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. It is good for a country to develop but on the other hand it is not good for the rural areas, which remains undeveloped. Moreover this kind of migration also creates a lot of pollution and economic imbalance. This is harmful for sustainable development. Sustainable development means development that will sustain 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 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.
What is Microcredit?
Most of the population in Bangladesh lives below the poverty line. There are some rural areas in Bangladesh the people from there can’t do anything for living just because they don’t have the money to start with. No commercial bank will give them loan because they have nothing as guarantee which is called collateral. Keeping this situation in mind one process of lending money has been introduced which is called microcredit. Microcredit means small amount of loan that can be distributed to those people who live below the poverty line and who don’t have anything as collateral. With help of government and some donor agencies from various part of the world, some non-profit organization has started microcredit in the rural areas of Bangladesh. Grameen bank, BRAC and Bangladesh Rural Development Board's (BRDB) RD-12 project are the most popular organizations who are devoted to microcredit. Microcredit can be agriculture credit, rural credit, cooperative credit, consumer credit, credit from savings and loan associations.
There are a lot of methods of running microcredit in the world. In Bangladesh there is a slightly different method for microcredit program. The organization has to choose an area where they will run the microcredit program and then they will employ field manager and other field workers for that particular area. During the first few days field manager and other field worker will just visit the area and be familiar with the local community. Then they will find those people who need credit to begin a new way of living. They will make group of five people from the same neighborhood. In that group of five people only two people will be responsible for taking the loans and repay the loans with interest every week. This is being done because it is easier to track two people instead of five if there is any occurrence of non-repayment. After fifty successful weeks other group members will also be eligible to get the loan. These groups are formed with only the women to empower the female population of the rural areas. With the help of the group system organizations can borrow money without any collateral. So in this way microcredit is playing an active role for the sustainable development in Bangladesh because in a country when the poor people become independent then they can take play a proper role for the country’s economy.
Microcredit organizations got a very warm welcome and recognition among the rest of the world. Apart from many well-recognized prizes, Grameen Bank and its founder Dr. Yunus got the highest prestigious prize: The Nobel Peace Prize. Moreover many donor agencies and banks like World Bank, UNDP are helping microcredit in Bangladesh with loans and grant loans.
Though microcredit is very popular in the world, there are some very crucial problems which can raise a question for the existence of the microcredit. First of all is the profit. Every organization needs profit to survive. In the case of the non-profit organizations they earn service charge as a profit or it can be a subsidiary program for the government. But Grameen Bank is not a subsidiary program. Its 25% shareholder is government and the rest 75% ownership is for the poor people because while they take the loan they have to open a saving account in the bank. That savings account is their ownership in the bank. So to survive Grameen Bank has to charge interest rate and that interest rate is 20% per year which is far more (12%-15%) than any commercial conventional banks(www.standardchartered.com.bd). But this is not the end, because of their increased expense they need to charge up to 33%, 40% or 46%. If that happens then there will be increased rate of loan default (J.Morduch, 1999).
The target of microcredit is reaching the poorest population in the country and to help them with loan. But it has been proved that microcredit is now reaching the poor but not the most vulnerable poor. In the villages of Bangladesh there are many rural households don’t have the insurance against the risks of floods, sickness, crop damage, fluctuation of price, political problems and other natural calamities. These households can be counted as the vulnerable population. Both rich and the poor people can be counted as the vulnerable in the research. But it has been found that generally poor people are more vulnerable than the rich. The research was done by comparing 1991-1992 to 1995 that if people were poorer and more vulnerable or not. Comparing the average consumption and average vulnerability between the members and the non-members did this. It was clear those households joined microcredit in 1995 were poorer than the population who didn’t join at that time. But it was not clear for the case of vulnerable. The research was done between two villages, and the average result is vulnerable people have been avoided. Subsidized loan cannot be encouraged because there is high risk of default (S.Amin, A.S.Rai, G.Topa, 2003). Even one officer has mentioned that they are looking for members who are “not hopeless”(Todd, 1996, p.173). So it is very clear that microcredit is not reaching the vulnerable poor.
