Nick's essay introduction

Title: What extent can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development?
Subtitle: what are the impacts of massive population growth by the policy of sustainable development in Shanghai? [not clear]

Introduction:


For promoting the economic development and improving human beings life standards, urbanization has become the main trend in lots of countries. So what is urbanization? Actually urbanization is a process that humans entered industries era, the proportion of agricultural activities began to decrease in some areas, and on the contrary, a proportion of non-agricultural activities began to increase. It also means that more and more rural population transformed into urban population. In fact urbanization is the product of the industrial revolution. It is a symbol [?] of city development. What the urbanization brings for us contain a growth of economic, a progress of the society, an improvement of technology and so on. However, when we appreciate these significant achievements of urbanization, some problems because of urbanization also cannot be ignored, such as a rapidly increasing proportion of urban population. More and more rural people migrate into urban. Therefore, we need to consider that whether a city could dominate the continuous expansion of the population with a limited resource. More and more household refuse and auto emissions also could cause lots of serious pollution.

For solving these negative impacts, many countries have mentioned that “sustainable development” will become an important strategy to face with urbanization issue. So what is sustainable development? In fact, sustainable development is a growth model of long term development. The currently definition explained by the World Commission on Environment and Development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (WCED, 1987; P 43). Generally, sustainable development involves main 4 aspects which are environment、science、society and economic. For long-term interests, sustainable development has a close relationship with urbanization issue. For instance, the strategy of SD needs to deal with some issues about how to allocate the resources efficiency, how to decrease the pollution and how to balance the ecological environment in a city.

In some developing countries, urbanization is more serious [?] than developed countries. In China, Shanghai as an international city could be a typical example. From the Shanghai Statistics office, there are more than 19 million people in 2010. Among this figure, the number of floating population is more than 5 million. And currently the area of Shanghai covers about 6340.5 Km2. it shows a high density of population in Shanghai. Seriously [?], due to urbanization this high density is increasing rapidly. It causes lots of problems such as serious traffic jam, less planting, poor environment and so on. Especially, because of economic risk in recent years it will also bring a higher unemployment. It is really hard to find a job. For dealing with these urbanization problems, the government has made some policies such as transfer factories to suburbs; build more complete public transport system and explore Pudong as a new urban area. In my essay I am going to talk about more problems because of urbanization, and how to deal with them by sustainable development. And also I will give an assessment for these achievements and policies. Finally, I will give some recommendations.


Reference
1) Qing S, (1997). Urban transportation in Shanghai, China: problems and planning implications.
2) Liu T, (1994), Urban renewal and development of Shanghai city. Journal of Chinese geographical science. Volume 4, Number 3, PP. 219-231,1994.
3) http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/2005shtj/2009shgl/rkjy/userobject1ai8633.html
4) http://www.shanghaihighlights.com/essentia
5) Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau. 2002. Shanghai Statistical Yearbook. Beijing: China Statistics Press
6) World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future. (New York: Oxford University press, 1987)

Introduction ---Sue

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

Sub-Title: Can the [art.] sustainable development policies solve the problems of urbanisation in Hong Kong?

Introduction

Urbanisation contains the population of immigration which is the physical growth of society living in civic area [unclear]. The world’s cities are growing with massive population growth because more and people are moving from rural to urban areas .The majorities of People who live in the cities are concentrated in a narrow area rather than stay in a large region. The government and others provide more service and resource allowedly [?] such as water, electricity and transport to a large number of citizens. Education, business and technological advances are also more accessible in urban area result in economic growth. Thus, the opportunities which are jobs and prosperity are the main factors to attract people to move to cities because people can seek their jobs to improve their quality of life and build a better future for their children. However, the characteristics of urban area can be caused a lot of serious problems in the societies like high housing price, limited resource, pollution, high population, traffic congestion, crime in the most of cities in east or west where are suffering in these situation. In fact, the problems of urbanisation have been the barriers to bring negative effects for the economic growth. Therefore, these problems have led the government to set the polices of the sustainable development to solve the problems such as waste management charge scheme, recycling scheme, renewable energy, urban living space. Sustainable development depends on how profitably balance on the objectives of society, economy and environment to maintain the needs of present for human and future generations to improve their lifestyle, protect ecosystems and the quality of environment with economic growth. In this essay, it will be given the case of Hong Kong which is a huge population east city and focus on the main urban problems of high housing price and pollution such as air, noise and waste to evaluate the different policies of sustainable development whether a effective solution to meet the aim that can increase the quality of lifestyle and preserve the environment but maintain the economic growth simultaneously. Additionally, it will be used the case of Hong Kong and Edinburgh to compare the various policies which can be more efficient to improve the urban problems between the cities in East and West. At the end of this essay, it will be given [passive?] the recommendations in the future and my opinion that I think it is obvious that Hong Kong’s urban problems are more serious than Edinburgh’s .Although different kind of sustainable development policy can solve the problems but I believe there are many more problems than solution in Hong Kong.


