Topic 25: Urbanization

New technology helped cities grow. Elevated trains carried passengers over (1) ____ streets. In 1887, the first electric streetcar system opened in Richmond, Virginia. Ten years later, the nation’s first electric subway trains began running beneath the streets of Boston.

Public transportation gave (2) ____ to suburbs, living areas on the outskirts of a city. People no longer had to live in cities to work in cities. Steel bridges also accelerated suburban growth. The Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, (3) ____ the city center in Manhattan to outlying Brooklyn. As a result, New York City was able to spread out to house its growing population.

Cities began to expand upward as well as outward. In 1885, architects in Chicago constructed the first 10-story building. People called it a “skyscraper” because its top seemed to touch the sky. By 1900, (4) ____ skyscrapers up to 30 stories high towered over cities. Electric elevators whisked office workers to the upper floors.

As cities grew outward from their old downtown sections, living patterns changed. Many cities took on a similar shape. Poor families crowded (5) ____ the oldest sections at the city’s center. Middle-class people lived farther out in row houses or new apartment buildings. The rich built fine homes on the outskirts of the city.

(http://www.murrieta.k12.ca.us)

Urbanization programmes are being carried out in many parts of the world, especially in densely (1) ________ regions with limited land and resources. It is the natural outcome of economic development and industrialization. It has brought a lot of benefits to our society. However, it also (2) ________ various problems for local authorities and town planners in the process of maintaining sustainable urbanization, especially in developing countries.

When too many people cram into a small area, urban infrastructure can’t be effective. There will be a (3) ________ of livable housing, energy and water supply. This will create overcrowded urban districts with no proper facilities. Currently, fast urbanization is taking place predominantly in developing countries where sustainable urbanization has little relevance to people’s lives. Their houses are just shabby slums with poor sanitation. Their children only manage to get basic education. Hence, the struggle for (4) ________ is their first priority rather than anything else. Only when the quality of their existence is improved, can they seek (5) ________ other high values in their life.

As communities across the U.S. replace forests and woodlands with housing developments and other new construction, researchers are noting an increase in Lyme disease. To help prevent the spread of Lyme disease, Dr. Ivan Castro-Arellano, a disease ecologist and wildlife researcher at Texas State University, is exploring how urbanization and its effects on mammals impact the spread of pathogens.

Lyme disease, which spreads from animals to humans, is one of the fastest growing zoonotic diseases in the United States. Counties considered high-risk for Lyme disease grew 300% between 1993 and 2012. Caught quickly, Lyme disease is easily treated with antibiotics, but if it goes untreated it can lead to chronic issues such as Lyme arthritis, facial palsy and impaired memory. Many such zoonotic diseases have been increasing globally, researchers say, partially because of the displacement of animals. While medium- and large-sized mammals are displaced or eradicated by the removal of forested areas, white-footed mice and deer thrive in small patches of green space. Mice and deer are contributing to favorable conditions for an increase in the ticks that spread the pathogens causing Lyme disease.

Although East Texas has a similar pattern of woodland space compared to new construction as the northeast United States, Texas contract the disease at lower rates. This fact piqued the interest of Castro-Arellano. In addition to studying the area where the disease is prevalent, he decided to study where the disease is not prevalent to find keys to prevention. Castro-Arellano is part of a team of biologists, veterinarians and biomedical researchers that have been collecting samples and trying to understand what makes East Texas different. He believes that the climate, or certain species of East Texas mammals who kill ticks, could be contributing to the reduced tick population in East Texas.

(Source: https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/)

Today, population growth largely means urban population growth. UN projections show the world’s rural population has already stopped growing, but the world can expect to add close to 1.5 billion urbanites in the next 15 years, and 3 billion by 2050. How the world meets the challenge of sustainable development will be intimately tied to this process.

For many people, cities represent a world of new opportunities, including jobs. There is a powerful link between urbanization and economic growth. Around the world, towns and cities are responsible for over 80 per cent of gross national product. While urban poverty is growing around the world, this is largely because many people – including the poor – are moving to urban areas.

The opportunities there extend beyond just jobs. Cities also offer greater opportunities for social mobilization and women’s empowerment. Many young people, especially young women, regard the move to cities as an opportunity to escape traditional patriarchy and experience new freedoms. Urban areas also offer greater access to education and health services, including sexual and reproductive health care, further promoting women’s empowerment and the realization of their reproductive rights. This contributes to significantly reduced fertility in urban areas, changing the trajectory of overall population growth.

