Geography
Urban Issues and Challenges
Urban issues and challenges refer to the problems that arise in cities due to rapid urbanisation, population growth, and economic development. These issues include traffic congestion, pollution, housing shortages, poverty, and crime. Urban planners and policymakers work to address these challenges through sustainable development, infrastructure improvements, and social programs.
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8 Key excerpts on "Urban Issues and Challenges"
eBook - PDFUrban Development
Environmental Planning and Understanding
- Solange Uwera(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Society Publishing(Publisher)
Urban areas around the globe are faced with numerous issues, for example, traffic clog, deficient energy, absence of fundamental administrations, informal residence, poor administration of natural challenges, crime, ecological degradation, environmental change, Urban Development: A Global Perspective 11 poor administration, urban poverty, informal economy and impromptu development (Figure 1.5). Figure 1.5: Urban settlement in Beersheba. Source: Wikimedia Frequently city management has little authority over people development. Henceforth, a portion of the real challenges are viably checking the adjustment in people and having the capacity to react through planning and framework development. Natural administration and financial development have risen up out of a bunch of issues as basic ones around the globe. Expanding atmosphere inconstancy and extreme climate conditions are thought to extremely influence urban areas, with floods and dry spells predicted to rise in both extent of their occurrence and its number. In urban zones, heat pressure, outrageous precipitation, inland, and coastal flooding, dry season and water shortage present challenges that are intensified for those lacking fundamental foundation and administrations. The monetary recuperation after the budgetary emergencies of 2008 has been moderate, with different districts far and wide encountering confined emergencies. While urban communities keep on driving financial develop -ment, the business condition for interest in urban framework and adminis-trations stays challenging. Urban Development: Environmental Planning and Understanding 12 Though both the environment and economy have reliably showed up among best provincial challenges in the World Economic Forum’s Global Survey on Urban Services, the study’s members expect more noteworthy change in nature than in the economy.
eBook - PDF- Joseph P. Stoltman(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
The attention is on urban places. It represents an opportunity for the study of urban geography because more people now live in cities than ever before, effectively widening the realm of topics that can be studied within urban geography. Most of the significant issues facing contemporary societies globally occurring now and projected into the future are related to cities. Cities may function as entrepre- neurial possibility machines, being the sites of many uni- versities, providing opportunities for the best jobs, offering a vibrant social life, and providing the best medical cover- age. Although many problems occur in cities-for exam- ple, industrial and automobile pollution, landscape blight, choked transportation networks, poverty, crime, and ethnic tensions and discrimination---eities provide some of the best opportunities to live a fulfilling life. When engaging with the world-be it in theory, in practice, or through everyday life-people are engaged in some aspect of urban geography. Also, as people age, many of the most pressing issues will involve making decisions related to urban geography.
eBook - PDFHandbook of Social Problems
A Comparative International Perspective
- George Ritzer(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
While it is important to consider the urban problems of the former, the sheer magnitude of issues and concerns confronting the latter overshadow that attention. Understanding urban problems in a global perspec-tive, therefore, compels us to focus primarily on the crisis of urbanization confronting the developing countries. With this emphasis in place, it is important 172 to note, however, that economic development and prosperity, such as that experienced by the developed countries, do not guarantee the elimination of urban problems, as their persistence in places like New York, London, and Paris attests. This chapter examines urban problems in a global context. Due to the complexity of the topic, we have chosen to focus most specifically on urban poverty and inequality, racial segregation and ghet-toization, inadequate housing and homelessness, and crime. In this chapter, we contextualize urban problems in the process of urbanization; delineate the link between the spatial patterns of urban devel-opment and urban problems; explain how urban problems are connected to broader economic, polit-ical, and social processes at the international, national, and local levels (e.g., global economy, state policy, land-based interest groups); discuss social consequences of urban problems; and finally address some attempts by urbanites to remedy their most pressing urban problems. AN URBANIZING WORLD At the turn of the twenty-first century, 2.8 billion people lived in cities, representing 47 percent of the world's population; in 1950, by contrast, fewer than 750 million people or 29 percent of the world's pop-ulation were city dwellers (United Nations Centre for Human Settlements [UNCHS] 1987, 2001). By the year 2006, more than half of the world's popula-tion is projected to live in cities (UNCHS 1999).
