Is Our Urban Realm is Turning into a Big Slum?

Despite poor habitats in cities, people are moving to urban areas for ‘opportunity’ without seeing real benefits. Such is the disillusionment with rural (read agricultural) lives! How will this play out?

Rashid's Blog: An Educational Portal

We’re not just talking about poor people living in classic shantytowns on the peripheries of Global South cities, but living on rooftops, in filled-in airwells in the centre of buildings; in cages of wire netting erected to protect their few belongings; on pavements; in former graveyards (>1 million people in Cairo); on swamps, floodplains, volcano slopes, unstable hillsides, rubbish mountains, chemical dumps, railroad sidings, desert fringes……

    –The new urban precariat (as opposed to proletariat)

According to UN,there will be, nearly 5 billion urban dwellers in year 2030 .sixty percent people will live in cities .Biggest increase will be in Asia and Africa – poorest, least-urbanised, least able to cope .

By 2017: nearly 500 cities ofwill be of million plus population.

By 2025, 8 cities 20m+ – Tokyo, Mumbai, Manila, Dhaka, São Paulo, Mexico City, New York, and Kolkata.

In 2005 the number of slum dwellers worldwide…

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About ramblinginthecity

I am an architect and urban planner, a writer and an aspiring artist. I love expressing myself and feel strongly that cities should have spaces for everyone--rich, poor, young, old, healthy and sick, happy or depressed--we all need to work towards making our cities liveable and lovable communities.

Posted on December 24, 2014, in Urban Planning & Policy. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.

  1. Mysore Sudhakar Rao

    The opportunity to synchronously develop rural India along with its major towns has already been lost, who knows, by concerned architects & engineers concentrating their efforts solely towards urban development. The resultant urban influx is consequently choking up city centres. What other alternative can we have now but encouraging suburbanisation? The cleaner occupational establishments such as schools, shopping centres & malls, offices, etc. can move out promptly out of the city limits according to needs. New polluting industries could be set up in similar fashion perhaps ensuring stricter placement, planning & supervision. Roads & public transport utilities could favor this trend. The slum dwellers unfortunately,for little fault of their own, will have to await relief from current miseries for yet awhile. Meager access to current utilities will slowly seem manageable to them after rapid outward exodus of the elite & middle class from their midst. Planners of future suburbs will have take serious lessons more about what not to do from the Gurgaon they have created of today. Assign funds & attention needs equitably across the board with thought to all the 3 economic classes comprising Indian society today. Private & public contributors to such development must react with far more responsibility & cooperation.

    • Thanks for reading my ramblings so closely! Am unsure about what you mean by suburban, but I’d rather we move towards more compact cities with better design inputs. Also, much has been done towards rural development by the India government. Not all of rural India is poor and miserable, only some more focus on facilitating the creation of non-farm jobs might help give rural youth more meaningful employment closer to home.

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