The next issue is using the woman population as the member. In Bangladesh the two most popular microcredit organization (Grameen bank and BRAC) works in the same way. They take only woman as their member and those women had to be present in the center meetings each week where they had to repay their loans. Grameen go through this procedure because they say that this procedure is appropriate to empower women in Bangladesh. But the reality is they do this because they don’t want to take male members because they can be arrogant, they can threaten the bank officers and can cause high default rate. Bank officers are instructed to do so from their superior though they don’t have any written document for it. It become easier for them to pressure and manipulates the woman if they failed to repay the loan in time. Moreover they keep the center meeting running until each and everyone repays the loan. This is done because if any one failed to bring the money then because of the meeting they would be late to go home and prepare the meal and later their husband would physically abuse them. On top of that other members would blame on that member and it causes her a bad reputation in the society. Sometimes bank officers take the defaulter women member to the branch office with them and lock her up. If it was a male member than it is not a matter for the society but now it is not a male member. If a woman member doesn’t come home for a few days and stay locked up in the bank office than it means a huge shame in the society of the rural Bangladesh. Incident happened like woman member has committed suicide by hanging herself with her cloth from the ceiling of the bank office (Rahman 1999a: 70).
Another reason to use woman is to attract the donor agencies. Donor agencies always encourage empowering woman in a male dominating country like Bangladesh. So that Grameen always show the poor woman from the rural areas and get grant loan from donor agencies, which they don’t have to pay back. It is kind of selling the “poverty” for own profit. But if Grameen really wanted to do so they should have tried to recruit woman in their bank instead of just using them to only get their profit from them. In a book on Grameen Bank, David Bornstein noticed that the founder of Grameen Bank doesn’t want to talk about this issue where as he always talks about his challenging ability. When this question was brought up Yunus replied:
‘There’s tremendous pressure for women to quit their jobs. It’s very difficult to take them on. We still try but we have not succeeded. This is one area where we have failed miserably. We didn’t do it.’ (Bornstein 1996:187–188)
He replied quickly and wanted to go for the next question. ). This is not acceptable from a noble laureate. Bornstein called this a blind spot for them. But this shouldn’t be a blind spot. The save the children fund in Bangladesh (SCF) has 43 percent of female staffs whether Grameen and BRAC has only 10 to 9 percent (Ackerly 1995:66). So there are many things that could have been done for sustainable development instead of attracting donor agencies by selling poverty and encouraging the gender conflict.
Microcredit, itself a very powerful tool to reduce poverty. But it has to be well organized. Without the financial help from the government and other donor agencies the interest rate would be so high to bear the program feasibly. Organizations those do the microcredit program have to be more honest and not selfish at all. If microcredit in Bangladesh keeps going on like now then it would be a very shameful situation for the whole nation in the near future. Many improvements are necessary. NGOs should follow some main code of conducts by the government where as now they don’t. Organizational structure is not appropriate because there is no accountability. Government should take responsibility about the expenses of million of dollars that organizations like Grameen get from donor agencies. To what extent the poor members are benefitted from those grant loans. Moreover government should be responsible about the hierarchy of the organization, retirement policy, salary scale, other facilities and everything of the employees and the board of those organizations. These organizations should be accountable more than any other organizations because they are literally running on poor people’s money. Ethics should be the most important issue there. For the microcredit there also many things can be changed. First thing should be the interest rate. Interest rate should be lower. Organizations should also help the members with their way of earning money, not just giving them the loan. Because if they don’t know what they will do with the money than they will waste the money on something else and will be a defaulter and as a result will be abused by the bank officers. So they cannot ever get out of the circle of poverty. Microcredit organizations should also do some thing to help the vulnerable to help to fight unavoidable circumstances like natural calamities. There should be some other special program for them. Actually if microcredit is being run properly then it would be really a weapon to fight poverty and that will result a sustainable development. So organizations who are doing microcredit program should overcome their shortcomings and offer the rural Bangladesh a sustainable development.
