Geography essay free essay sample

Urbanization refers to the process by which an increasing proportion of a national population lives in towns and cities. It can be movement from rural to an urban or simply involves a growth in the number of people in urban areas. On the other hand, starting from Cold War era, threefold division of the world was employed. In political sense, ‘First World’ regards to capitalist industrial market economies or more-developed countries while ‘Third World’ refers to some initially nonaligned states, which eventually became clients states of one camp or the other. In a socio-economic sense, the Third World refers to countries that failed to develop economically after independence (Pacione, 2009). From the above, we can see that there are some fundamental differences between First World and Third World, which lead to various characteristics of the urbanization process between two worlds. Although it was inevitable to have differences in the urbanization process between these two worlds, some similarities can be found. In this essay, I shall attempt to analyze both the similarities and differences between the main characteristics of the urbanization process in the First and Third Worlds. I will focus on investigating social and economics aspects. Market Force – The invisible hand Undoubtedly, urbanization has a close relationship to the economic development. One of the similarities of the urbanization process in First and Third World is that the processes in both places are mainly driven by the economic development. (Pacione 2009) In 18th century, Industrialization  began gaining popularity in Britain. Increasing jobs opportunities and the higher wages in industrial regions attracted people living in the rural areas to flock to the cities as it is believed that living and working in urban areas will raise their living standards. Same phenomenon was found in Africa. In 20th century, the establishment of new industries in North Africa drove people, which around 47. 8% of African, from rural to the urban areas for higher wages and job opportunities (African Development Bank Group 2012). Actually, the above phenomenon could be implied by Rostow’s stages of economic growth model, which tell that once countries start developing, there would be a central role of primate cities in development. As a consequence, the primate cities would provide lots of job opportunities, which led to urbanization to primate cities. From the above, we can see that the urbanization process in both First World and Third World countries were actually driven by market force, the invisible hand. Due to historical difference as well as the variation in soft power1, it is inevitable to have differences in the urbanization process between these two worlds. The most explicit differences, concerning social and economic aspect, are population growth and urban poverty. Population growth In social aspect, the population growth in the Third World is much greater than that in First World in urbanization process. To commence with, the speed of population growth of urbanization process in the Third World exceed the First World. According to the Demographic Transition model (Thompson, 1929) (figure 1) (BBC, 2013), it described the population change in different stages of industrialization and urbanization. At the beginning of the industrialization, the population growth and the rural migration into urban area are rapid, and then the trend slows down and finally reaches near zero. First world countries have passed through the second stage after the Industrial Revolution, and most of these countries are in the third stage nowadays while some highly-developed countries like Japan and the US are steeping into the fourth stage. Similarly, Thompson (1929) believed that the Third World countries are in the stage two which the First World countries have passed through. Therefore, the population growth of Third World would be much larger than that in First World. In Table 1, we can see that from the World Population Prospects released by United Nation, the population growth rate of First World was much smaller than Third World, which the population growth rate of Third World was three times than first world. Also, According to Table 2 below, we can see that the Population of Third World sharply increase from 280 millions to 4877 millions while population of First World had relatively slight increase from 813 millions to 1194 millions. These statistics show that the Demographic Transition model stands, which the annual growth rate of population in less developed countries was indeed greater than that of more developed countries. (Figure 1) (Table 1) (Table 2) Besides the differences in the population growth, the urban growth rate in Third World also has a sharp contrast with the First World. Table 2 below shows that in 1930, there are only 17. 9% of population in the Third World lived in urban area while there was over half of the urbanized population in the First World countries at that time. However, the continued urbanization process over the last 50 years brought Third World’s urban growth rate greatly surpass that of the First World. From Table 2, we can see that in year 2000, the urban population of the Third World has already transcended First World for more than 2 times and it is predicted that such a trend will continue to reach around 4 times in 2030. What is more, the distribution of the world’s urban population had experience a gigantic change. According to Table 2, the ratio of the distribution of population between the First and Third Worlds has changed from 1:0.7 to 1:2. 