Nero's final essay

Title:

To what extent can the problems of urbanisation be met by a policy of sustainable development?

-What are the problems of urbanisation in China and the existing solution and possible solution?

Abstract

Urbanisation is a good way to develop local economy, but over-urbanised caused lot of negative problems in some countries and regions. Therefore, sustainable development was tabled to solve these problems. Firstly, this essay takes China as a case and focuses on over-crowded housing, unemployment and crime, which caused by urbanisation. Furthermore, it will talk about two existing solutions that are to develop rural area and to develop new towns, then I will discuss whether these two development are sustainable development. After that, two possible solutions are given with their limitation as well. Lastly, the essay will explain why sustainable development is a good method to solve urbanisation problems.

Introduction

“Urbanization is a historic transformation process by which the means of production and people’s lifestyles evolve from the country to the city. While this process is often characterized as farmers’ migration to cities and the continuing development of cities” (Wen, undated). It not only includes movement from rural area to urban area but also include the changes of migrants’ attitudes, habits, behavior and life style. In the present age, urbanization is playing a significant role in the development of society and economy. It can reflect the level of social development and civilization of a country as well (Zhao & Liu 2010). Urbanisation was caused by industrialisation and technological development in developed countries, such as in Europe and North America. The huge economic and social changes were happened gradually. From 19^th to early 20^th centuries, industrialisation and technology developed very fast in these countries or regions. A vast number of opportunities were created for workers who were from rural areas (Wang & Hu 1999). The process of urbanisation comes out rapidly all over the world. In the meantime, urbanisation has caused many problems, such as crimes, environmental pollution, overcrowded housing, high unemployment and traffic jam. Governments attempt to solve these problems. A series of policies were introduced. Many policies solved these problems effectively, but some of them could affect our future lives. For instance, aim to solve the problem of overcrowded housing, some governments decided to destroy some traditional architecture or cut plenty of trees to build tall buildings. It could solve this problem at this moment, but in the long run it will cause many other serious problems. Therefore, the idea of ‘sustainable development’ was tabled. Sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (wordIQ.com, undated). Sustainable development not only consider present situation but also think about the effects of the future. Increasing people suggest that sustainable development should be adopted to solve the problems of urbanisation. Personally, I agree with this opinion. Sustainable development can improve our living condition and environment.

China is a developing country. Urbanisation has encouraged both the development of economy and society hugely, but the situation of urbanisation in developing countries is different from developed countries. China has the largest population in our world. It brings more negative effects.

This essay will talk about the different problems which caused by urbanisation in China, it will focus on crimes, unemployment and overcrowded housing, I will analyse these three problems and give some existing policies of solving these problems and possible solutions, then I will discuss whether they are sustainable development. Lastly, some limitation will be given at the end of this essay.

Negative effects of urbanisation

During the past 2 decades, the economy has grown quite fast in China. After joining the World Trade Organisation(WTO), China becomes a significant role in the world economy. Considering the fast growth of economy in China, some scholars and experts assert that urbanisation starts in China quite later than developed countries and regions. The authority of China must adopt a series of policies to catch up with these developed countries. Indeed, the Chinese government permit rural people move to urban area in order to accelerate the process of urbanisation(Wen, undated). There are more than 1.3 billion people in China. With the huge amount of population, China has to be confronted with the unprecedented challenge of urbanisation.

The Chinese population growth rate in urban area is particularly high. It includes both natural increase and increasing farmer moving into cities. The increasing population needs more housing, facilities and space to live(Wang & Hu 1999). Over-crowded housing becomes a serious problem in many big cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hongkong. It caused many problems:

Firstly, due to the huge amount of farmers migrating into big cities, lots of them cannot find any rooms to live. More and more homeless people appear. Secondly, many migrants have to live in one small room with the other people. Poor living condition caused many health issues and infectious disease.

After looking at over-crowded housing, we should now focus on another urbanisation problem – unemployment. Urbanisation of a city should provide more jobs to its residents, but in China, the situation is different. A vast number of people in Chinese cities need plenty of jobs while the narrow employment opportunities cannot meet residents’ needs. Furthermore, increasing migrations moving into cities caused high competitions. In 2002, the amount of workers who work for state-owned firms reduced from 75millions to 40 millions. More than 20millions people lost their jobs. Until June 2004, nearly 8.37millions urban residents were unemployed (Wen, undated). Otherwise, in China, the reason of many poor rural people moving into big cities is that they could not find any jobs in countries rather than they get a job in urban area. They just think that if they move into cities, they will have better lives (Wang & Hu 1999). In fact, when they move into cities, most of them cannot find a job because of both high competitions and less skills. That causes more and more unemployment.

In addition, urbanisation also could affect social stability. Chinese authority has emphasized many times that social stability is the most important task. Unfortunately, uncontrolled urbanisation makes lots of rural people moving into cities almost in same period, and it caused many potential social issues. Many people could not find any jobs. They cannot gain enough money to guarantee their basic lives, therefore, some of them decided to be criminals, such as thieves ,robbers or the others, who could get some money through using illegal methods(Wen, undated).

Besides, China’s huge population makes the normal solution useless, the solution that focuses on city inside will not solve the problems effectively. It will not be a good solution for long-term plan. Facing to the huge number of people, internal solution of a city is too weak. Considering all of these factors , we can understand that too many unemployed people in large cities is the main problem. Therefore, controlling the population of the urban area and creating more job opportunities are the key methods to solve these problems.

.Policy of solutions

Having introduced some urbanisation problems, we should now focus on some successful solutions. Aim to solve those urbanisation problems, the Chinese government carries out a series of strategies to face these unprecedented challenges. First of all, after the economic reform, Chinese government revised its strategies. The authority has implemented a small town development policy to develop rural areas instead of engaging enormous workforce move into big cities. The authority encouraged rural farmers to do some non-farm activities, for example animal husbandry. In the mean time, the government allowed farmers to change their jobs in local industry, transport and the other service (Wang & Hu 1999). In 1984, the Chinese government adopted new policy to liberalise rural trade. Farmers are allowed to engage selected goods between town and countries and to adopt household registration in small town to engage in commerce. They could be responsible for their own goods supplies (Wang & Hu 1999). In 1987, China adopted a strategy which is an export-oriented development. Many rural products closely link to the export sector (Wang & Hu 1999). These policies effectively created enormous job opportunities in rural areas. When big cities are too crowded and lacking job opportunities, those small towns can supply lots of job opportunities. Furthermore, to create more job opportunities, huge investments are needed. Facing to the challenges, China attempts to expand the rural urbanisation model in the whole country. If the government sent all of surplus workforce to towns, it would be more than 2 times of the current population. Therefore, a vast number of new towns will needed to be develop(Gale & Dai, 2002). Indeed, this kind of huge investment will spend plenty of money and resources to build housing, transportation and the other infrastructures for new town, but in the mean time, it will create a vast number of jobs (Gale & Dai, 2002). The occurrence of these jobs could reduce unemployment. Since 1978, small towns have developed rapidly in main land of China. Many new towns were built in China. In 1979, almost 2400 small towns housed about 55.56millions people, but in 1995, according to China’s Ministry of Construction, more than 50,000 small towns occurred in China. Small town development was progressed rapidly in coastal cities. For instance, in Shanghai, the amount of small towns had raised from 1070 to 2300 in 2 decades. In the Zhujiang Delta, the number increased from 21 to 188 form1982 to 1987. The increased small towns absorbed a vast number of rural surplus workforces (Wang & Hu 1999).