Ref:
Mallick, Ross(2002) 'Implementing and evaluating microcredit in Bangladesh', Development in Practice, 12: 2, 153 — 163
S.Amin, A.S.Rai, G.Topa (2003), “Does Microcredit reach the and vulnerable? Evidence from northern Bangladesh”, Journal of Development Economics, Vol 70, issue 1, pg 59-82
J.Morduch (1999), “The role of subsidies in microfinance: evidence from the Grameen Bank”, journal of development economics, vol: 60, issue 1, pg 229-248
Todd, H., 1996. Women at the Center. Westview Press, Boulder
Bornstein, David (1996) The Price of a Dream, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Ackerly, Brooke A. (1995) ‘Testing the tools of development: credit programmes, loan involvement, and women’s empowerment’, IDS Bulletin 26(3):56–68.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Friday, 23 July 2010
NICK'S first draft
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? [very similar to Annie's]
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.[You didn't act on my previous comments]
Main body
City is the symbol of human civilization, and also is the centre of economic and social life. In developing countries, the level of urbanization could stand for their economic strength. Since the 1990s, China began to accelerate the development of urbanization. A large of population migrates from rural into city. However, lots of problems because of urbanization appear gradually. Over the past of 20 years, Shanghai has experienced a rapid expansion and urbanization. In 1990, the number of total population in Shanghai was about 13millions. In 2000, the number has increased to more than 16millions. And the recent data shows that in 2010 the total number is more than 19 millions, in which the number of floating population occupies the main part. Now the population density is about 3000 persons per km2. However, in some urban area of Shanghai the population density is more than 30,000 persons per km2, such as Hongkou, Luwan and Jingan area. (Shanghai Statistics office) Obviously, that is really crowded in some areas. Through these increasing trends, it is predicted that in 2020 the number of population in Shanghai will be more than 25 millions. Therefore, most of citizens have to suffer a rapid narrow living space.
The massive population not only leads to a narrow space, but also causes a definitely negative impact on environment. During the past of 30 years, the urbanization promoted the economic development effectively in Shanghai. The need of land use expanded rapidly. More and more buildings, factories and other facilities were constructed constantly. It directly causes a decrease of planting areas. As we all know, today the global warming has become an important issue. In fact, it has been proved that planting more trees is a good way to remit its serious trend[support?]. Furthermore, more factories cause more industry emissions. And it has become a complex problem in developing countries. The traditional sustainable strategy cannot make a balance between economic and environment. Although the government has made some policies to limit some harmful emissions, the pollution was still very serious in Shanghai. For example, 40 years ago, what the residents in Shanghai drank was direct from Suzhou River which is a logical river in Shanghai. However, since 1970s, it has begun suffering a serious pollution. Lots of industry rubbish and house refuse were emitted into Suzhou River. Until the end of 20th century in which it has become a complete black and dirty river, the government began realizing that they should do something to protect it. However, it will be impossible to make the Suzhou River completely clean again. Another serious problem by urbanization in Shanghai is traffic jam. With the increase of population and more commercial activities, people have a high need for cars. The number of privately owned motor vehicles in 2002 which was about 1,198,400 is more than 466,400 in 1996. Especially in 2008, the quantity was close to 2 millions (The population statistic in Shanghai, Shanghai official website). Although the development of traffic facilities in Shanghai is greater than other international cities, it cannot carry such massive quantity of population and vehicles. For example, there is no enough space provided for parking. The high co2 emission by vehicles causes serious air pollution. And also, it leads to more traffic accidents. Annually, the opinion polls in Shanghai shows that traffic always is the most serious problem needed to solve.
