Urban Development : The Asian Pacific Region

The author Mike Davis has done countless research on the topic of urban poverty. In his studies he collects and receives his information from other sources. Perhaps this is the reason why he has a negative view on slums. This is illustrated in his piece “Planet of Slums” as he discusses the politics, urban development, and methods within the slums population. According to Davis, slums and urban poverty have and will continue to significantly increase. While doing so, the gap in exclusion and inequality will grow. As a result, this will weaken urban elites in their work to utilize cities as engines of growth. Slums and slum population are classified as those who are living below the poverty lines, all while, being associated with overcrowding, having poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure. This is being recognized as an international phenomenon. To emphasis this phenomenon, approximately half of the slum population in most

Planning and management needs to happen in all countries over the world because no matter how different the level of development between countries the problems will be same in urban areas. These problems that need to be planned and managed in the urban areas of the city are becoming increasingly significant due to the fact that there has been a hug increase in the number of people living in cities worldwide, just over fifty percent of the world are now living in urban areas. The main reason for this is the huge increase in urbanisation which is defined as an increase in the proportion of

Urban Primacy is defined as a condition in which a country has a primate city three to four times larger than any other city in the country. Examples are Latin America, China and India. The primate cities are sometimes, but not always the capital.They dominate the country in influence and are the national focal-point. Their size and activity becomes a strong pull factor, bringing additional residents to the city and causing the primate city to become even larger and more disproportional to smaller cities in the country. India's most populous city is Mumbai with 16 million; second is Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) with more than 13 million; and third is less than 13 million. China, Canada, Australia, and Brazil are additional examples of non-primate-city

Each month, in developing countries, five million people have access to the cities. The trend towards concentration in some developed countries like the US is clamorous: 243 million Americans are concentrated in urban 3% of the country.

Asian cities have been tended to grow more quickly than Western cities, so what makes their growth so phenomenal? The accelerated rate may be attributed to population dynamics, economic markets and or/socio-political conditions, poor planning and disregarding environmental hazards like flood plains have held them back. Many primate cities in Asia have grown to become megacities, and some more are rapidly increasing in size to assume such a status by the end of the century. This is a remarkable phenomenon fraught with various implications, favorable or unfavorable. In 1960 there were only two megacities in the region, which were, Tokyo and Shanghai. In 1970 Beijing was added, and Asia had three of 10 megacities in the world, or two of five

As “Mumbai boomed on the back of its port and textile mills, poor peasants flowed in from the land in search of job opportunities to provide a roof over their head” (Beddoes). For many of the impoverished, the ability to start small, undocumented businesses was not only a source of income, but also an attractive force that drew them to the slums. As more people came to live in these slums, the amount of space diminished. “ In a 2010 census, it was found that there were roughly a million people per square in a slum called Dharavi” (Beddoes). As the population increased, the living conditions became a lot worse as now “instead of flowers and trees lining the sides of these [narrow] streets, there lies trash, sewage and dead animals”(Parussini). Slums are already very small and now trash takes up half of the street leaving no space for proper homes. “On one side is a family of 12 living in a 90-square-foot room—about half the size of an American car-parking space...eight people share a similar area” (Beddoes).When families finally run out of space, to save money, they add more floors, known as verticalization. This solution fixes the immediate issue of space but unprofessionally built buildings can cause “...building collapses and fire hazards” (Zhang). Due to the cramped nature of the slums, and an abundance in people, these slums have become hard to live in, but because these slums provide shelter and a source of income, many people are forced to overlook these heinous

Factors Underlying City Patterns, Economies of Scale – Cheaper to produce goods in large volume, Economies of Agglomeration – Cost advantages to colocating production factors, Positive Locational Externalities – “piggyback” benefits, Factors that make centralization less productive or more costly:, Congestion, Pollution, Crime, Transportation costs

“In 1800 only 3% of people lived in a city of 1 million or more; by the year 2000, it was 47%. In 1950 there were only 83 cities worldwide with populations over 1 million; by 2007 there were 468. In April 2008, the world passed the 50% urbanization mark. Cities have evolved into a more complex space inter-linked by a number of systems and planners generally have failed to read the ‘Urban Progression’ and thus cities have failed significantly in terms of the ‘Quality of Life’ of the urbanites.”