eBook - PDF- Frances Harris(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
In most cases these are areas of potential that cities represent. For example the concentration of population provides opportunities for ‘environ- mental economies of scale’. In most cases this relates to the declining relative Global Environmental Issues 204 costs of providing infrastructure or services as population density increases. However, increased population can also place a heavy burden on the infrastruc- ture and can have adverse impacts on the city’s environment and that of its surrounding areas. There is therefore much still to be learned about the major environmental problems that face the rapidly growing cities of the developing world. Not least is the extent to which generalisations and comparisons can be made between such a large number of very different cities in different environmental and social contexts. The literature on the urban environmental problems of the developing world is voluminous, covering issues such as population, water, waste, food supply, pollution, energy, disasters, transport and housing. The next section reviews a selection of these issues, highlighting the key problems and some pro- posed solutions. Waste management and urban pollution are covered in Chapter 9. Other issues are covered in detail in some of the reading material suggested at the end of the chapter. 8.4 Challenges to sustainable urbanisation 8.4.1 People The headline concern about the fastest growing cities relates to the rapid popula- tion growth of the cities of the poorest countries. Ultimately this concern is based on the difficulty of cities even in advanced economies to meet the needs of their citizens. However, the reason for the particular concern as we enter the 21st century is that we are living in a period of time when the world’s poorest cities are growing at a rate that is faster than has ever been seen before (Potter and Lloyd-Evans, 1998).
eBook - PDF- Dave H. Kaplan, Steven Holloway(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Those of you who wish to make a career in planning will find this chapter especially informative. The final section of the book, Part VI, first exam- ines cities in the developed or industrial parts of the world other than the United States and Canada (Chapter 13) and in the less developed nonindustrial areas of the world (Chapter 14). These are fascinat- ing reviews of where and how people live such dif- ferent lives in the world cities. Finally, Chapter 15 details the geographic layout of cities in Latin Amer- ica, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast- ern Asia. WRAPPING UP Urban geography today is the leading substantive area of geography and the one in which GIS tech- nology, the leading growth segment in contemporary geography, is most often applied. As with other social and behavioral sciences, urban geography is a product of the past century, with most of its accomplishments occurring only within the past few decades. Urban geography has taken advantage of the opportunities of using multiple perspectives on how to conduct research to better understand our changing urban regions in the United States and Canada and around the world. Given the rich academic and pedagogic traditions built by multiple generations of geographers interested in the city, contemporary urban geographic education, training, and research offer challenging employment opportu- nities in private industry, government, planning, and education. CHAPTER 2 THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF CITIES Between the rail and the river there is sparse cultivation and little villages of mud huts or reed-mat shelters are dotted here and there; but westwards of the line is desert blank and unredeemed. Out of this waste rise the mounds which were Ur, called by Arabs the highest of them all, the Ziggurat hill, “Tell al Muqayyar,” the Mound of Pitch. —C. Leonard Woolley, 1930, p. 17 (Figure 2.1) Only in the most recent period of human history has a significant proportion of people lived in cities.