2. T herefore, it is explicit that the process of urbanization in the First World began saturated. From the above, we can see that there are two factors for the urban growth and population growth in such a trend, which are the overall urban growth and the population growth. According to Figure V, the increase in urban population from 1950 and 2000 is nearly the same between urban growth and overall population growth in Philippines and India. From Figure V, we can see that USA is the only country that the overall population growth was the fundamental factor for urbanization. It is predicted that between 2000 and 2050, China’s urban population will be guarded by the urban growth. On the contrary, the urbanization process of the United States would be dominated by an overall population growth. From the above, we can see that the urbanization process in First World countries, represented by USA, are mainly driven by overall population growth while the urbanization process of the Third World would mainly attributed to urban growth (World Urbanization Prospects, 2011). Urban Poverty – Vicious cycle in the Third World There are no causal relationship between urbanization and poverty. However, poverty is an unavoidable consequence if no corresponding measures are implemented to solve the imbalance social condition caused by urbanization. Unfortunately, this is the exact difficulty faced by Third World countries. Rapid urbanization in Third World has exceeded the capacity to provide primary service for their citizens. (Giok Kai, 2007). When it comes to urbanization in Third World countries, urban poverty have naturally becoming more concentrated in urban areas as there are no corresponding nor appropriate measures carried out. Massive slum areas characterize most large cities of Third World countries. Table 3 (UN-HABITAT Global Urban Observatory, 2003) Indeed, urban poverty takes place in both First World and Third World. Yet, Third World raises more awareness than that in the First World as the severity is much bigger in Third World. According to Table 3, urban slum population in developing regions is sixteen times over developed regions. In order words, through calculation, the percentage of slum population to total population in developing regions and developed regions are 4. 5% and 17. 6% respectively. According to UN-HABITAT’s report in 2007, it predicted that there would be about two billion slum population in 2030 which more than 95% of slum population would be found in developing region (UN-HABITAT, 2007). It is no wonder that Third World raises more concern than in the First World. The speed and scale of urbanization of the Third World have post a thread to the countries’ social and economic condition. There are increasing numbers of residents living in poor living environments with poor sanitation, no clean water, lack of facilities as well as lacking living space due to saturation of capacity in urban regions. Worse still, as increasing people come to urban for job and shelter, the supply of labour increase tremendously but the job opportunities did not increase to cater the increasing labour, therefore, ironically, urbanization in turn leads to serious unemployment problem. It is estimated that about 30 – 60% of urban dwellers are living under poverty in the Third World. Let’s take Asia as an example. According the research conducted by the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, it is estimates that around 640 million of people in Asia are living on less than one dollar per day. What is more, urban poverty has been rising from 110 million people in 1993 to 167 million in 2002 (Giok Kai, 2007). Even worse, as Third World countries keep attracting new migrants, this would probably magnify the number of squatter settlements, which in turn aggravate the problems of urban decay, urban congestion and urban poverty. These problems had posed a challenge to government in improving basic infrastructure ad providing principal services to citizens, which would led to further unemployment and lack of urban planning, result in urban congestion, implying aggravating urban poverty. A vicious cycle is then formed in Third World. In conclusion, urbanization is an inevitable process for all countries to go through during development as it is driven by market force naturally. However, it had different impacts to the First and the Third World due to different cultural factors faced by the First and Third World. Nowadays, urban poverty in Third World, which own nearly 95% of urban slum population in the world, is becoming increasing severe and requires urgent attention from the governments, even the whole world. In the era of global village, every citizen of world should face and try to assist Third World countries to cope with their aggravating urban poverty problem. On the other hand, for those countries which have not yet experienced the urbanization process, the above figures and data would be the best reminders to them to take preventive measures before carry out further development in their countries. All in all, urbanization is a double-edged sword to a country, if the government can implement appropriate measures to solve at list some of the problems arisen by urbanization like developed countries did, it would definitely bring more good than harm to their nationals as well as the social, economic and political situation of the country.