Question

Increased urbanization in much of the developing world has not resulted in a similar increase in the living standards of the average person. In several cases, increased urbanization has led to a substantial increase in urban unemployment/underemployment, resulting in a multiple fold expansion of the size of the urban underclass. What could have gone wrong?

Answer 1

Since 1950, urbanization has seen a major increase in developing countries. The urban population since then has nearly doubled in developing countries and in same period is even less than half in developed countries.

There are various reasons why urbanization is increasing at such a high rate. There are two major reasons for urbanization, rural push and urban pull. Reasons like scarcity of resources in rural areas, lesser job opportunities in rural area etc are the examples of rural push and the better health and education in urban, better living standards etc are the examples of urban pull. Though these are the reasons towards urbanization, in developing countries this doesn't always lead to a better lifestyle.

In the contrary, in developing countries, it leads to more unemployment, poor air and water quality, challenges in waste management, excessive energy consumption and wastage. There have been positive effects of urbanization too.

Urbanization can have more positive impacts if it happens at a desirable limits. The negative effects that this over urbanization leads to are,

• Problems related to over population. This leads to lesser space for all to live, leading to more slums and small habitations.
• The cost of living in urban areas are high. It becomes difficult for less income groups to have a decent standard of living there.
• Increasing poverty leads to more crimes like theft, murder, cheating, pick pocketing, etc.
• Pollution increases, leading to environmental degradation.
• More population in urban areas lead to more stressful life of people which leads to many psychological health problems.
• Noice pollution and other pollution have also seen a drastic increase.