It can be seen that these two methods can make people move to small towns or new towns. They can both reduce the population in the urban area and create lots of job. Less population cause less over-crowded and less unemployment. Less unemployment cause low crime rate. Therefore, these two methods can solve these three unbanisation problems effectively. Besides, looking at the future, the two developments will not bring negative effects. They will not cause environmental pollution and will not harm the lives of the future. Conversely, they will bring many benefits for human lives. For instance, if those towns be developed very well and successfully, they will attract increasing people to move into them. It will further reduce the over-crowded housing pressure of urban area. Some people might argue that when more people move to rural area or develop new towns, it would damage local environment. In my opinion, it really depends on how to develop, development is not equal to damage environment. The government should adopt some policy to protect local environment.

.Given two existing sustainable development policy, let us look at another two possible solutions. Firstly, the west of China is an important investment area in China. In the western area, the urbanisation rate is still very low. In 2007, the urbanisation rate of the western China is only 37.83% while the rate in the east is 60.47%, and the average rate is 44.94%. Obviously, the low urbanisation rate prevents the improvement of national urbanisation rate. Only the urbanisation rate of Inner Mongolia and Chongqing are higher than the average rate of China (Zhao & Liu , 2010). If the government implemented a policy to send the huge number of surplus workforce to the western area, the west of China would be urbanized faster. In the mean time, the urbanisation of west of China would be able to create plenty of jobs as well. Secondly, finding approaches to send Chinese rural labour to work in foreign countries is another good method. It could reduce unemployment as well. It is not only a good way to make the farmers getting rich but also a good way to improve farmers' views and their work skills. These benefits could equip them and make them have enough abilities and skills to find a job when then come back (Wen, undated).

After showing these existing policies of sustainable development and possible solutions, we can understand that in China, the key methods of solving those urbanisation problems, such as over-crowded housing, unemployment and crimes are jobs creation and encourage surplus workforce to develop those less developed area, such as rural area, small towns and western China. As a result, the two existing solution effectively reduce the negative effects of urbanisation. It can fully testify that a policy of sustainable development could effectively solve urbanisation problems. The investment of western China and accelerating the pace of international employment are good way to solve urbanisation problems as well, because they can also create plenty of jobs to absorb rural surplus workforces.However, these two methods both have some limitations. Not all of people are willing to or have enough ability to migrate to western China or go to the other countries. The weather of western China is not as pleasant as the east of China, and the desertification of some western area is quite serious. In addition, not all of rural farmers have enough money to go to the other countries to find a job without any economic aid.

.Conclusion

.To summarise, in China, urbanisation has caused many serious problems, including over-crowded housing, unemployment and increasing crime rate. Chinese government has reduced the effects of these urbanisation problems effectively through adopting some policies of sustainable development. It can illustrate that urbanisation problems could be solved by sustainable development. However, due to the largest number of population of the world in China, they are still big problems in the modern society. The Chinese government should carry out some new policies of sustainable development to further solve these problems. The investment of western China and accelerating the pace of international employment are two possible solutions, but they both have some limitation. The authority of main land of China should consider both the benefits and limitation of these two possible solutions. If the government can adopt some new policies to reduce these limitation, these two possible solutions will be good methods to solve urbanisation problems effectively.

Reference:

Gale Fred & Dai Hongguo(2002) Small Town Development in China, A 21^st Century Challenge, Rural America, vol17, issue 1 pp.12-19.[online ] Available from:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/ruralamerica/ra171/ra171b.pdf

Wang Gabe T & Hu xiaobo (1999) Small town development and rural urbanization in China, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 29:1, pp.76-94. [online] Available from:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a778632865

Wen Guoming (undated) Cautions on China’s Urbanization. [online] Available from:

http://www.mansfieldfdn.org/pubs/pub_pdfs/wen0105_chinaurban.pdf

.WordIQ.com (undated) Sustainable development [online] Available from: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Sustainable_development

Zhao Bing & Liu jinpeng (2010) Research on Pushing Effect of Urbanization on China Western Investment. International Journal of Economics and Finance Vol.2 No.1 pp.182-185 [online] Available from: http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijef/article/viewFile/4961/4120

whole essay-ibrahim

Title: to what extend can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development?
Subtitle: has the Saudi government taken the right steps for sustainable development in term of urbanization since, its unification and explored oil, 8 decades ago?
Abstract :
An increase in petrodollars for the Saudi government helps the governors to spend enormous amount of money to develop the country. Saudi has reached a high level of development in several aspects in the Saudi society in short time by comparing with this society few decades ago. Saudi has built a huge roads network between cities, number of universities and schools. Improve the work place and income for the Saudi citizens, helping Saudi citizens for building new houses. Some of these plans of development have face protest from the religion institution as law of Saudi government. That led to appeared some corruption issues to avoid the monitor from the Sharia law to process their plans. This research attempts to analysis the process of development in Saudi and why they did not reach sustainable development even though they have spent a huge amount of money. To approach for trust view in this research will compare the development in Saudi with others countries in the same region who have the same circumstances. In the end will gave some recommendation for the Saudi government to approach sustainable development by involve religion institution in all aspect of development plans.


Introduction
As a result of the presence of Makkah and Medina, the two holy cities for Muslims people around the world, inside the board of Saudi Arabia, it should represent the Islamic society and concepts perfectly. Therefore, Saudi government has imposed Shariah law as constitution of the country. So, any measure or action should attain approval from religious institution before imposing by the government. It is important to confirm that the religious institution has a complete power to refuse any measure conflict with Shariah laws. Moreover, all the Saudi kings should attain approval from religious institution before assuming the reins of powers and also they have right and power to isolate them if they do not follow Shariah laws or national interest.

Shariah law is not only one influencing factor on policy makers in Saudi, there is also customary law which is called in Saudi society URF, culture heritage from Arab tribes, the agreement among these tribes before Islam existing 14 centuries ago. This law responsible for arrange and organize the relationship among members of one tribe or among others tribes and each tribe has representative is elected by the members of tribe(Eben Saleh. 1999).

These two factors Shariah law and customary laws URF are highly considerable from policy makers in any aspect in Saudi society. That means any plan from the government for development the country should take approve from religious institution before it be applied on the ground. Religious institution calls for Islamic urbanization for sustainable development. Islamic urbanization is development of the society through concern for the individual and society both in terms of education, healthcare developing cities and country and all aspects of live and support freedom and equality in rights and obligation within the framework of Islamic law and social customary if do not conflict with Shariah law.

This essay will discuss what Saudi government has done for sustainable development in term of education, healthcare, cities, roads network and analysis the change in lifestyle and improve standard of living in urban and rural region in Saudi. After that it will evaluate the outcome of sustainable development plans with government expenditure on these plans. Finally, it will compare the development between Saudi and others countries in Gulf region. This essay conclusion is the shariah law has positive implication in plans of sustainable development but the problem might come from who apply these rules or lack of knowledge in new technology from Shariah scholars and what the Saudi government has to do to reduce the disagreement between planners for sustainable development and Shariah scholars.