Reference:


1. Peter Roberts and Peter Hills (2002) Analysis and policy in East and West – the case of Hong Kong and Scotland , Journal of Sustainable development Vol 10 pp117-121 Available from:http://www.docin.com/p-43528787.html
(accessed 5 July 2010)


2.Urbanisation, BBC Homepage,18th June 2002,Available from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A757415 (accessed 5 July 2010)

3. What is sustainable development? Available from http://www.susdev.gov.hk (accessed 5 July 2010)

ಇಬ್ರಾಹಿಂ

Ibrahim's outline
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, 8 decades ago and explored oil?
Introduction:
Society review: structure, religion, location.
Definition of Islamic urbanization
The impacts of Islamic law on policy makers
Main body:
What the government has done for sustainable development in term of education, healthcare, cities, roads network.
Analysis changing on lifestyle and standard of living in urban cities in Saudi.
Evaluate the cost with outcome.
Compare development in Saudi with other countries in the Gulf region.
Conclusion:
Preview of new generation of Saudi people
What government should do for sustainable development of urbanization for the future.
References:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/112596666/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a743780101
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

Introduction-Kelvin

Topic: To what extent can the problems of urbanisation be met by a policy of sustainable development?
Sub-title: How to iron out the urban problems? Are the policies successful? Find the answer from Hong Kong. [make this into one question]
More than half of the population of the world are living in the urban areas now (Ciok Ling Ooi, 2009). There is no surprise that it is the trend in the future of the world. From this point of view, urbanisation is used to describe the growth of the urban cities. Kam Wing Chan (2009) claimed that urbanisation is caused by the growth of population in the city. The migrants moving from rural areas to urban area and the sprawling of the urban area are the two main patterns of the urbanisation. At the very beginning, urbanisation can boost the economic growth thus leading to a higher living standard of the whole community. Government welcomes the [art.] urbanisation or even encourages and develops more urban areas. However, the reality is that urbanisation brought the economic growth to the community together with a handful of urban problems. The main underlying cause of the problem is the huge population in a tiny place. In this essay, Hong Kong is being used as a case in order to illustrate the urban problems in most of the cities in the World. Additionally, Asia is the home of the fastest growing urban population in the World. Therefore, the main cities in Asia such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai are suffering from the urban problems. Those problems are now the obstacles for the economic growth because of the poor transportation system and housing environment and heavy pollution in terms of air, water and solid wastes. With the aim to eliminate the negative effects of the urbanisation and continue the city development, sustainable development policy is the ultimate method. According to WCED [who?] report, “sustainable development refers to establish the fundamental needs of the current population without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Based on this principle, the sustainable development policy does improvement on environmental and economic and quality of life for the people living (David L [is that his surname?], 2007). Definitely, it is not an easy task for the government to balance every aspect, therefore, there is a need to evaluate the policy regularly. In the case of Hong Kong, sustainable development policy had been carried out for a long time with the aim to iron out the two main urban problems, which are housing and transport problem. Indeed, to a fair extent the policy can meet the urban problem in Hong Kong. At the end of the essay, [gr.] do comparison with Singapore in order to evaluate the sustainable development policy in Hong Kong and come up with some recommendations eventually [v.}.

References:
• Ciok Ling Ooi 2009. Challenge of sustainability for Asian urbanisation. Current opinion in Environment Sustainability 2009, 1:187-191
• David L. Blumenthal and Edward J. Martain 2007. Urban Sustainable Development, Lower Income communities, and Transorganisation. Public Administration, 30: 95-107
• Kam Wing Chan and Ying Hu 2003. Urbanization in China in the 1990s: New definition, Different Series, and Revised Trends. The China Review, vol. 3 No, 2(Fall 2003), 49-71
• Report of the the World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future. Chapter 2: Towards Sustainable Development. Available at: http://habitat.igc.org/open-gates/ocf-02.htm#I

