pollution is a major problem, particularly from traffic congestion in the city centre and from industrial zones

• Waste disposal is a particular problem in the favelas, where access is difficult and there are no organised sewage or waste recovery systems

• Sewage isn't properly treated or disposed of and this ends up in local rivers and Guanabara Bay, polluting the water and damaging the marine wildlife there

An Emerging City - Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya

• Largest slum in Kenya - 60% of the people that live in Nairobi live in slums

• Between 800,000 and 1 million people live in Kibera 255 ha (around the size of 255 football pitches)

• Extremely high population density of 1 meter of floor space per person

• There are around 100,000 orphans under the age of 18 years – this is due in part to the AIDS epidemic in Kibera

• Due to rapid expansion, Kibera lacks sewers and has poor levels of sanitation, making diseases the main killer 

Unemployment

• Kibera is near the industrial area of Nairobi where up to 50% of the available workforce are employed - usually as unskilled labour

• Changaa is a cheap alcoholic drink, which is widely available, and very strong (over 50% alcohol)

• It is usually made incorrectly, and has a very high level of methanol

• The cost is only KES 10 (7p) per glass and after a couple of glasses people become very drunk

• With over 50% unemployment in Kibera, many start drinking early in the morning leading to problems of violence, crime, rape etc.

• Several charities are trying to help by showing Changaa makers how to make the drink less dangerous

• Cheap drugs and glue sniffing are an increasing problem

• Initially taken to alleviate boredom but then people find themselves hooked, again leading to a rise in crime rates

Land ownership

• The Government owns all the land

• 10% of people are shack owners and many of these people own many other shacks and let them out to tenants

• The remaining 90% of residents are tenants with no rights

Housing

• The average size of a home is 12ft x 12ft built with mud walls, a corrugated tin roof with a dirt or concrete floor

• The cost is about KES 700 a month (£6)

• These 'shacks' often house up to 8 or more with many sleeping on the floor

Electricity

• Only about 20% of Kibera has electricity

• The UN-Habitat is providing electricity to some parts of Kibera

  • This includes street lighting, security lighting and connection to shacks

  • Whilst this costs KES 900 per shack (£6.50), in most cases cannot afford it

Water

• Water was collected from the Nairobi dam until recently

• As the dam water is polluted, typhoid and cholera were prevalent in Kibera due to a lack of sanitation

• Now there are two water mains in Kibera, one from the municipal council and one from the World Bank

• Residents pay KES 3 per 20 litres (25 pence) for clean, safe water

Sewage

• Most of Kibera has no toilet facilities

• One latrine (hole in the ground) is shared by up to 50 shacks

• Once full, young boys are employed to empty the latrine and take the contents to the river, further polluting the water and spreading diseases

• UN-Habitat and a few other agencies are trying to help improve this situation but it is a slow process

Medical facilities and HIV/AIDS Clinics

• Kibera has no government clinics or hospitals

• The providers are NGOs (charitable organisations): Oxfam, Red Cross, MSF, churches plus others

• All people are encouraged to have a free HIV test and if positive to take free generic ARV medicines 

• Many men in Kibera do not use condoms and with the availability of Changaa, many girls become pregnant

• At any one time about 50% of 16 to 25 yr. old girls are pregnant

• Most of these pregnancies are unwanted, resulting in abortions, which are due to lack of medical care are dangerous in such a poor area as Kibera