What Saudi government has done for sustainable development?

before unification of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabian eight decades ago by King Abdul Aziz AL Saud , people in this region were living under the poverty line and there are not any kind of education such as school or universities except some teacher in mosques to teach the Quran and the basic requirement of the Islamic religion. Moreover, not everybody has opportunity to involve in these basic teaching. Since Saudi founded and explored oil, government has become surplus of oil revenue helped to build strategic plans to re-build the country as contemporary design. As a new government has less of experience of development plans project, Saudi invite international company for draw the plans and implement it. In the beginning, government started in temporary project without clear vision of the future just attempt to reaching developed countries .No one deny Saudi government has built enormous projects in infrastructure, healthcare, education and cities and roads development.

As a result of massive amount of petrodollar, Saudi government has been able to build the basic infrastructure in short time. Just before fifty years ago, there are no urban city in most of region of Saudi especially in the middle of the country . Each village is independent on its resources and manage by oldest one who has the power and ability on influence on others. In around 1950 there are no central electricity services in most town and city in Saudi. Each place and community has to do their needs independently without any intervention or organize by the government. Most population in this period were living in houses built from mud and woods. These houses usually have less of facilities such water, electricity and sewage. In term of education most population do not have an opportunity to go to schools because there were no available schools near where they live and if it happen someone attained an opportunity to attend that usually just for primary or secondary school. Also, in this period no hospitals or even healthcare centers for treatment illness and diseases it was just limited on folk treatment without adequate of knowledge and equipment for diagnosis diseases accurately. Most people have died because of there are no qualified doctors and equipment and safe place at that time.

Nowadays, it is clear that Saudi Arabian has jumped from poor country and lack of basic needs for its population and number of them travel to neighbor countries to find a job to become one of countries who have developed rabidly. Saudi has built all cities with high standard of technology as a modern country. In short time, all population have all facilities and services for free such healthcare, schools and universities. Moreover, to encourage citizens to join schools, Saudi built schools in every where near housing with accessibility by provide students with transportation from and to schools for free. Also. Saudi students who get grant loan from government went to continue studying in universities a free accommodation and payment for expense as a fixed amount payable monthly.

In spite of Saudi concerns about how to develop its region and its citizens but these plans same time encounter with religion institution. Religious scholars take long time of discussion to approve specific plan of development. That belong to less of experience of religion scholars in developing plans or they cannot apply Islamic concepts on these plans or even they thought these plans might conflict with Islamic concepts or destroy these concepts. Mix workers or students in the same place are forbidden in Islam that let government for each kind of project has to do it for two genders and that increased the expenses of development projects. On the other hand, religion institution concerns about protect and maintain Islamic concepts. That create a huge argue between government planners and developers with Islamic scholars in controversial issues such workplace and the way of woman education recruit them. Both government planners and Islamic concern about development the country and citizen but they argue about the way and measurement and implement of these plans (Doumato. 1999).

Lifestyle in Saudi Arabian has changed rabidly since it founded eight decades ago until now. My family lives in village in the middle of the Saudi Arabian, it just 10K.M. from fourth commercial city in Saudi, I remember, when I was in primary school 25 years ago, that there were no road from our home to school it is just the same path or dirt road unpaved. Also, there is no state electricity or water. Moreover, the first year for me in primary school I remember that there is no chair or table in classrooms but I think I am lucky because I had opportunity to enrolled in schools and universities which was not available for me father or previous generation. Now both cities and villages have attained all government services and liking of roads networks.

In recent days people behavior and treatment has been shifted some time in negative side. They lose some traditional feature at social and moral. People become unhelpful each other as a result each one keen to increase its wealth and their lifestyle individually. Accelerating in lifestyle in Saudi society led to disintegration in society and family. Also, that led to reduce the practice of Islamic concept as Saudi people are considered as conservative Muslim at Muslim people (Hijazi. Etc. 1998).

The things that might criticize Saudi government is they pay more attention and investment in development project in design and technology in asset such as building and roads and in the other side they pied less in investment in education for new generation as modern education (Algindan. 2000). Shariah law support justice and equality and fight against corruption and exploitation issues. Saudi government pretends as Islamic country enforces the shariah laws but that is not true in the ground.

Development cost in Saudi is very high by comparing with other countries in the same region and circumstances. For example, in the recent days, Saudi government has announced about plan to build new sports stadium in Jeddah that will cost the government budget $ 10 billions. Whilst in just four years ago Qatar has built enormous stadium in just about $1 billion. Saudi government has spent a huge amount of money for development projects comparing with other neighbors countries but unfortunately the outcome of those expenditure are very low in term of quality, technology and safety. That might due to corruption or less of knowledge and experience of dealing with foreign company. However, Saudi society still commitment on its traditional and religion concepts. Islamic practices are essential to apply in all aspect of life day in Saudi society such as markets and companies. So far Saudi government has planned for development but its might not for sustainable development because some of them have been protested by devout Muslim such as King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. This university led to aggressive controversy in Saudi society even if it will encourage the knowledge and technology research but they think it will destroy their concept and traditional of Islam because the system of education lead to workers and students work in one place and that against their believe.

To evaluate the development in Saudi Arabia whether achieve high level of sustainable development or not is essentially to compare its achievements with other countries have the same conditions and resources in the same region. For instance, any visitor to United Arab Emirates especially in Dubai and Abu Dhabi can observe that the level of development in all aspects such as education, healthcare, justice, modern cities, human right and safety on building and roads. However, that might belong to this country was colony and that help them to draw plans for development. Also, the size of Emirate is small and population is low by comparing with size and population in Saudi. Moreover, development projects in Emirates do not need approval from religion institution that lead to rapid implementation of these projects.
From all these reasons and evidences, it can be say the Saudi government has developed its area but has not reached the sustainable development. That due to religion institution has just an advisory power not implementing power.

Conclusion:

Whereas reason for writing this essay is to analysis the impacts of Islamic laws (shariah) on sustainable development in Saudi Arabia. Shariah laws do not clash with sustainable development but planners and developers have to understand the theory and requirement of Islamic society. Shariah emphasizes of using resources fairly and distribute it equally that are essential in sustainable development. Also, shariah laws prohibited moral and financial corruption and they consider a big sin in Islamic religion. Moreover, the Islam encourages education and keen for new knowledge and build the society in high standard of living and fight against injustice and poverty. All these factors are essential for sustainable development which Saudi government should consider it whilst making any plans of developing country.

In recent years, Saudi government has launched new programs of education. There more than 50000 Saudi students around the world for studying high education. Also, they have plane to build more than 30 university in next five years in high standard of technology for meeting an increase of demand on high education in labor market (Ministry of High Education Saudi Arabia. 2010). These planes to reach their aims should attain the agreement from religion institution and suitable for Muslim society to avoid their protested.
Finally, to achieve the goals of sustainable development, Saudi government should allows religion institution work in the long side with other involvers.

Reference;

Al-Gindan. Y. M. "Undergraduate curriculum reform in Saudi medical school". Saudi Medical Journal. Vol. 21(4).324-326. 2000
http://www.smj.org.sa/PDFFiles/Apr00/Undergraduate.pdf. (accessed 20/07/2010)

Alshuwaikat. H, "GLS-based urban sustainability assessment: the case of Dammam city, Saudi Arabia" Local Environment, Vol 11, issue 2 April 2006.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a743780101(Accessed 20/07/2010)

Doumato. E, " Women and work in Saudi Arabia: How flexible are Islamic Margins?, Middle East journal. Vol.53. No.4, Autumn 1999.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/4329391. (accessed 20/07/2010).

