topic on urban settlement from first chapter of timesavers standard

1. URBAN
SETTLEMENTS
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2. The global scale and impact of urban
settlements and cities will determine the
course of the emergent 21st century. Cities
are no longer isolated and responding only
to local and regional influences.
Very large cities — megacities — are exploding in size and
growth, for the most part in newly developing regions of the
globe. The impact of this growth, however, is not isolated. The
urban explosion is international in its origins and in its
influences, affecting every continent and country, as a result
of globalization, multinational political affiliations,
telecommunications, transport and commerce
POPULATION AND THE
URBAN FUTURE

3. Urban design of human settlements and cities — what
they are as a result of explosive growth and what they
could be if guided by urban design instead of
happenstance — is thus the foremost agenda for
planners and design professionals throughout the world.
POPULATION AND THE
URBAN FUTURE
Cities have shaped mankind. They now shape the quality of life for
the entire biosphere of earth. But today, city building is subject to
the unplanned and often chaotic flow of humankind undergoing
unprecedented growth, migration, and an attendant diminution of
natural resources, beyond the limits of sustainable life.

4. MEGACITIES
The last half-century has witnessed the emergence of megacities —
enormous metropolises with more than 8 million people each.
Most will be in newly developing economies of the developing world,
making the urban explosion almost exclusively a developing world
phenomenon. The impacts, however, will be evident internationally, both
in terms of worldwide economic infrastructure but also global
environmental quality and health and human culture influences that have
no boundaries. The cities of the 21st century are by definition global cities.
0 million inhabitants — more than 4 percent of the world’s population.
While growth of cities in the developed nations has stabilized somewhat,
most growth is occurring in the cities of poor, less developed nations that
are ill equipped to accommodate it.
This serves to aggravate the perception of a geopolitical and economic
divide between the world’s rich and the world’s poor. Often as a result, the
challenges of designing world cities are poorly understood by planners
and designers, whose knowledge of urban design is called upon to
improve urban conditions across the globe.
AND GEOPOLITICAL
CONSEQUENCES

6. MIGRATION AND
DESTABILIZATION OF THE
LABOR FORCE
Population growth drives the increased pace of global
urbanization and is accelerated by unplanned and
unpredicted migration. In developing regions throughout
the globe, there is an historic migration out of rural areas
by workers and families attracted to cities by the promise
of a better livelihood. In other regions subject to natural
disasters and civil strife, migration is forced as people are
displaced from their traditional homelands.
In other regions subject to natural disasters and civil strife,
migration is forced as people are displaced from their
traditional homelands. Such migration offsets the best
population stabilization efforts of cities, imposing added
pressure on their infrastructures, and contributing to
problems of health and sanitation, unemployment, crime
and the cycle of poverty. In such cases, urbanization is part
of the problem.

7. POVERTY
More than half of the urban inhabitants of Asia,
Africa and Latin America live in poverty. More
than 3 billion people — half the world’s total
population — subsist on less than $2 a day. The
number and proportion of those living in extreme
poverty are rising.

8. SANITATION AND HEALTH
Thousands of urban inhabitants in developing countries cannot afford the high costs of housing
in the cities. The overstretched finances of city governments cannot subsidize housing for its
millions of poor inhabitants. As a result, most of these people end up living in slums and
shantytowns. It is estimated that 25 to 30 percent of the urban population lives in poor
shantytowns, squatter settlements, or on the streets.
Squatter
settlements lack
running water and
sanitation facilities.
Good access to
clean water has a
proven impact in
reducing
waterborne diseases
Such unsanitary
living conditions
have made city
slums breeding
grounds for various
diseases.
Waterborne diseases
such as diarrhea,
typhoid and
gastroenteritis are
rampant.
At least 220 million
people in cities of
the developing
world lack clean
drinking water, 600
million do not have
adequate shelter,
and 1.1 billion are
exposed to elevated
and unhealthy levels
of air pollution.

9. CONSUMPTION AND WASTE
Megacities are partly the result of an emergent international economic infrastructure,
including the global trend to outsource jobs to developing countries where there is
availability of skilled but cheaper labor. Cities cause extreme pressures on the natural
resources of the rural areas and damage to their environments. Cities have very high
population densities, with the result that city dwellers consume several times more food,
energy and other resources than do the rural people
Cities also generate disproportionate high levels of waste. Inadequate collection and
unmanaged disposal present a number of problems for human health and productivity.
Dumping and uncontrolled landfills are sometimes the main disposal methods. Sanitary
landfills are the norm in only a relative handful of cites.

10. SPRAWL
As thousands of people move to cities in search of better
opportunities or merely basic livelihood, cities face pressures upon
limited space and infrastructure. The result is often a spreading out
through sprawl, suburbanization and the creation of satellite cities.
The horizontal expansion into green fields seems irresistible in spite
of it dysfunctional results.
Sprawl also increases the need for transportation and other facilities.
Travel time is a key performance measure of transportation systems.
Long transport time to work is a sign of urban dysfunction, associated
with severe traffic congestion, uncontrolled mixes of traffic types,
poorly operating public transport networks, lack of adequate local
traffic management, accidents and general dissatisfaction of the
travel dependent population.
Growing dependence on vehicles and the resultant traffic congestion
make air pollution a primary urbanization concern. As much as 20
percent of the world’s population is estimated to live in cities where
the air is not safe to breathe.

11. Population Stabilization Sustainable Development Urban Infrastructure
CONCLUSION
Whether rural or urban, nations
and international aid
organizations will have to
redouble their efforts to stabilize
population growth rates to
sustainable levels. More and more
developing countries have
achieved remarkable progress in
reducing their total fertility rates.
Besides efforts to stabilize their populations,
governments of countries with high levels of
urban migration must initiate creative programs
that will reduce the determination to migrate.
These countries and the international industries
that partner with them should give job
incentives to rural people to keep them in their
villages, disperse industries so the rural people
can find jobs closer to home, and improve
infrastructures in the rural areas. When they
have better economic opportunities and other
facilities at home, the people will feel little
need to migrate to the cities.
Even the most dramatic and large-scale
effort to improve the quality of life of
people in rural areas may not
immediately stem the flow of migrants
into the cities. Countries will have to
work to improve the lives of migrants in
the cities so that they do not end up on
the streets there, becoming a burden on
the city’s resources. In this respect,
housing is a major issue. More and more
migrants to cities end up living in slums
and shantytowns, risking their health
and the health of the cities

12. URBAN
SETTLEMENTS
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