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Problems of Urban growth.

By

Dr. Nitish Priyadarshi

As more and more people leave villages and farms to live in cities, urban growth results.
Urbanization occurs naturally from individual and corporate efforts to reduce time and
expense in commuting and transportation while improving opportunities for jobs,
education, housing, and transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to
take advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition.

People move into cities to seek economic opportunities. In rural areas, often on small
family farms, it is difficult to improve one's standard of living beyond basic sustenance.
Farm living is dependent on unpredictable environmental conditions, and in times of
drought, flood or pestilence, survival becomes extremely problematic.

Cities, in contrast, are known to be places where money, services and wealth are
centralized. Cities are where fortunes are made and where social mobility is possible.
Businesses, which generate jobs and capital, are usually located in urban areas. Whether
the source is trade or tourism, it is also through the cities that foreign money flows into a
country. It is easy to see why someone living on a farm might wish to take their chance
moving to the city and trying to make enough money to send back home to their
struggling family.

There are better basic services as well as other specialist services that aren't found in rural
areas. There are more job opportunities and a greater variety of jobs. Health is another
major factor. People, especially the elderly are often forced to move to cities where there
are doctors and hospitals that can cater for their health needs. Other factors include a
greater variety of entertainment (restaurants, movie theaters, theme parks, etc) and a
better quality of education, namely universities. Due to their high populations, urban
areas can also have much more diverse social communities allowing others to find people
like them when they might not be able to in rural areas.

Clearly, urban settlements differ greatly in size, as mentioned by their populations. Is


there a Theoretical maximum and an optimum size? Criffith Taylor and others believe
that the ultimate size may be fixed by the increasing difficulty of obtaining enough water
to supply unduly large numbers concentrated in a small area, while Lewis Mumford and
similar authors think that the continued growth of very large cities not only produces
more administrative problems than benefits. This also paralyses rather than furthers social
relationships and phenomenally raises central land values, so much that land ceases to be
adaptable to new needs.

Views on the optimum size of a city have altered with the march of history. Plato
believed that most desirable size was 5,000, a figure which would allow everybody to
hear the voice of an orator and so participate in active political life and develop varied
social relations. Late nineteenth – century garden city enthusiasts in Britain thought that
towns of 30,000 to 50,000 would be large enough supply all necessary human needs,
whether medical, educational, social, economic or cultural.

Towns could not come into being until the surrounding countryside was capable of
providing a food surplus in the past. Due to modern transport and large surpluses in many
parts of the world, towns generally have little difficulty in obtaining food, even from far
distant lands. Developing countries may lack the capital to give all their town folk an
adequate diet, and even in developed countries there are sporadic temporary shortages,
owing to failures in economic planning, poor harvests, dock strikes and traffic hold-ups
occasioned by excessive rain, snow, floods, droughts etc.

The problem of water supply is more permanent and applies specifically to cities. It is
becoming increasingly serious even in advanced countries which certainly have no
problem in paying for the water they consume. The root of the problem lies in the fact
that 98% of the earth’s surface water is contained in the salt oceans and in ice-caps. The
remainder is unevenly distributed and often polluted. Over half is needed for agriculture,
about a third for industry, 10 percent for domestic use.

Many cities, especially in developing countries, lack a clean supply of fresh water. In
India, e.g., less than a third of the urban population has access to pure water, and the main
reason why water borne diseases are rampant. Even when people are provided with
purified water for drinking, they usually wash themselves and their clothing in
contaminated supplies.

The demands made on water by urban industries, power stations and homes are growing
at a more rapid rate than the growth of population. Many wells do not yield enough
water, river pollution, like Ganga, Damodar etc. in India, is a continuing evil, and the
remaining water resources- mostly in thinly populated highland areas of abundant rain-
are far from many consuming centres.

After being separated from Bihar, Jharkhand state of India is now fast growing in terms
of business. Ranchi the capital city is expanding both vertical and horizontal resulting in
lots of problem like irregular electric supply, water supply, ground water depletion, air
pollution, noise pollution, municipal waste disposal, failure of drainage systems, traffic
jams etc. Surface waters are being contaminated. Seasonal diseases have also multiplied.
More and more people are concentrating in the city flats which has raised the land values
many fold. Ranchi earlier known as the summer capital has now become the heat furnace
during summer. It is all due to the unplanned expansion of the city.

The urban heat island has become a growing concern and is increasing over the years.
The urban heat island is formed when industrial and urban areas are developed and heat
becomes more abundant. In rural areas, a large part of the incoming solar energy is used
to evaporate water from vegetation and soil. In cities, where less vegetation and exposed
soil exists, the majority of the sun’s energy is absorbed by urban structures and asphalt.
Hence, during warm daylight hours, less evaporative cooling in cities allows surface
temperatures to rise higher than in rural areas. Additional city heat is given off by
vehicles and factories, as well as by industrial and domestic heating and cooling units.
This effect causes the city to become 2 to 10 degree F (1 to 6 degree C) warmer than
surrounding landscapes. Impacts also include reducing soil moisture and intensification
of carbon dioxide emissions.

Owing to population growth, poor levels of hygiene, and increasing urban poverty, the
urban environment in many developing countries is rapidly deteriorating. Densely packed
housing in shanty towns or slums and inadequate drinking-water supplies, garbage
collection services, and surface-water drainage systems combine to create favourable
habitats for the proliferation of vectors and reservoirs of communicable diseases. As a
consequence, vector-borne diseases such as malaria, lymphatic filariasis and dengue are
becoming major public health problems associated with rapid urbanization in many
tropical countries

Another change that has occurred after the oil crisis of 1973 is the vertical growth of
large cities. People who were living in suburbs found it costly to travel to the city. The
open spaces within the city got filled up by the construction of high rise buildings. Large
bungalows and old residences were demolished and high rise buildings have come up
both as commercial complexes and as residential flats. Many rich families are migrating
from the suburbs to flats or apartments near the city centre. The vertical expansion of
cities poses further problems in water supply, sewage disposal and traffic congestion on
the roads. Traffic causes urban noise, air pollution, stress and strain in an individual.

One solution for both lateral expansion and vertical growth of a city is to develop satellite
towns at a distance of 40 to 50 km from the city. The satellite town will not be a mere
residential town to accommodate commuters. Such a satellite town will be both a place of
work and a place of living.

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