The urbanization process – which is particularly pronounced in Africa and Asia, where much of the world’s population growth is taking place – is also an enormous opportunity for sustainability, if the right policies are put in place. Urban living has the potential to use resources more efficiently, to create more sustainable land use and to protect the biodiversity of natural ecosystems.

Still, the face of inequality is increasingly an urban one. Too many urban residents grapple with extreme poverty, exclusion, vulnerability and marginalization. Urban land is expanding much faster than urban population, a phenomenon known as urban sprawl. It is driven in part by increasing urban land consumption by the wealthy and the increasing separation of rich and poor communities within cities. Sprawl undermines the efficiencies of urban living, and it marginalizes poor people in remote or peripheral parts of cities, often in dense informal settlements or slums.

This phenomenon can eliminate the very opportunities people seek when they move to cities. Many people in slums lack ready access to health facilities. Others rely on private, unregulated providers for health services that are free in rural areas. In some urban slums, poor women have fertility rates closer to those of rural women. The urban poor also face risky and unhealthy living conditions, such heavy pollution or high vulnerability to disasters.

The total estimated number of slum dwellers is rising – from over 650 million in 1990 to about 863 million in 2012. Almost 62 per cent of the urban population in sub-Saharan Africa lived slums in 2010, the highest proportion of any region. But slum growth is not the same as urbanization. Most evidence suggests that global urbanization is an inevitable trend, while slum growth results from the decisions to limit poor people’s access to cities, through limited service provision to informal settlements or by forced evictions and resettlement of the urban poor to peripheral or under-serviced areas.

(Source: https://www.unfpa.org/urbanization)

A new study shows that urbanization shifts this seasonal cue in nuanced ways, with cities in cold climates triggering earlier spring plant growth and cities in warm climates delaying it. The study also found that the urban heat island effect, the phenomenon in which cities are warmer than their surroundings, is not the only culprit behind the shift, suggesting that other aspects of urbanization, such as pollution, changes in humidity and fertilizer runoff, may also influence plants’ seasonal patterns.

Researchers analyzed millions of observations of 136 plant species across the U.S. and Europe to study how regional temperature and the local density of people-a proxy for urbanization—affect when plants sprout leaves and blossoms. Their results revealed a complex story: Separately, warmer temperatures and higher population density each spurred earlier springs. A 3.6-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature bumped up plants’ production of leaves and flowers by about five and six days, respectively. A fourfold increase in human population density advanced flowering and leaf production dates by about three days. But the team found that when these two factors worked together, local temperature had an outsized influence.

In cold regions—areas with an average November-to-May temperature of about 18 degrees-plants produced leaves and flowers about 20 days earlier in locations with about 26,000 people per square mile, compared with equally frigid wildland. When an area’s average November-to-May temperature jumped to 68, however, leaves and flowers appeared four and six days later, respectively, in locations with about 26,000 people per square mile, compared with equally balmy wildland. In New York, for example, plants are likely sprouting leaves about 9.5 days earlier and blossoms eight days earlier than uninhabited regions with the same temperature. Jacksonville, in contrast, is likely pushing leaf production later by about one day and flowers by about half a day, with leaves appearing two days later and flowers a day later in Houston.

Even after accounting for urban heat islands, the team’s models revealed cities significantly affect plants’ springtime growth. “Not only are there other things going on, but they actually matter quite a lot,” said study co-author Brian Stucky, Florida Museum research scientist. Plants may not be the only organisms affected by seasonal shifts, he added. “Seasons are such a big part of our lives. We define our world around seasonal things. Those rhythms are what we think of as the normal way the world works.”

(Source: https://phys.org/)

Some cities are located by chance. A wagon breaks down, the driver spends some time in repairs, finds that he is in a congenial spot, and settles down. Later another person builds a house near his, and later someone adds an inn. Someone else starts selling farm produce there. Soon there is a little market, which grows to a town, and later to a city.

Other places were destined by nature to become cities. London, for example, is on what is called the head of navigation - the point where it becomes too difficult for ocean-going ships to continue upriver, and must transfer their cargoes. As with London, the head of navigation is also the point where the river can be conveniently bridged. In fact, the location of a bridge is often the reason for the birth of a town - as Cambridge or Weybridge in England show. Again, a good harbour will generally lead to a city growing up about it. New York and San Francisco began life as ports, as did Cape Town in South Africa.