Eban Salah. M, "The impact of Islamic and customary laws on urban form development in Southwestern in Saudi Arabia". Habitat International. Vol 22 Issue 4. 1998
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9H-3VR0CNW-G&_user=10&_coverDate=12/31/1998&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1386112455&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=1e5d8eb02a013a737c0728966bc5ccbb. (Accessed 20/07/2010)

Hijazi. N, Abalkhail. B, Seaton. A, " Asthma and respiratory symptoms in urban and rural in Saudi Arabia". European respiratory Journal, 1998.
http://www.ersj.org.uk/content/12/1/41.full.pdf+html. (accessed 20/07/2010).

http://www.alarabiya.net. (Accessed 20/07/2010)

Eddie's whole essay

Topic: To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met by policies of sustainable development?
Subtitle: How did Ho Chi Minh City solve its urban problem?

Abstract

Along with the emergence of urbanisation, more and more metropolitans have encountered a lot of urban problems, such as pollution and water management. It is clear that the UN and governments have paid attention to these problems and tried to use sustainable development policies to solve them. Since Vietnam adopted the reform programme, a lot of foreign investments had been poured into in Ho Chi Minh City and more and more people moved into this city. However, lack of infrastructures and environmental consciousness resulted in water supply problem. Moreover, poor families did not have plenty money to buy houses, so they built the house by themselves and lived in precarious areas. Residents’ lives were threatened; therefore, precarious settlements were another critical urban problem. To solve the water supply problem, the government should establish more infrastructures and consider natural factors. In addition, the government had implemented community development projects to improve the poorest family lives. In fact, the government had to consider all concepts to solve the water supply problem and solve uneven wealth distribution to give poorest families better standard of living.

Introduction

At the present time, it is interesting that there are more and more people trying to move to urban areas which then expand extremely quickly. It can be seen that this migration trend has taken place all over the world and the level of world urbanisation and the number of big cities has reached the highest level ever (Cohen, 2006). Following this trend, academics have coined a new word – urbanisation, which is widely defined as a trend that people migrate from rural areas to urban areas.

It is an undeniable fact that people move to cities for a lot of factors, such as getting high salaries, better life conditions, and more opportunities. In addition, local governments welcome people moving to urban areas, since these additional labours can stimulate economic growth and local competitiveness. However, along with urbanisation development, not only have advantages, but also disadvantages been brought to cities simultaneously. For instance, urbanisation might result in more serious pollution, traffic congestion, increased crime rates, energy deficiency, soaring housing price, and fierce competition in job hunting. All of these result in the decline of city competitiveness.

Encountering these serious problems, the UN and governments have paid attention to this issue. They try to solve this problem and commence implementing a variety of programmes, schemes and policies. These agendas are becoming the most urgent ones to be implemented in many countries, especially Asian countries. Currently, most Asian countries are developing countries or undeveloped countries and suffer from serious urbanisation problems. In the recent twenty years, the UN and Asian governments have adopted sustainable development policies which are deemed as solution of urbanisation problems. Most governments have dedicated to using sustainability programmes or policies to reduce urbanisation problem and retain the original and potential benefits of urbanisation trend.

At the present time, there is still no specific definition of sustainable development. People with different backgrounds interpret this term in various ways (Van Pelt, 1994). On the other hand, sustainable development “has become widely used to stress the need for the simultaneous achievement of development and environment goals (Pugh, 1996, P 23).” Also, sustainable development is called eco-logical sustainability which can be divided into five parts: economic sustainability, community sustainability, cultural sustainability and social sustainability. As a matter of fact, sustainable development is a long-termed programme which can improve environment, reduce the volume of resource used, and reduce waste (Mega, 1996a).

Since the liberalisation process was implemented in Vietnam, Vietnam’s two main cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, went through urbanisation very fast. More and more people flowed to these cities and some urban problems were resulted in. Therefore, this essay will first describe Vietnam urbanisation and urban problems. Then it will focus on Ho Chi Minh City’s water management problem and solve this problem. After that, it will describe Ho Chi Minh City’s precarious settlements and solutions. Finally, it will examine Ho Chi Minh City’s sustainable development policy.

Main body

Vietnam has experienced fast growth in economy and urbanisation since late 1980s when the Soviet Union collapsed. The GDP grew at almost 9% annually between 1992 and 1995 and the growth was concentrated in the industrial and service sectors. The 1989 census shows that there have been nearly 13 million people, 19.8% of the population, gathered in urban areas. Among them, more than 3 million people, almost 25%, lived in Ho Chi Minh City, the capital of Vietnam. In addition, the official data suggests that the urban population grew by 1.4 million between 1989 and 1994. However, the urbanisation and economic growth is very uneven in Vietnam. Most of investment and migration are occurred in two major cities – Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Actually, Vietnam “has one of the lowest levels of urbanisation in the world and one of the more highly concentrated (Drakakia-Smith and Dixon, 1997, p.24).”

The fast economic growth, rapid urbanisation, and huge amount of in-migration break down local registration systems, which had an important role to play in providing basic needs and employments. They were unable to provide effective assistance to migrants and this led to some serious problems. The problems included traffic congestion, various pollutions, water supply, inadequate drainage, and power and communications. Besides, since the local registration systems were break down, it is estimated that the official figure listed above were seriously under estimated. Therefore, the problems would be more serious than what published by official organizations (Drakakia-Smith and Dixon, 1997). Here I will focus on water supply and precarious settlements problems in Ho Chi Minh City.

Water Management

Stable clean water supply was a big problem for people who lived in Ho Chi Minh City. The city is full of canals and rivers. These canals and rivers were the living areas of most poor families, traffic routes of waterway transport, and various market areas. However, people were used to throw wastes directly to rivers and canals. As the number of people moving to Ho Chi Minh City increased, the needs of clean water also increased, but the water pollution became more serious. In addition, new-built factories also threw industrial wastes to these waterways. This made the access of clean water more limited (Bolay, Cartoux, Cunha, Du, and Bassand, 1997).

To deal with this serious problem, the authority had to implement water management. This could be divided into two different aspects. The first aspect was water usage. The water usage in Ho Chi Minh City was subjected to several natural constraints: the effects of the tides and raining seasons. Both of them might cause floods and make it difficult to manage water distribution and storage. The ever highest level of population made it even harder to access to clean water in low price.

The other aspect was the emission of waste water. The increased number of residents and factories caused the amount of dirty water increase as well. However, some topographical and social challenges made it difficult to solve this problem. Firstly, most urban areas were located at a very low altitude and beside the canals or rivers and the volume of rainfall were so high and so concentrated in certain period. In addition, most people and factories took canals and rivers as sewages and just threw their wastes into these waterways. Besides, the sewer system was built in fragmentary manner. It was not well connected at the level of entire city territory.

To solve this problem, local government should build more infrastructures, such as new sewers, repairs of existing water networks, and the tear down of houses built on piles. In addition, new disposition system for both industrial and household wastes should be built and the canals and rivers should also be cleaned.

Indeed, the establishment of new and better infrastructures was urgent, but this policy should be carried out in overall concepts. In fact, there were two areas in Ho Chi Minh City so concentrated that the water problem was so serious. Because of more and more in-migrants, people were forced to raise the ground level in order to avoid the systematic floods. This made the way of canals and rivers more and more shallow and narrow. If the government did not think of water management in overall concept, the establishment of new infrastructures would result in new forms of floods (Bolay, Cartoux, Cunha, Du, and Bassand, 1997).