Another potential problem by urbanization in Shanghai is that people have a deep pressure about employment. The massive competition makes people hard to find a good job. Furthermore, due to the unstable economic environment in recent years, the unemployment became more serious than before. The college graduate has become a part of victims. Actually, one benefit for urbanization is to provide more employment opportunities. But the fact is absolutely opposite. The increase of unemployment not only could lead to economic recession, and also could cause more crime and other unstable factors.
Obviously, urbanization could lead to a lot of problems, such as less living space, the overuse of resources, damage of environment, serious traffic jam, high unemployment and so on. The strategy of sustainable development is a good way to solve these negative factors.[unsupported assertion] For example, the government should make some policies to limit the use of land. The planting areas could not be occupied to do other things. Any resource is limited. Therefore, the price of water, natural gas or electric could be increased appropriately. Secondly, In Shanghai the most serious problem is traffic jam. The number of individual cars has increased at 20%--30% (Qing, S. 1997). So it has to develop more modern and impeccable public transport system. And also, the fees of public transport could be decreased.
In fact, some policies have been made to solve these problems because of urbanization. In 1990s, the pollution by Suzhou River was very serious. After realising this problem, the government decided to dispatch more human to clean rubbish which float on the surface. The water quality was investigated regularly. The most important is to limit the emission by industries. Actually, that is not enough. After 2000, the government required that the industrial factory could not be built in the central of city. Finally, most of factories began to transfer from urban to suburbs, such as Qingpu area and Jiading area. Nowadays, the Suzhou River water quality has been improved obviously. Meanwhile, the government spent lots of money on establishing more and more green, such as urban ecological park. A famous park called “Oriental Land” attracts a lot of citizens. Its theme involves green, environmental protection and science. The government also required that every secondary school or middle school must organize students to join in some activities which are held in “Oriental Land”. The aim is to promote some relevant knowledge about environmental protections and science.
In another way, the development of Pudong new area brought a lot of benefits. It not only improved the economic in Shanghai, but also provided a good opportunity for urban renewal in Shanghai. Lots of population transferred from the urban area to Pudong area. The land use structure and industrial structure also were adjusted effectively. (Liu T, 1994) indicates that High population density and the sustainable growth of number of cars lead to serious traffic problems. In recent years, government has made some policies to improve the serious situation. For instance, the price of car licence was raised to limit the number of individual cars. And also, regularly people just could get the limited car licences through bid. In another way, more complete public system has been established in recent years. Compared with 2003, the underground lines have been increased to 11 from 4 in 2010. And, the government plans to build 22 underground lines in 2020. Furthermore, for solving traffic jam, the government also bans some vehicles to drive in urban area. For example, some large trucks are not allowed to drive in the central of city. In peak time, any vehicles from other cities are also banned to drive in the central of city. Compared with Shanghai, Beijing implements another policy which is called “odd-even number restriction”. It means that the last number in the licence is used to decide if a car could be driven in a day.[not a comparison]
Conclusion
In fact, urbanization is the inevitable development of cities. A real advanced urbanization could bring more positive impact. Compared with some European cities, the urbanization in developing countries is absolutely immature. In China, Urbanization development has just gone through about 30 years. The government put more emphasis on economic. Until lots of problems appeared, government began to make some policies to control or improve them. For example, a benefit for exploring Pudong new area is to scatter urban population. However, the fact has proved that the population in Shanghai still keeps fast growth. Therefore, before exploring Pudong area, the government should prepare to deal with new urbanization problems in Pudong. In another way, the government has made some effective polices to improve environment, such as transferring industrial factories to suburbs. However, a question is how to solve new pollution in suburbs. In a long term view, what the government should do is to raise the standard or restriction with emission. Without doubt, government has spent lots of money to build more impeccable public transport system. In the future of 10 years, it is possible to solve traffic jam. However, compared with Beijing, the fees for using public transport should be decreased. Otherwise, people prefer to use individual cars. Therefore, government should insist on the sustainable development to face with these negative impacts of urbanization.