Some places were created mainly for military purposes, such as Milan, and the host of English cities finishing with - cester, which is derived from castra which means camp in Latin. Chester itself, created to guard the Welsh border, is a very good example. Other such military bases are Manchester, Doncaster, and of course, Newcastle.

A few cites are not created by accident, but by intention. This was the case with Milton Keynes in England, but the most famous examples of such cities are capitals. Brasilia, Canberra and Washington are capitals created in modern times, but even their greatest admirers will admit that they lack a certain character. It is no co-incidence that there are famous pop songs about New York, (“New York, New York”) Chicago (“My kind of Town”) San Francisco (“Going to San Francisco”) and many other US cities, but none about the nation’s capital. On the other hand any Londoner can give you at least three songs about the place.

In 1903 the members of the governing board of the University of Washington in Seattle engaged a firm of landscape architects, specialists in the design of outdoor environments - Olmsted Brothers of Brookline, Massachusetts - to advise them on an appropriate layout for the university grounds. The plan impressed the university officials, and in time many of its recommendations were implemented. City officials in Seattle, the largest city in the northwestern United States, were also impressed, for they employed the same organization to study Seattle’s public park needs. John Olmsted did the investigation and subsequent report on Seattle’s parks. He and his brothers believed that parks should be adapted to the local topography, utilize the area’s trees and shrubs, and be available to the entire community. They especially emphasized the need for natural, serene settings where hurried urban dwellers could periodically escape from the city. The essence of the Olmsted park plan was to develop a continuous driveway, twenty miles long, that would tie together a whole series of parks, playgrounds, and parkways. There would be local parks and squares too, but all of this was meant to supplement the major driveway, which was to remain the unifying factor for the entire system.

In November of 1903 the city council of Seattle adopted the Olmsted Report, and it automatically became the master plan for the city’s park system. Prior to this report, Seattle’s park development was very limited and funding meager. All this changed after the report. Between 1907 and 1913, city voters approved special funding measures amounting to $4,000,000. With such unparalleled sums at their disposal, with the Olmsted guidelines to follow, and with the added incentive of wanting to have the city at its best for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, the Parks Board bought aggressively. By 1913 Seattle had 25 parks amounting to 1,400 acres, as well as 400 acres in playgrounds, pathways, boulevards, and triangles. More lands would be added in the future, but for all practical purposes it was the great land surge of 1907-1913 that established Seattle’s park system.

In 1860 the United States was predominantly rural. Most people were engaged in agriculture, and about 80 percent of the population actually resided on farms or in small villages. Only 20 percent lived in towns and cities of 2,500 or more, the census definition of an urban area after 1880. New York alone in 1860 had more than 1 million people, and only 8 cities could boast about a population of more than 100,000. Thereafter the transition from a rural to a predominantly urban nation was especially remarkable because of its speed. By 1900, urbanization, with all of its benefits, problems, and prospects for a fuller life, became the mark of modern America.

The changing physical landscape reflected the shift to an urbanized society. Railroad terminals, factories, skyscrapers, apartment houses, streetcars, electric engines, department stores, and the increased pace of life were all signs of an emerging urban America. Indeed, the vitality, dynamic quality, variety, and restless experimentalism in society centered in the urban communities where the only constant factor was change itself.

Urbanization did not proceed uniformly throughout the nation. New England and the Middle Atlantic states contained the highest percentage of city dwellers. In the Middle West, the growth of cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and St. Louis showed the importance of urbanization in that region. The three West Coast states also experienced rapid urban growth. In the South, urbanization developed much more slowly, although by 1910 the expansion of transportation, commerce, and industry had greatly increased the population of older cities such as New Orleans and stimulated the growth of new urban centers such as Birmingham. However, the South remained predominantly rural. Only somewhat more than 20 percent of the population in that region was urban by 1910.

In some regions the urban impact had a depressing effect upon the surrounding rural communities. Much of New England in the late nineteenth century presented a discouraging picture of abandoned farms and sickly villages as people forsook the countryside and rushed to the larger towns and cities. In the Middle West, particularly Ohio and Illinois, hundreds of townships lost population in the 1880’s.