12-09-2014, 06:09 AM
CHALLENGES OF URBANISATION
As a city grows beyond its natural carrying capacity, it suffers from one or all of
the following conditions:
• Deteriorating infrastructure and services, and a corresponding reduction in the citizens’
‘willingness to pay’, resulting in the impoverishment of local governments, and further
deterioration of services – in a vicious downward spiral.
Declining services in turn lead to poor sanitation, inadequate waste disposal, and result in
diseases becoming endemic to the entire population of a city (the rich and poor alike),
almost always accompanied by low quality public health services.
• The urbanisation of poverty, whereby the cities witness an unnatural growth in the poorer
segments of their society, leads to greater informalisation of the local economy, and a
spurt in informal housing, slums, and squatter settlements. The political aftermath of this
informalisation often engenders a subsidy culture, impractically low user charges, and
further impoverishment of local governments.
• The resource crunch is most telling in the areas of public education, and entire
generations of the urban poor are doomed to life in the informal sector, with little hope of
joining the mainstream – whatever the economic growth rates of a country. This has a
great social and cultural impact, and often feeds directly into the prevailing social unrest
and crime.
For more details visit
http://jnnurm.nic.in/wp-content/uploads/...odule3.pdf
As a city grows beyond its natural carrying capacity, it suffers from one or all of
the following conditions:
• Deteriorating infrastructure and services, and a corresponding reduction in the citizens’
‘willingness to pay’, resulting in the impoverishment of local governments, and further
deterioration of services – in a vicious downward spiral.
Declining services in turn lead to poor sanitation, inadequate waste disposal, and result in
diseases becoming endemic to the entire population of a city (the rich and poor alike),
almost always accompanied by low quality public health services.
• The urbanisation of poverty, whereby the cities witness an unnatural growth in the poorer
segments of their society, leads to greater informalisation of the local economy, and a
spurt in informal housing, slums, and squatter settlements. The political aftermath of this
informalisation often engenders a subsidy culture, impractically low user charges, and
further impoverishment of local governments.
• The resource crunch is most telling in the areas of public education, and entire
generations of the urban poor are doomed to life in the informal sector, with little hope of
joining the mainstream – whatever the economic growth rates of a country. This has a
great social and cultural impact, and often feeds directly into the prevailing social unrest
and crime.
For more details visit
http://jnnurm.nic.in/wp-content/uploads/...odule3.pdf