Reference
· Qing, S. (1997). Urban transportation in Shanghai, China: problems and planning implications, the journal of Urban and Regional Research, 21 (40), p.589-606
· Liu T, (1994), Urban renewal and development of Shanghai city, the Journal of Chinese geographical science. Volume 4, Number 3, PP. 219-231
· Zhao , S., Da, L., Tang, Z., Fang, H. Song, K., and Fang, J. (2006), Ecological consequences of rapid urban expansion: Shanghai, China, the journal of Front Ecol Environ, 4(7), p.341-346, Available from: http://www.frontiersinecology.org/specialissue/ESA_Sept06_ONLINE-03.pdf
[accessed in 20.07.10]
· Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau. 2002. City of Shanghai Vital Statistics, Available from, http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog261/dschned/Shanghai/Data-EMBARQ-ShanghaiStats.pdf [accessed in 20.07.10]
· Shanghai Highlight , Shanghai Facts , Available from:
http://www.shanghaihighlights.com/essential/ [accessed in 20.07.10]
· The population statistic in Shanghai, Shanghai official website, available from:
http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/2005shtj/2009shgl/rkjy/userobject1ai8633.html
[accessed in 20.07.10]
· Oriental Land, Available from:
http://en.ogb.com.cn/newEbiz1/EbizPortalFG/portal/html/index.html
[accessedin 21.07.10]
The transportation background and current situation in Shanghai, available from: http://baike.baidu.com/view/70368.htm?fr=ala0_1_1 this is a Chinese website.
[accessedin 21.07.10]
· The statistic of Individual Civil Motor Vehicles (2004-2006), Shanghai Statistic Bureau, available from:
http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/2003shtj/tjnj/nje07.htm?d1=2007tjnje/e1410.htm
[accessedin 21.07.10]
Subtitle: what are the impacts of massive population growth by the policy of sustainable development in Shanghai? [very similar to Annie's]
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.[You didn't act on my previous comments]
Main body
City is the symbol of human civilization, and also is the centre of economic and social life. In developing countries, the level of urbanization could stand for their economic strength. Since the 1990s, China began to accelerate the development of urbanization. A large of population migrates from rural into city. However, lots of problems because of urbanization appear gradually. Over the past of 20 years, Shanghai has experienced a rapid expansion and urbanization. In 1990, the number of total population in Shanghai was about 13millions. In 2000, the number has increased to more than 16millions. And the recent data shows that in 2010 the total number is more than 19 millions, in which the number of floating population occupies the main part. Now the population density is about 3000 persons per km2. However, in some urban area of Shanghai the population density is more than 30,000 persons per km2, such as Hongkou, Luwan and Jingan area. (Shanghai Statistics office) Obviously, that is really crowded in some areas. Through these increasing trends, it is predicted that in 2020 the number of population in Shanghai will be more than 25 millions. Therefore, most of citizens have to suffer a rapid narrow living space.
The massive population not only leads to a narrow space, but also causes a definitely negative impact on environment. During the past of 30 years, the urbanization promoted the economic development effectively in Shanghai. The need of land use expanded rapidly. More and more buildings, factories and other facilities were constructed constantly. It directly causes a decrease of planting areas. As we all know, today the global warming has become an important issue. In fact, it has been proved that planting more trees is a good way to remit its serious trend[support?]. Furthermore, more factories cause more industry emissions. And it has become a complex problem in developing countries. The traditional sustainable strategy cannot make a balance between economic and environment. Although the government has made some policies to limit some harmful emissions, the pollution was still very serious in Shanghai. For example, 40 years ago, what the residents in Shanghai drank was direct from Suzhou River which is a logical river in Shanghai. However, since 1970s, it has begun suffering a serious pollution. Lots of industry rubbish and house refuse were emitted into Suzhou River. Until the end of 20th century in which it has become a complete black and dirty river, the government began realizing that they should do something to protect it. However, it will be impossible to make the Suzhou River completely clean again. Another serious problem by urbanization in Shanghai is traffic jam. With the increase of population and more commercial activities, people have a high need for cars. The number of privately owned motor vehicles in 2002 which was about 1,198,400 is more than 466,400 in 1996. Especially in 2008, the quantity was close to 2 millions (The population statistic in Shanghai, Shanghai official website). Although the development of traffic facilities in Shanghai is greater than other international cities, it cannot carry such massive quantity of population and vehicles. For example, there is no enough space provided for parking. The high co2 emission by vehicles causes serious air pollution. And also, it leads to more traffic accidents. Annually, the opinion polls in Shanghai shows that traffic always is the most serious problem needed to solve.