Introduction - Shantanu

Introduction:
The latest trend in the developing countries is urbanization. Urbanization actually means development in the urban areas of the country and migration of the people from rural areas to those developed urban areas. [Unclear] It is good for a country to develop but on the other hand it is not good for the rural areas, which remains undeveloped. [are you going to support this assertion?] Moreover this kind of migration [what kind?] also creates a lot of pollution and economic imbalance. This is harmful for sustainable development. Sustainable development means development that will sustain [again, don't define a term by using the same term] or remain for a long time period considering factors in mind that can be responsible for future development like environment. There can be some other factors like empowerment of the poor people, which can be a big consideration for future development. If the poorest populations get their empowerment in the rural areas then it will be nothing but a proper sustainable development for a developing country and those poor people will not try to go to the urban areas for living. One of the most popular steps is microcredit for the sustainable development in Bangladesh. People can borrow money from the bank but they need to show some property to the bank against that loan. They call it collateral [use it then define it] in the language of business. But no bank is going to give loan to a poor man who doesn’t have anything as a collateral. May be if that person could get the loan he could have done a business for living and crossed the poverty line. For this reason microcredit has been introduced in Bangladesh. Microcredit is a very small amount of loan for the poor people that they can give back in very small installments through a long period of time. For small weekly installments it became very easy for them to repay back the money. As they didn’t show any kind of collateral, staffs from bank needed to know about their full information like where they live, about their neighbours and many more. This microcredit program was taken by some non-profit organizations (NGO) and later some governmental projects were also included. But the question is how far this was a real help for the poor people. There are many questions about the efficiency of the microcredit like microcredit is not reaching the vulnerable areas of the country, their interest rate is so high that they are making poor people even poorer or they are making gender conflict even worst. Microcredit was good when it was first introduced but now it is not a real help for the poor people of the rural areas of Bangladesh, it became like a burden for them. In my essay I want to analyze both positive and negative issues of microcredit and how efficient is its role for the sustainable development.

ref:

www.grameen.com

S.Amin, A.S.Rai, G.Topa(2003), “ Does microcredit reach the poor and vulnerable? Evidence from northern Bangladesh”, Journal of Development Economics, volume 70, pg 59-82.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBV-46X2MGM-2&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F2003&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1390333120&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=8c14e31a04ae3ef66e7db7c851c1bc5d

Mallick, Ross(2002) 'Implementing and evaluating microcredit in Bangladesh', Development in Practice, 12: 2, 153 — 163.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713412875

Essay Outline - Shantanu

Topic: To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development?
Focus point: Is microcredit really the way forward in rural Bangladesh?
Introduction:
Definition of urbanization as it is a latest trend.
Definition of Sustainable development
Short description of microcredit and why it is related to sustainable development?
Thesis: Microcredit is not that much effective for the sustainable development in rural Bangladesh.
Main body:
How microcredit really works?
Which organizations are mainly working with microcredit: Grameen Bank, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), and Bangladesh Rural Development Board's (BRDB) RD-12 project.
Success history of Microcredit so far.
Real picture and negative impacts of microcredit: high interest rate, not reaching the proper vulnerable areas, making poor people even poorer.
Conclusion:
Summary of the negative impacts.
Restate the thesis.
Some recommendation and own opinions.

Ref:
S.Amin, A.S.Rai, G.Topa(2003), “ Does microcredit reach the poor and vulnerable? Evidence from northern Bangladesh”, Journal of Development Economics, volume 70, pg 59-82.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBV-46X2MGM-2&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F2003&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1390333120&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=8c14e31a04ae3ef66e7db7c851c1bc5d
Mallick, Ross(2002) 'Implementing and evaluating microcredit in Bangladesh', Development in Practice, 12: 2, 153 — 163.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713412875

Outline - Freya

To What Extent Can the Problems of Urbanisation be Met by a Policy of Sustainable Development?
——The situations of water, land (housing), and transport in Tokyo

Introduction:
a) What is ‘sustainable development’? Give the definition of it.
b) What is ‘urbanisation’? Give the definition.
What problems are caused by it? Like crowd, pollution, lack of space
c) The mega-cities all suffer from these problems, such as Tokyo.
Talk about three main arenas: water, land (housing) and transport in Tokyo.
d) The present policies to these problems and possible solutions in Tokyo.
e) Whether these solutions are workable or not. If workable, what degree do they met the problems in Tokyo.

Body:
1. What happened to water? Such as groundwater
The cause of these problems
The policies for solving and evaluation of it, may be referential to other cities
2. Lack of land, not enough house, increasing population
Land readjustment, land development
To what extent, shortage in housing was solved
3. Capability of transport system
The causes: population, vehicle, the road
The present solutions
Check effectiveness and conceivably adopted ways from other cities

Conclusion:
General description of these problems and evaluation of solutions.
Lessons and how to improve
Good experience for others
Look forward to the sustainability of future


Bibliography：
Dhakal, S. (2004) Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Asian Mega-Cities: Policies for A Sustainable Future. Japan, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES).

Furumai, H. (2008) Rain and Reclaimed Wastewater for Sustainable Urban Water Use. In: Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Vol. 33(5), pp. 340-346. Elsevier Ltd.

Hayashi, T. et al. (2009) Effects of Human Activities and Urbanization on Groundwater Environments: An Example from the Aquifer System of Tokyo and the Surrounding area. In: Science of the Total Environment. Vol. 407 (9), pp. 3165-3172. Elsevier.

Jenks, M. & Dempsey, N. (2005) Future Forms and Design for Sustainable Cities. Oxford, Architectural Press.

Mendes, M. R. (2005) Urban Environment Management Challenges in Asia. Japan, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES).