PROBLEMS OF URBANISATION

PROBLEMS OF URBANISATION

Urban growth may be due to two reasons. (i) Towns form concentrations of population and in each succeeding generation these con­centrations will be prone to out-migration. (ii) Towns constantly increase in population by in-migration-the drift to the towns. The movement of people from rural to urban areas first took place in the now industrialised countries, but at present it is the underdeveloped countries which lead the rates of urban growth. This rapid urban growth in the underdeveloped countries shows some special fea­tures: (i) Rural-urban migration is more important than natural increase as the cause of urban growth. (ii) Rates of natural increase are much higher than what occurred at the peak of.- urban growth in the developed world. (Hi) Industrialisation met the demand for jobs in western Europe and the USA, whe're towns grew as manufacturing centres; but industrial development is unlikely to provide jobs for the majority of people entering Third World cities. People in developing countries have to be content with what livelihood they can get in an 'informal' service sector. (iv) The growth of housing is totally unable to keep pace with demand and people are forced to construct temporary accommodation in slums. (v) The movement of people to the towns is unlikely to slow down in the developing countries, as villages lack in modern amenities and devel­opment.

It may be pointed out, however, that population growth in India, China and Japan may be unevenly distributed, but is more similar to the western pattern, embracing not only the largest cities but also the large and moderate-sized towns. However, in many developing countries, urbanisation means almost exclusive develop­ment of primate cities. A single, uS\lally a capital city, completely dominates the whole country.

Urban growth poses many problems. These may be due to increase in the population or due to the physical expansion of the towns. In many cases the people who come to the towns are unemployed. Standards of housing and health are therefore low. Public services in underde­veloped countries are taxed beyond their powers. A major environmental problem is created by towns growing at the expense of surrounding agricultural land.
The growth of urban population is also on account of natural increase and net migration from rural to urban areas. The sample registration system data suggest that the rate of natural growth changed only marginally in most of the major states during the 1991-2001 decade. This suggests that a slower pace of migration to the urban areas possibly explains the slower overall urban growth. By size and class of towns, slower urban growth is a fairly general phenomenon observed in the big cities as well as the smaller towns.

Nevertheless, there was an increasing concentration of population in the cities (above one lakh population). This does not necessarily imply that the big cities or metropo­lises are growing faster than the small towns. On the contrary, it only suggests that fewer new small towns have sprung up while more of the existing towns have gradu­ated into medium-sized towns and cities. On account of such upward mobility, the number of cities has increased. Their weightage in the country's urban population has also risen accordingly. Under these circumstances, the number of metropolises has also nearly doubled to 27. The new­comers to metropolitan status are Surat, Kochi, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Indore, Patna, Madurai, Bhopal, Visakhapatnam, Varanasi and Ludhiana. The fastest growth rates over the 1981-91 decade were registered by Visakhapatnam, followed by Hyderabad and Ludhiana.