Population and settlement
FOCUS QUESTIONS
1. What are the possible solutions to the problems of urbanisation?
2. How can a country control urbanisation?
3. What is the difference between urban sprawl and urban growth?
The physical growth of urban areas as a result of rural migration.
Do you remember what urbanisation is?
It is the increase in the proportion or percentage of people or the population living in towns and cities (urban areas).
Here are some possible solutions to the problems of urbanisation.
1. Solutions to pollution problems:
Banning heavy vehicles from the central business district.
Developing cleaner fuels, Providing more litter bins in the central business district (CBD).
A CBD is an area of high land valuation characterised by a high concentration of retail businesses, service businesses, offices, theatres and hotels, and by a high traffic flow.
2. Traffic congestion, for example, can be solve by:
Encouraging the use public transport. Controlling the type of traffic which is allowed to enter the city.
Increasing road capacity by building dualcarriage systems.
Improving the traffic control systems by making sure the traffic lights are fully computerised and constantly serviced.
3. To solve the problem of slum creation:
Governments should construct low-cost, multi-storey flats to accommodate the slum dwellers.
Promote schemes which are divided into plots and provided with basic supporting services, e.g., water and electricity.
Plots are either sold or leased to those who wish to build their own home on them. Construct skyscrapers.
OTHER SOLUTIONS
Systematic development of urban centres and creation of job opportunities.
Encourage people to enter into the informal sector to ease unemployment and antisocial behaviours.
Government should provide funds to promote entrepreneurship so that part of the surplus unemployed will be employed.
Encouraging industries to move to backward area.
Municipalities to find own financial resources.
Adopting pragmatic housing policy.
All of this would not be necessary if governments try to control urbanisation. To do this, for example, they must:
Not allow people who were born in the rural area to move permanently to the urban areas.
Decrease migration of families and this will reduce the rate of permanent migration, because most people do not want to be alone in the city, and the family very often cannot survive without help in the rural areas.
In the Caribbean, in order to control urbanisation, they have implemented various strategies.
In Jamaica, certain things have been done to encourage the movement of people to rural areas:
Affordable housing developments have been constructed in suburban and rural areas to encourage people to move from urban communities to live in these areas.
The construction of large hotels in rural areas have provided a large number of jobs and this has also motivated persons to migrate to areas outside urban communities.
Universities and colleges have established rural campuses which enable students to pursue tertiary studies close to home instead of having to migrate to the city to do so.
The implementation of the North and South Coast highways and the improvement of major roadways have reduced the number of people who migrate to the cities. Persons are now able to take less time to travel between rural and urban areas, and so it is no longer difficult to commute between home and work, or home and school.
The improvements in the general performance of the secondary-school system have seen a reduction in the number of persons who chose to send their children to schools in the cities. These persons now chose to send children to schools near their homes in the rural areas.
To complete our lesson on urbanisation we must understand the difference between ‘urban sprawl’ and ‘urban growth’.
Simply defined urban sprawl is the spreading out of a city and its suburbs over more and more rural land at the periphery. This happens when people abandon cities for the suburbs or vast rural areas once home to farms (It is the unplanned uncontrolled expansion of urban areas into areas adjoining the city.).
This occurs because more people want to live in urban area and there is a lack of space for new housing, the expansion of industry, transport links and open space, so the urban area builds outwards on to undeveloped sites.
URBAN GROWTH
In order to limit urban growth, it is important to establish an urban growth boundary around its perimeter. This boundary is simply a land use planning line to control urban expansion on to farm and forest lands.