Impacts of Urban Growth (Cambridge (CIE) O Level Geography)

Impacts of Urban Growth

• Urban areas offer a variety of opportunities to people and businesses

• However, rapid and unplanned urbanisation creates a range of problems, including

  • Poor housing

  • Deprivation/inequality

  • Unemployment

  • Along with congestion, transport, crime, and poor environmental quality issues

• The speed of development is greatest in LEDCs, e.g. Sao Paulo in Brazil, which grew from 7 million people to over 20 million in 40 years and is now the second-largest urban area in the Americas

Transport

• The provision of roads and public transport tends to be poor in quality, size, and reliability

• Rapid development leads to transport systems becoming easily overloaded and overcrowded

• Urban congestion varies over the week, time of day, the weather, and the season

• High numbers of vehicles create high levels of atmospheric pollution such as smog

• As poor rural migrants arrive, there is a lack of affordable housing and demand is high

• Transportation issues mean people will have to live closer to their employment

• Temporary or informal settlements arise, adding to overcrowding and poor living conditions, so adding to already cramped/congested conditions around the city

Housing

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

• 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 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 LEDCs, about a quarter of urban inhabitants (1.6 billion) live in these impoverished slums and 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

• These informal 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 the squatter settlements have insecure living conditions as they may be forcibly removed by landowners or other authorities

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

Deprivation and inequality

• 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

• It is more than just not having enough money

Cycle of poverty

• All cities have levels of inequality, but LEDCs are amongst the worst affected

• 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 cities is low

Cycle of Poverty

• 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

Impacts of urban growth on rural areas

• Rise of the suburbanised village

• Originally these were quiet, independent places with basic services and located near large urban areas

• Also known as 'dormitory or commuter towns' and had a residential population that commuted to work

• As people have moved out of the city - retirement, family or work reasons - these areas have changed

• New, large, expensive housing estates with detached or semi-detached homes, some are gated communities

• Urban style services increased - hence the change in name to 'suburbanised' village

• The commuter belt means new roads and public transport links

• New businesses such as pubs, restaurants, supermarkets and hotels have opened

• Dilution of traditional country life