Another potential problem by urbanization in Shanghai is that people have a deep pressure about employment. The massive competition makes people hard to find a good job. Furthermore, due to the unstable economic environment in recent years, the unemployment became more serious than before. The college graduate has become a part of victims. Actually, one benefit for urbanization is to provide more employment opportunities. But the fact is absolutely opposite. The increase of unemployment not only could lead to economic recession, and also could cause more crime and other unstable factors.
Obviously, urbanization could lead to a lot of problems, such as less living space, the overuse of resources, damage of environment, serious traffic jam, high unemployment and so on. The strategy of sustainable development is a good way to solve these negative factors.[unsupported assertion] For example, the government should make some policies to limit the use of land. The planting areas could not be occupied to do other things. Any resource is limited. Therefore, the price of water, natural gas or electric could be increased appropriately. Secondly, In Shanghai the most serious problem is traffic jam. The number of individual cars has increased at 20%--30% (Qing, S. 1997). So it has to develop more modern and impeccable public transport system. And also, the fees of public transport could be decreased.
In fact, some policies have been made to solve these problems because of urbanization. In 1990s, the pollution by Suzhou River was very serious. After realising this problem, the government decided to dispatch more human to clean rubbish which float on the surface. The water quality was investigated regularly. The most important is to limit the emission by industries. Actually, that is not enough. After 2000, the government required that the industrial factory could not be built in the central of city. Finally, most of factories began to transfer from urban to suburbs, such as Qingpu area and Jiading area. Nowadays, the Suzhou River water quality has been improved obviously. Meanwhile, the government spent lots of money on establishing more and more green, such as urban ecological park. A famous park called “Oriental Land” attracts a lot of citizens. Its theme involves green, environmental protection and science. The government also required that every secondary school or middle school must organize students to join in some activities which are held in “Oriental Land”. The aim is to promote some relevant knowledge about environmental protections and science.
In another way, the development of Pudong new area brought a lot of benefits. It not only improved the economic in Shanghai, but also provided a good opportunity for urban renewal in Shanghai. Lots of population transferred from the urban area to Pudong area. The land use structure and industrial structure also were adjusted effectively. (Liu T, 1994) indicates that High population density and the sustainable growth of number of cars lead to serious traffic problems. In recent years, government has made some policies to improve the serious situation. For instance, the price of car licence was raised to limit the number of individual cars. And also, regularly people just could get the limited car licences through bid. In another way, more complete public system has been established in recent years. Compared with 2003, the underground lines have been increased to 11 from 4 in 2010. And, the government plans to build 22 underground lines in 2020. Furthermore, for solving traffic jam, the government also bans some vehicles to drive in urban area. For example, some large trucks are not allowed to drive in the central of city. In peak time, any vehicles from other cities are also banned to drive in the central of city. Compared with Shanghai, Beijing implements another policy which is called “odd-even number restriction”. It means that the last number in the licence is used to decide if a car could be driven in a day.[not a comparison]
Conclusion
In fact, urbanization is the inevitable development of cities. A real advanced urbanization could bring more positive impact. Compared with some European cities, the urbanization in developing countries is absolutely immature. In China, Urbanization development has just gone through about 30 years. The government put more emphasis on economic. Until lots of problems appeared, government began to make some policies to control or improve them. For example, a benefit for exploring Pudong new area is to scatter urban population. However, the fact has proved that the population in Shanghai still keeps fast growth. Therefore, before exploring Pudong area, the government should prepare to deal with new urbanization problems in Pudong. In another way, the government has made some effective polices to improve environment, such as transferring industrial factories to suburbs. However, a question is how to solve new pollution in suburbs. In a long term view, what the government should do is to raise the standard or restriction with emission. Without doubt, government has spent lots of money to build more impeccable public transport system. In the future of 10 years, it is possible to solve traffic jam. However, compared with Beijing, the fees for using public transport should be decreased. Otherwise, people prefer to use individual cars. Therefore, government should insist on the sustainable development to face with these negative impacts of urbanization.