Precarious Settlement

Since the reform programme called Doi Moi, which was a renewal policy, a lot of foreign investments had been poured into in Ho Chi Ming City. There were a lot of people moving to Ho Chi Ming City. Therefore, precarious settlements were a big problem for people who lived in Ho Chi Ming City.

Due to the modernization of Ho Chi Ming City, the municipal government lacked of comprehensive design to balance the local historical culture and the city development. Therefore, it can be seen that living conditions had become a seriously problem. On the other hand, there are around four-fifths of people who lived in urban area lived in the Ho Chi Ming City, the inner-city area (Bolay, Cartoux, Cunha, Du, and Bassand, 1997). The above mentioned two phenomena could be found that both technical networks and housing quality were very poor. Also, more and more people lived in the precarious habitat in urban areas, in where many canals crossed and floods were easily to happen. In fact, poor families in particular always encountered this problem, because the majority of them lived in areas near canals or rivers.

Poor families did not have plenty of money to buy houses. They just built the house by themselves and lived in the small space. They usually used materials, such as woods, sheet metal, palm leaf, bamboo and recycled building, to build their houses. However, these materials were easily to have a bad influence on people’ health, because they always utilised the inferior quality materials. Furthermore, their residences were lack of infrastructures and technical services, such as sewer system and drainage system, so waste water directly flowed into the streams and rivers which then contaminated the environment (Wust, Bolay and Du, 2002). It can be seen that they lived in lives which have highly potential hygiene crisis; therefore, these inhabitants were easily to get cholera and dysentery.

The majority of the poorest families did not get any legal documents to authorise the use of land right. In fact, they just built their houses and lived here. However, the municipal government did not adopt the positive attitude to solve this problem. Conversely, it began to restrict investment in public infrastructures and development in their live place. It resulted in poor standards of living of these families.

To overcome these problems and increase the standard of living of inhabitants living in Ho Chi Minh City, the government started carrying on community development projects. These projects examined the standard of living from residents’ points of views and started dealing with problems they believe the most urgent. This method was aiming at two goals. Firstly, the government wanted to resolve the most urgent problems to increase the quality of life directly. In addition, by assessing the situation from people’s opinions, people could be involved in the project and also take necessary actions (bottom-up approach) (Wust, Bolay and Du, 2002).

The projects were very realistic and had been proved to be effective. However, this method also had its down side. In fact, this method needed to balance the opinion of people who is responsible for urban development and the population in more sensitive way. In addition, the government also need to teach the public about related issues (Wust, Bolay and Du, 2002).

The projects was first took place in two of the areas in Ho Chi Minh City, in where the situation was most serious. These areas were all situated in lowland by two canals. In addition, most people here were from poor families and had no sense of environmental protection issues.

The government followed some guidelines to carry on sustainable development here. Firstly, a participatory self-help model was used. This was the model that local people had been familiar with through loan rotation. This model helped people save money to built toilets and other facilities to improve their lives. Secondly, the governments hired some people to show residents how they could improve their stand of living in practice. This measure effectively educated people how to do the practical things by themselves. Finally, the government started with the projects in small-scale, instead of general areas. They divided these two areas into several small groups and focus on each group at one time (Wust, Bolay and Du, 2002).

Challenges

The ‘bottom-up’ approach is being carried on by the Vietnamese government has been approved to be successful. Compared to the past ‘top-down’ method, this approach make the government understand the opinions of residents, especially the ones from poor families. The government had tried to build new houses for these families to solve settlement problems, but people from poor families think these houses were so expensive that they could not afford. However, the ‘bottom-up’ approach totally changed the situation, since it finally took poor families’ opinions into accounts.

However, this policy still had its limits. For example, one of the most important guideline was the cooperation from local people. Of course, it was effective that local residents could start thinking about their living condition and making improvements. Yet, the approach often resulted in the fights between the professionals and residents, since people from poor families lacked of education, especially about environmental problems and sustainable developments. In this case, people might refuse to cooperate with the government anymore (Wust, Bolay and Du, 2002).

In addition, lack of financial resources made these poor families is unable to improve their lives. It is true that the economy in Vietnam has been progressed, but the distribution of wealth is very uneven. Poor families cannot afford clean water, better settlements, and public infrastructures. The Vietnamese government should not only try to carry sustainable developments to improve residents’ quality of living, but also think about how to solve this wealth distribution problem. In fact, this is the fundamental problem of all urban crises.

Conclusion

It was clear that Ho Chi Minh City encountered two big urban problems, water supply and precarious settlements, which constrained the development of Ho Chi Minh City. The municipal government coped with water supply problem by two separate aspects: water usage and the emission of waste water. Indeed, the local government established new and better infrastructures to solve water supply problem. This sustainability policy was useful, but the most important thing was that the government had to increased people’s environmental consciousness and considered in all concepts, otherwise all efforts would be in vain.

Furthermore, in terms of precarious settlement, the local government had implemented community development projects to improve the standard of living of poor families. It can be seen that this policy could be considered successful to solve this problem, even though it still faced some challenges. In fact, to solve this problem totally, the government must also consider the fundamental problem, uneven wealth distribution. Then, the abovementioned problems would be solved more easily than before in Ho Chi Minh City.
Bibliography

Bolay, J. Cartoux, S. Cunia, A. Du, T. and Bassand, M. (1997) ‘Sustainable Development and Urban Growth: Precarious Habitat and Water Management in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’, Habitat International, Volume21, Issue 2 , Pages185-197, 1997

Cohen, B. (2006) ‘Urbanization in developing countries: Current trends, future projections, and key challenges for sustainability’, Technology in Society, Volume28 Pages63-80, 2006

Drakakis-Smith, D. and Dixon, C. (1997) ‘Sustainable Urbanisation in Vietnam’, Elsevier Science Ltd, Volume28, No.1, Pages21-38, 1997

Mega, V. (1996a) ‘Our city, our future: Towards sustainable development in European cities’, Environment and Urbanization, 8 (1), p.p. 133-154

Pugh, C. (1996), ‘Sustainability the Environment and Urbanization’, P23, Earthscan Publications Limited

Van Pelt, M. Kuyvenhoven, A. and Nijkamp, P. (1995) ‘Defining and measuring sustainability’, Institutional Journal of Pollution 5 (2/3), p.p.204-223

Wust, S. Bolay, J. and Du, T. (2002) ‘Metropolisation and the ecological crisis: precarious settlements in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’, Environment and Urbanisation, Volume 14, No 2, Pages211-224, 2002

Jackie's whole essay

The policy for sustainable use of land in China


Abstract
Nowadays, urbanisation is the certain trend of the world. It brings a lot benefit to cities and meanwhile it also brings numerous of problems. It has been treated as a big challenge to sustainable development. Land, as the base of human, is a particular important area of sustainable development and in which China’s government hasn't a good performance yet. Thus, aimed to meet the sustainable principle, this research focuses on the land using problems in China. It involves an introduction, a description of the serious problem, three key issues to solve this problem which are based on some other researcher’s data and writer’s own views of points. Some possible policies will also be given in the conclusion part.


