Jackie's essay draft

Title: to what extend can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development?
Subtitle: the policy for sustainable use of land in China /make a statement or a question/
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. 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. China, as the largest developing country and economic centre in the world, has also carried out some policy of sustainable development. Therefore I choose China as a specific case to figure out the situation of land using in urbanisation, the problems, how the policy face the problems and other possible solutions to meet sustainable use of land.

/Good. But what's your thesis?/


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.

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.

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 urbanisation
Concerned 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.

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
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.
/This paragraph a bit unclear./

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 /needs explaining/. 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.

ConclusionTo 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. A new and useful policy should be carried out to improve the current situation of land utilisation. /For example?/

References:
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C.G. Bentham Which Areas Have the Worst Urban Problems? Urban Stud 1985 22: 119

Rachel Ramsey 2006 The language of urbanization in John Stow's: survey of London

Rui Wang Sustainable Urban Development in China A Literature Review on Issues, Policies, Practices, and Effects,2009

http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/9290/

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/Sort the bibliography./