Urbanization: New Haven for our Rural Neighbours?
Urbanisation
has been a long debated topic of pros and cons. Critics of urbanization has suggested that urbanization comes along with other social problems, such as cultural erosion, increase in crime rates, the poor living conditions when overcrowding occurs, the lack of jobs and many more social issues. But is it really that bad? If it is indeed that bad, why do rural settlers keep coming back to the city for decades and centuries?
In my opinion, the benefits of urbanization outweigh the negativity associated with it. Rather, it’s a matter of how the government or state handles the situation of urbanization.
Instead of thinking urbanization as a cause of cultural erosion, it seems more appropriate that it creates a cultural melting pot. As mentioned by Sernau1, there are various sociologists such as Hubert Gans who identified dwellers who became “urban villagers”. Hence, they bring their culture to the cities and not all of their culture is lost. With globalization, more cultures come together in a city due to the ease of travel. The city therefore becomes a city of various cultures, where an urban dweller can actually experience other cultures. The University of Illinos at Chicago held a conference themed ‘City Futures’ and talked about the need to ‘embrace diversity and culture’. In fact, it has come up with 3 concrete reccomandations as to how to engage and immerse them. Singapore, an urban concrete jungle, has celebrated diversity and it has become a unique identity to us.
High crime rates are associated with high unemployment or under-employment. Because of the lack of jobs and means to sustain them, they turn to crimes such as robbery and burglary for economic gains. Hence to lower crime rates, it is important to maintain a low unemployment rate as well. Undeniably, it is difficult to control influx of rural people settling in the cities. Hence to prevent the huge shantytowns from proliferating, what the government can do is to shift different specializations to different areas of the city, rather than a concentrated city centre. This prevents overcrowding in a single city and with this, crime rates are likely to lower as there would not be a single area where many unemployed people looking for employment would be concentrated.
There must be a reason why rural people still come to the urbanized cities to work or settle down despite all these negativities. Sernau also identifies the reason is that the rural people faces even more hardships and uncertainties in their rural hometown compared to urban cities. They also need to find sources of income for their families back in villages when sources of income within the villages are diminished or non-existent. However, there are some people who prefer to live a simple life of self-sustenance without materialism. Hence, they would rather stay in the villages. What I feel drives people to cities could be the influence of us – city dwellers. People in villagers might not have the idea of how tough it might be for them to settle in a city due to various factors, but what they see is the benefits it could give. Money sent back by sons working in cities could buy villagers many things in the villages. What they don’t see is the pain and hardship of how it is obtained. Even if they have seen the pain, they still felt that it was worth it, for the rest of their families could live better. Hence, it the influence of rural villagers who had gone into cities to work and settle on fellow villagers that could have caused this cycle to be continued for centuries.
Sernau S. (2006) ‘Global Problems: The Search for Equity, Peace and Sustainability’, Indiana University South Bend, Pearson Education, Boston
Robin Hambleton, January 2006, ‘US Public Policy for Cities – Insights from Abroad’, Report to the Joyce Foundation, University of Illinois at Chicago, http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/cityfutures/joycereport.html#2
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