Introduction

As a global change, urbanisation has become very much mainstream and a certain trend of most countries in the world. At the end of 2008, the UN reported that almost half of the world’s population live in the urban areas. The world is urbanising. For instance, in the United States, 5% of the population live in urban area, 50% by 1920 and eventually about 80% of the population live in the cities and suburbs today. In fact, urbanisation has two parts of meaning: the physical expansion of the urban areas and the movement of population from rural to urban also know n as urban migration. It is a complex process and as the result of many variables: economic, technological, environmental, political and demographic, it brings huge benefits to some aspects of a city. The organized communities become larger, more specialized and more interdependent, which can boost the economic growth, the industries and businesses will both develop rapidly in the trend of urbanisation. Besides the benefits of urbanisation, however, it brings a lot of drawbacks and problems as well, mainly appeals in overcrowd population, busy transport, pollution in water and overuse of land, workforce and unemployment, high stress and pressure. These drawbacks will do huge harm to both city and people and some can bring serious consequences. It can be taken as a challenge for sustainable development which is also a new trend coming up in 1970s. How to solve these problems become a very important issue all over the world. Land, the base of human existence, is affected by urbanisation deeply. Many countries have this problem, especially in China. China, as the largest developing country and economic centre in the world, the government did not perform very well in protecting land. Thus in this essay I focus on a particular aspect of sustainable development----the sustainable use of land in urbanisation. The research between land and urbanisation will help to achieve the sustainable use of land. Therefore I choose China as a specific case to figure out the situation of land using in urbanisation. Besides the description of the problems, combining some research and my own views, I tend to give three principles to meet this question and provide some possible policies which could be carried out by the Chinese government in the future. ( Bentham C. 1985)

Problems of land using in urbanisation

1.Overuse of land

The Quick expansion of urban area in China makes a huge amount of land, especially farmland was used for urbanising. According to the data from satellites, between 1986 and 1996, the average use of land in urban area has increased by 50% and during that decade the area of urban has a expansion of 60% as well. As a prediction, the urban population of China will reach to 60% by the end of 2010 which is indubitably a big challenge to sustainable development in current land using situation. The growth of urban population is about 2.2 times the growth of urban land. All the figures report a serious problem of land overusing. (Li X. 2007)

2. Structure imbalance

The structure imbalance exists mainly in the allocation of the land resource. Influenced by the long-run aim of developing manufacturing industry, quite a high percentage of land using is for industry and most of it is normally in the centre of city. In addition, statistics in 1996 showed that industrial land takes 24.2% of China’s urban area, which only takes less than 10% in developed countries. Furthermore, the imbalance also appears in the chaotic space structure system. Without an overall control of whole city, every urban area has its own system to manage the land. The lack of reasonable management has not only limited the function of ‘big modern city’, but also wasted the valuable land resources. Especially, China’s government always take the busy section of the city centre, the urban organization does not have the intended instructive and restrictive effect. (Wang J. 2007)

3. Deteriorated ecological environment

Any ecological environment has its own recovery ability. Once overuse is much greater than the ability, there will lead to a destruction of environment, no exception for land-ecological environment. Urban, as an assembly place of large population and industries, the environment is even more vulnerable. So far, serious environmental problems like land subsidence by overexploiting, pollution of both land and air…are all caused by the very much overusing of land in urbanisation. In addition of budget limitation, the deteriorated environment can’t be under effective control immediately, which makes the land-ecological system getting worse and worse.Issues and policies on sustainable use of land during the process of urbanisationConcerned about the problems in the use of land, how the government might do and what policy can meet these problems become a significant importance of sustainable development in urbanisation. From the common understanding of sustainable utilization of land, combining the certain research background of the process of urbanisation, we can divided the goals of study on the sustainable earth utilization into the following three aspects: protection of arable land, structure optimization and environmental optimization. These three principles come from urbanisation and consist of the three key element of sustainable land utilisation.

1. Protection of farm Land

The concern about protection of arable land mainly comes from the concern about food safety issue resulted from the non agricultural use of earth. ‘Food Safety’ originates from the 70s food crisis of last century. Proposed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, its definition is that everyone can get the necessary food for his survival and health anytime. It has three meanings: first, make sure there is enough food; second, stabilize the food support as much as possible; third, make sure that people in need of food can get the food.In developed countries, that high speed urbanization stage has passed. During the time of 1851 and 1950, the world was going through a localized urbanisation process. Urban came out and was fully developed in European developed countries. For those developed countries, the sustainable usage of earth means more attention on the environmental protection. From this point some Asian and South American countries have a close resembling of our situation. For these countries there are strong conflictions between the people and area of arable land. (Wang J. 2007)From the trend of the recent food demand of China, we can see that the future Chinese food demand is determined by the amount of people and the average consumption of per person. If birth control is strictly executed in China, they are able to control the population under 14billion in 2010 and the peak population would come as 16billion in 2030. China needs to decide for their food consumption pattern according to their resources and economy development. If the estimated average need for food is 385 kilograms in 2010 and 400 kilograms in 2030, the total would be 5billion tons in 2010 and 6.4 billion in 2030.Ensure the food supply based on the domestic resources should always be the goal for China. The features of Chinese arable land are that the amount area is large while the average for a person is small, the mountain area is large the flat area is small, the area of earth not suitable for agriculture is large and the percentage of agriculture land is small, especially for arable land, the quality of arable land is poor. Huger pressure is loaded on the shoulders of Chinese people.Theoretically speaking, when the urbanisation comes to a point that the price for food is expensive and the price of arable land is expensive enough that the laws of economy would protect the land. Two assumptions are made for this conclusion. First is that there is no export or import. If there is import there is the price of land for other commercial product would go down. Second is that people should realize the non economical value of land. As for China, the area of arable land plays an important role in the relationship between food supply and the potential increase.

2. Structure Optimization

Optimization means re-order the things in a more organised, effective and functional way. Theoretically speaking, spatial structure's benefit originates may divide into two kinds approximately: One kind is the structure coordinative benefit; the other kind is the structure layered benefit. Strengthens to the land utilization structure research, is helpful in the understanding the social and economic mechanisms during land utilization.Structuring the use of Land is complicated in urbanization. They can be divided into two levels. The first is the city system structure and the other is the land utilization structure within city. The urban system is a spatial system that consists of many related urban of different scale and different characteristics centring on a core city area. The spatial structure of cities and towns means the spatial combinations of towns and cities in the certain geographical area; the city size distribution structure means a country or a region within the hierarchy of the urban population distribution; urban functions is the labour role that the city in the country or region. The urbanisation process could be recognized as a process of the formation of urban system. The reasonable organization and utilization of spatial structure, city size and urban functions would be of high influence to the land utilization. (Rui W. 2009)The land distribution within the urban contains two aspects: the quantity of land for different departments and the spatial realization of these departments. How quantity of land for different departments being determined is is of high interest under research right now. Population based distribution may not be a good idea. Urban has a close relation with industry. So the problem might be solved from the industrial point of view. As different industry department would cost different area of land for the same value. The urbanization is a process of gathering of different industry. For the second aspect, we should stick to the rules of Pareto Optimization. Studying the rent distribution of land and combining it with the non industry value of land would be a good way. The goal is to make great usage of great land, make possible usage of bad land, and make intensive use of land. As for China, although since 1988 the government has started a series revolution for urban land, people need to pay to use, the spatial structure utilization of urban is still an issue.