- Kamil Glinka(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Peter Lang Group(Publisher)
Part I. Urban Development – Spatial and Technological Context Robert Wiszniowski Contemporary City – Complex Subject of Research and Various Methods of Measurement Abstract: The main objective of the article is to analyze the conditions and manifestations of the functioning of a modern city defined as an area of interpenetration of the activity of many different actors, both institutional and non-institutional ones. A key role is played by the presentation of the phenomena and processes that determine the goals and directions of urban policy, including the possibilities and organic implementation of the philosophy of integrated strategic approach. It is equally important to assess (a synthetic measure- ment) to what extent the city, when using various types of instruments, is able to build its advantage over other cities. Key words: city, urban policy, urban planning, measurement, index In the monograph entitled Cities and Crises (2009), Dennis Day, Annette Grindsted, Brigitte Piquard, and David Zammit suggest, or rather indicate, that cities are affected by many crises. They emphasize that it is here, i.e. in urban space, that tragedies take place. Cities often become a crime scene caused by excessive stress in the “charismatic” metropolitan community. The authors indicate that urban areas are the place where elusive and unpredictable critical changes take place. After all, crises, by their nature, are not only the result of direct interpersonal relationships – the sum of social behavioral patterns. They are also the result of social infrastructure, currently of critical order mass. This critical infrastructure is based on the social engineering, organizational, and net- work model. What is more, the crisis of metropolitan communities also reflects (reconstructs) the national or international system of social contradictions and conflicts, currently based on every field of disagreement – from axiological through material, and sometimes even to dystopic visions.
- Singh, N. Deva(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Regency Publications(Publisher)
Chapter 3 Urban Change: An Overview N. Deva Singh Urban areas are the most complex creation of human being on earth’s surface where the best and worst forms are present. They represent past, present and future of human civilizations. The physical manifestations of history and culture, industry and technology and incubators of innovation and creativity are found in towns and cities according to the ambition and aspiration of people. The urban habitation of city exposes such a landscape which symbolizes beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice, where we see the materialization of humanity’s noblest ideas otherwise repository of society’ ills(State of the World’s Cities, 2008/2009). Every country of the world has interest to build up healthy and sustainable cities, so that strong national economy would be derived by creating wealth, enhancing social development, generating employment and providing economic avenues. However, improper plan and weak governance often bring worse situation in urban areas by creating breeding grounds of poverty, crimes, congestion and pollution, environmental degradation etc. Day by day, the population of urban areas is increasing very fast and half of humanity of the world lives in urban areas now. It is estimated that within the next two decades 60 per cent of the world’s population i.e. above four billion persons will be residing in urban. As such, world is increasingly an urban world and the 21 century will be the century of the city (Ban-Ki Moon, Secretary General, UN, 2008). As urban areas steadily expand and have rapid increased population growth, the spatial, social, environment aspects and characteristics of inhabitants are significant for the overall development. But the approach of urban development should not have to create spatial disparities while distributing and installing infrastructure of cities. The rural-urban contrasts need to be reduced considerably in view of having a well organized settlement system in the region.
eBook - PDFGoverning Cities in a Global Era
Urban Innovation, Competition, and Democratic Reform
- R. Hambleton, Kenneth A. Loparo, Jill Gross(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
And this is a two-way C i t y G o v e r n a n c e a n d U r b a n C h a n g e 47 street—the global and the local are mutually constitutive, and the differences between places can be disruptive of general economic processes, thereby impacting on the outcome. This is a central tenet of economic geography—the importance of difference, place, locality, unevenness, etc. (Massey 1995). In other words, increasingly global forces are working through at every geographical scale but constantly coming up against the obstinate variation of place, context, and resistance. In a globally interdependent system, economic activity is embedded in and disrupted by the geographies through which it takes place; practice and instance matter (Lee 2002). Of particular importance for this research is how these formulations can be applied to urban analysis. At a general level, the movement of capital through the built environ- ment in search of surplus value (through investment in industrial production, services, or real estate) is a primary general force underlying the restructuring of both the urban economy and the urban environment. This tendency toward equalization is offset by the highly differentiated outcomes across a variable physical and social landscape. For instance, the general processes of investment and disinvestment, boom and slump cycles, stop-go development patterns, growth, and decay can be recognized in every city, but the effects across a highly variable and dynamic surface of ground rent and land uses are unpredictable and sometimes surprising. The well-recorded cycles of inner-city underde- velopment and disinvestment (creating a rent gap) and, at a later point, reinvestment and recommodification lead to the local social effects of middle-class colonization and working-class displacement. However, the patterns vary and the end product is far from certain.
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