More jobs are available, the development and increase of diversification creates opportunity, there is access to more technologies, consumption rates are at an all time high, and many gaps are being bridged between business people. There is also a much greater deal of innovation and many new opportunities that were not possible before. Although this may be the case here in America, it is not the ultimate reality globally. The relationship between economic development and urbanization is complex. As it is well noted, many studies would conclude that there is a strong positive correlation between the degree of urbanization and it’s result in per-capita income, but this case is only true in those countries that are already developed. In an effort to provide results on urbanization in developed and developing countries together, we must look at urbanization as a whole. Studies show that as a city increases in population by 10% it offers wages that are anywhere from 0.2 to 1% higher. “The conclusion of the agglomeration literature is that there is a causal static effect of cities and urbanization on wages in more advanced economies, but this effect represents only approximately half the measured association between city population or density and wages.” Overall there are many differences between developed and developing countries and some of these key differences may make it harder for cities in these developing countries to reach their full potential

In every country, the land is divided into sections of towns and cities. These towns and cities are homes to people who have looked upon their preferences to decide where to locate their homes. Individuals take into account the advantages and disadvantages of both locations as well as the opportunities presented. Hence, there are several similarities and differences between big cities and small towns.

The origins and development of a slum are varied and complex. As there are a myriad of possible scenarios and variations, to avoid over-complexity, there are a few key political, economic and social factors that are a running theme within the majority of slums. Most of these aspects transpire concurrently and are inextricably linked. One of the main causes of a slum’s creation is due to rapid urbanisation in a city that is unable to keep up with the growing demands. The rapid influx of people to cities could be for several reasons: moving from rural areas to find work in bigger cities or migrating from a war torn country. Upon moving to these larger towns, they are unable to afford housing due to lower incomes in the

The word ‘slum’ was firstly mentioned by a writer called James Hardy Vaux, in his book ‘Vocabulary of the Flash Language’ which was published in 1812[1]. At those times ‘slum’ was also a synonym of illegal commerce. Today, ‘slum’ is used to describe the residential areas of a huge amount of people of the world. According to the UN-Habitat report released in October 2003 “Some 923,986,000 people, or 31.6 per cent of the world’s total urban population, live in slums; some 43 per cent of the urban population of all developing regions combined live in slums; some 78.2 per cent of the urban population in

A Slum refers to informal settlements within urban areas or cities. The informal settlements depict inadequate housing and miserable condition with reference to living standards (Meade p 43). In the slums, numerous individuals seek housing facilities within small living spaces. The slums also lack basic local authority services such as sanitation, collection of waste, water, drainage systems, street lighting, and emergency roads. Most slums also lack schools, hospital, and public places that might offer adequate environment for social amenities. The experience of France illustrates the essence of slums within the modern society (Oberti p 58). Crime and unemployment are on the rise within the slums because of the poor

The twenty-first century is the moment from which, for the fist time in history, there will be more people living in cities then in the countryside. The percentage of urban population started to increase in the 19th century, at the end of which only 3% of the world population lived in cities. In slightly more then a century there was an impressive growth in both relative and absolute terms and the trends for 2030 forecast that 5 out 8 billion people will be urban inhabitants. It is important to understand that, based on how we deal with this change; it can be either a powerful mean to improve life quality or the reason to cause a situation of deep urban conflicts. The rapid growth of the city can be a risk for its poorest

Cities located globally increase significantly through the process of urbanisation, temporally and spatially. Through urbanisation, technology is a huge advancement for cities. The main technology advancement is transportation. I have chosen to compare Tokyo with Auckland. I will discuss Tokyo and Auckland’s development (1880-1930), outlining pressures and opportunities created by technology advancements and how Tokyo is caused by urbanisation, comparing with Auckland.