3. Environment Optimization

Environment Optimization is different from environment protection. Environment protection is negative while environment optimization is positive. Environment optimization seeks the way to change the bad environment into good, improving the land quality instead of preventing it from going bad, as in environment protection.Environment optimization is an important issue. There are positive and negative effects on the environment as the urban forms. Though the positive part is that as urban forms economy goes up and the environment would recover or become better as the result. The environment pollution should not be forgotten.Environment system is divided into two parts: natural environment system and human environment system. Human Environment system consists of the urban system and arable land system. Natural Environment system consists of the forest, prairie, and lake and sea environment systems. Two sub systems in the Human Environment system: arable land system and urban land system are the mainly focused two during the urbanisation, as they are close to people. The effect is direct to them. These two systems would communicate with other Environment system through the circulation of matter and energy. Thus solving the problems within these two systems would solve problems in other systems.

Conclusion

To sum up, land, as the base for human living and developing, has met a big challenge by urbanisation. So the research of figuring out the solution for land using problems in urban area become of great importance. In order to meet the principle of sustainable development, which is to satisfy the current needs of people without affecting the next generation, the China’s government has carried out some policies to settle the solutions. However, that is far from enough. They do need to realise the important relationship between land and urbanisation and consider the key elements of sustainable use of land mentioned. Some new and useful policy should be carried out to improve the current situation of land utilisation. For instance, the policy of restriction of use farmland, establish a special department to organize structure, setting more serious punishment for harming environment and introduce new species to improve environment. There still a long long way to go for China’s government.

References:

Bentham C. (1985) Which Areas Have the Worst Urban Problems? Urban Study 1985 22: 119

Heineke J. etal (1998) Developments for planning the sustainable use of land resources

JSTOR (1974) The Town Planning Review, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Apr., 1974), pp. 216-218Li X. (2007). Our country countryside urbanization existence's question and development counter measure Exchanges the field, 132, 30-33.

Lwgates R. & Stout F (1996) The City Reader

Rachel Ramsey 2006 The language of urbanization in John Stow's: survey of LondonRui W. (2009) Sustainable Urban Development in China A Literature Review on Issues, Policies, Practices, and EffectsWang J. (2007). Our country countryside urbanization development's basic mentality searches analyze . Anhui agricultural science, 120, 54-57.

Wu S.(2007). Brief analysis countryside urbanization sustainable development Anhui agricultural science, 120,22-24.

Final Version - Sophie

To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development?

-The Health Problems of Urbanisation and Policies of Sustainable Development in China

Abstract:
This project aims to evaluate and analyse the existing policies in China whether they could resolve the urban population's health issues (communicable diseases, non-communicable chronic diseases, undeveloped national health system) or not.
After comparing and contrasting with American medical-care reform, is it the sustainable development for Chinese urban human being? According to the resources collected from official database, I judged these series of policies are not the sustainable plans, so the only thing is that we can implicate both objective and subjective methods for the sake of long - term well-being in China. Finally some limitations and further studies will be conducted in the future.

INTRO:
The majority of the dramatically urbanizing cities probably exist in the least developed countries (LDEC) which was originated from demographic and economic transformations over the past few decades. This phenomenon highlights constantly both adverse and advantage effects on the urban communities. Alternatively, it may lead to housing problem, social crime, traffic congestion or environmental contamination and so on (Vlahov & Galea, 2002).
According to a survey of the United Nation (1990), Urbanisation is the growth in the ratio of population migrating from rural areas into the cities and towns. That is, the sleepy city of thousands which has suddenly mushroomed to a congested area with millions of people crowded in the street (Harpham, 1994). On this account, sustainable development which was defined as the combination of sociology, economy and culture with environment should be adopted in order to address the urban problems. (Hopwood, et al, 2005).
Based on the published literature and evidence in the third world, take China for instance, this paper attempts to analyse and evaluate the dimensions of metropolises that affect human health risks as well as the relevant sustainable policies which could be conducted by the authorities. At the first sight, it reveals the potential causes of human chronic morbidity by virtue of the poor health services around expanded cities of China. Secondly, the essential factors will be specifically discussed in terms of communicable and non-communicable diseases, the undeveloped health care services and systems. Then, it looks into the current policies have adopted of sustainable development to municipal cities in China which compared with the U.S. Medicare Reform; Finally, I will show suggestions and recommendations for tackling the population.
I conclude that the more processes of urbanisation, the worse conditions of public well-being. The sustainable way which aims to improve urban population’s health issues could adopt the reasonable methods both objective (government policies) and subjective (lifestyles, habits, healthy awareness) aspects from long-run.
The People's Republic of China has about 1.3 billion population, which is the largest in the world. Meanwhile, China is confronting the considerable evolution of Urbanisation at present. The percentage of urban inhabitants has expanded from 23% to 42% by 2006(UN, 2007). According to China's government survey (2006), it is likely that this trend will increase further to more than 50% by 2020. As a result, the Chinese mega-cities are suffering a human health crisis for chronic sickness in terms of environmental (physical and social environment) hazards, a multitude of people, lower income communities and poor national health care systems.

Nevertheless, the rapid scientific innovations in health-medical methods and facilities have significantly split the centralized population in urban areas from numerous original infectious diseases which had killed thousands and millions of citizens in historical periods also the industrialization of 18th century in European nations (Rosen, 1993).



BODY PARTS
PROBLEMS:
-Communicable Diseases
Since the immigration of the demographic shifts from rural to urban regions decades ago, compared with other developing countries China has made vital accomplishment in both preventing and controlling communicable diseases by adopting multi-dimensional measures. Nonetheless, with the advancement of global economy, the rebirth of certain communicable morbid symptoms such as tuberculosis, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs); acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and emerging infectious diseases (EIDS) could probably increase the public concerns about the negative influences on public health in China. Nowadays, because of non-ethical behaviours, the figure of citizens infected with STDs has transmitted the constant hazards for infectious communities. In addition, it is evaluated by NHO (National Health Organization) in 2002 that at least around 1.2million population have been infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in urban regions. Furthermore, the pestilence of tuberculosis (TB) in China has reached plague proportion (Lee, 2004).

In fact of that, owing to the expansion of communicable or non-communicable diseases in the world, yet the prevention and treatment methods of those diseases are by no means appeared so complex in such process of globalization and urbanization, which could embody Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), occurred in 2003.

Figure 0: Diabetes in China -National Well-Being Hazards
‘‘A: Urban diabetic prevalence rates in 2007. B: If all patients diagnosed with diabetes had access to a treatment costing 50 cents a day (with a patient compliance of 60%) the market value would increase from US$1.1billion to $1.7 billion by 2017’’ (Ward, 2008)

-Non-communicable Diseases
Due to the industrialization, urbanization and unhealthy lifestyles, the metropolitan cities have been suffering such the non-communicable diseases as diabetes, mental problems, cardiovascular illness, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It is the most distinct public health issues that can affect the destroyed human health-systems and the considerable medical expenditures (Lee, 2004).
According to a National Survey of 2002, approximately 20 million diabetes and 17.7 million people are diagnosed with COPD; the number of the people with high blood pressure is over 100 million in Chinese cities. In that sense, the dramatically growing non-communicable diseases could pose the great threat to the health of inhabitants especially the young working communities within varies urban areas, plus the exceedingly high medical fees for such epidemic in the People's Republic of China (Lee, 2004).
Therefore, mental well-being is regarded as an essential issue of human health. Notwithstanding, the large number of adolescents and youngsters are in danger of suffering from mental problems in China currently. "Bad familial environment and social ethos, improper education style, unhealthy media function, and increasingly greater scholastic pressures have made them become the 'psychologically fragile generation (Lee, 2004, p332)'. The Chinese youth mental research of recent years indicated that the number of Chinese youth who have had mental problems was 24%. Furthermore, the proportion of students with such diseases in universities was 29%; while the rate of younger people in high schools was 36% (China Internet Inf. Cent. 2003).

-Undeveloped health care services and systems
Perhaps it is also worth pointing out that the unbalanced distributions of national health care services and systems implemented in different cities, particularly, the divergence of medical-care levels and organizations in China. When it mentioned about health resources issues, we cannot ignore the fact that the more people are living in urban areas, the less health resources to be allocated efficiently in an equal way. Although a few of urban areas have seen the unprecedented changes of public health systems and technologies which could attain such levels of developed countries as Beijing, Shanghai and other coastal cities; On the contrary, certain inland or western areas need medical equipment and the professional doctors(Lee, 2004).

It seem unreasonable that Chinese policies and regulations of health subsidies or welfares Government can provide some free and excellent health services, but the scarce of medical funding, most people should pay for high prices but primary health services or basic social welfares within the back grounds of excessively huge health demands of the urban citizens. Thus, Lee. L (2004) examined that China has burdened a huge economic pressure of medical reform while it is inequitable for poor citizens who cannot afford high expenditures of disease treatment.


SOLUTIONS
-Approaches to Tackle the Health Jeopardy in Mega-cities
-Existing Chinese Policies
The well-being of public is currently a crucial concern for Chinese governments, which have already implemented three holistic strategies and perspectives on health (Corvalán et al, 1999).
The first round of Chinese urban health insurance policy can be traced back to 1960s when co-existed the Labour Insurance Schemes (LIS), and the Government Insurance Schemes (GIS). LIS applied for the enterprises' staffs while GIS just for the employees of the official establishments or governments. Whenever those people were injured or infected diseases, they can obtain 75%-95% subsidies from the government without any contributions to the public health system (Zheng, Jong, et al, 2010). Moreover, the Chinese authorities have funded the stated-owned medical care systems controlled by the Ministry of Central Health. But the biggest obstacle to doing service is a huge burden of national medical costs.

With the improvement of medical systems and the growth of employees, the central government cannot afford the huge expenditures of public health any more. Mainly, majority of urban residents did not have the chances of medical aids or the health insurances during 1951-1978(Zheng&Jong, et al, 2010). So the central state confronted new challenge while public could not obtain the efficient medical care and health insurance in China.
-The Second Round Reform
Accordingly, as the opening reform policy and market-oriented system have conducted, the state government adopted the second reform of ill-functional plan since the 1980s forwards. The amendment of urban health documents described that both employees and employers should pay the health insurance fees in order to transform the collective responsibility into individual protection. Until 1998 Chinese government has performed the urban labour/worker health insurance amendments within the whole cities (Zheng&Jong, et al, 2010) Indeed, such a new cohesive reform strategy as the urban employee basic health insurance scheme (BHIS) has provided the integrated services for civilians (Xu&Wang, et al, 2007).Actually, this kind of health plan was put into practise just for less than nine months which arise from national financial deficits and turmoil of economic market.
-The new wave health reform is an ongoing process
On April 2009, the People's Republic of China has funded $124 billion to the new round health reform plan for the next 3 years. It aimed at overhauling the national medical-care systems, lower costs but higher quality services as well as covering the universal wholesome. Meanwhile, the principles of such a new reform were concerned about ‘Cost, Quality, Efficiency, and Equity (Lawrence, 2009).’ The National State Council claimed that the government would do its utmost to guarantee the distinct community which refers to the poor patients, infants, women and seniors could receive the priority of medical aids and services as soon as possible all around the country. Although flooding migrants rushed into cities nowadays, the gap of health-care systems between urban and rural regions cannot be disregarded.

Figure 1: Medical Insurance Coverage in China from 2003 to 2007
(International Social Security Association ISSA, 2009)

-Compared with U.S. Reform Policy
The recent history of the American healthcare system which has undergone the fundamental changes and challenges over the last seven decades may provide a good example for China and other developing countries. Especially, a prominent event of Medicare services is the delivery shift the patient-centred medical home (PCMH) in 2007(Diane & Stephen, 2009). American Medicare Association (AMA) along with other health-care institutions together funded 20, 000 millions in order to execute 9 types of civilian healthy plans and whole states public insurances in 2007, these amendments has been implemented efficiently by diverse profitable organisations (Diane & Stephen, 2009).
While the election of American president Barack Obama proclaimed the new health reform bills in 2009. Since the big failure of the medical-care reform in 1993, this plan has gradually from some degrees, resolved three major constant issues: the lack of insurance, the dramatically increased healthcare expenditures, important errors in service (Victor& Fuchs, 2009).

-Can those measures be sustainable?
RECOMMENDATIONS+ CONCLUSIONS
Therefore, an embarrassing circumstance is that the more development of urbanisation, the worse environment of mankind’s well-beings.
From author’s views, the existing policies are not the sustainable strategy which could tackle population’s healthy issues from long term in China.

China's urban resolutions can tackle the short-run human health hazards. Apart from them, the negative effects may be probably exposed in the future subsequently, for instance, insufficient provision of urgent medical reserves; lack of supervision and laboratory ability; changeable series of workforces; deficiency of competent environment; morbid reporting scheme, which can cause a retardation in news transmission; plus shortage of health funds(Lee, 2004).

-Urbanization & Humanization
Notwithstanding, as the improvement of urbanization and industrialization, the health crisis which human have to deal with seems to be practically complicated than ever. China's public well-being may meet the excessive human requests for medical services which should combine the powerful administration and efficient health services distributed equally in varies provinces of Chinese people.

Hence, the health institutions or charitable organizations could provide comprehensive health (mental, physical) education and consultation. If the National Health System can directly or indirectly embody the features of Lee’s idea of ‘information, technification, globalization and humanization', our people will likely live in a harmonious circumstances whenever social-environment or physical-environment with sustainable development universally.

CONCLUSION
Both of the objective and subjective measures could be adopted, for instance, government should fund certain projects about improving the urban environment for the sake of citizens' insanity; mainly, the health & medicine associations need to conduct scientific research for treatment, anti-biotic drugs and healthcare facilities; the final objective way is to educate and protect three types of people: females, seniors and younger generations whenever it concerned about mental or physical elements.
The key task is depended on public themselves - Prevention. Keep away from morbid lifestyles, and cultivate more positive habits, for example, do more sports and maintain a better state of mind.
Thus, all the above elements could be regarded as the most sufficient and sustainable development for both Chinese and global population. The priority is that public should take preventative measures right now; government ought to carry out more responsible health insurance plans and more affordable medical-care systems in China.
However, the limitation of whole study is the database and evidence which I collected from official resources sometimes maybe not reliable or unbiased. In addition, without the relative backgrounds of medical knowledge, it is totally a tough procedure for me to do this project. Hence, regardless of government benefits and business profits, international cooperation could help to advance with sustainability in years to come.


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