Reference
· Qing, S. (1997). Urban transportation in Shanghai, China: problems and planning implications, the journal of Urban and Regional Research, 21 (40), p.589-606
· Liu T, (1994), Urban renewal and development of Shanghai city, the Journal of Chinese geographical science. Volume 4, Number 3, PP. 219-231
· Zhao , S., Da, L., Tang, Z., Fang, H. Song, K., and Fang, J. (2006), Ecological consequences of rapid urban expansion: Shanghai, China, the journal of Front Ecol Environ, 4(7), p.341-346, Available from: http://www.frontiersinecology.org/specialissue/ESA_Sept06_ONLINE-03.pdf
[accessed in 20.07.10]
· Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau. 2002. City of Shanghai Vital Statistics, Available from, http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog261/dschned/Shanghai/Data-EMBARQ-ShanghaiStats.pdf [accessed in 20.07.10]
· Shanghai Highlight , Shanghai Facts , Available from:
http://www.shanghaihighlights.com/essential/ [accessed in 20.07.10]
· The population statistic in Shanghai, Shanghai official website, available from:
http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/2005shtj/2009shgl/rkjy/userobject1ai8633.html
[accessed in 20.07.10]
· Oriental Land, Available from:
http://en.ogb.com.cn/newEbiz1/EbizPortalFG/portal/html/index.html
[accessedin 21.07.10]
The transportation background and current situation in Shanghai, available from: http://baike.baidu.com/view/70368.htm?fr=ala0_1_1 this is a Chinese website.
[accessedin 21.07.10]
· The statistic of Individual Civil Motor Vehicles (2004-2006), Shanghai Statistic Bureau, available from:
http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/2003shtj/tjnj/nje07.htm?d1=2007tjnje/e1410.htm
[accessedin 21.07.10]
Freya - First Draft
To What Extent Can the Problems of Urbanisation be Met by a Policy of Sustainable Development?
——The evaluation of remedies of the issues on water, transport and land (housing) in Tokyo
Introduction:
Nowadays that human being’s infinite wants and needs are being confronted with the threat of limited resources have became the focal point in the world; meanwhile, it has evoked the concerns of “sustainable development” in the future with the attention from all parties. Obviously, the explosion of the world population (Figure 1) is the chief cause that put a strain on the already stretched resource.
Figure 1 World Population Growth[1]
The phrase of “sustainable development” means the strategies are taken to solve the scarcity of resources without harming the benefits of next generations in the long run time (OECD 2010). However, the process of urbanisation is posing a huge challenge for the path of anthropic future, mainly owing to almost 70% of total population living in urban areas (Camagni et al. 2001). The word, urbanisation, is defined that there is a rise of population with economic growth in urban areas (Collins 2001) and is deemed as an irreversible course. It is always connected with “urban sprawl” referring to “unplanned, uncontrolled expansion of urban areas into nearby non urban areas” (Sorensen 2000). Nevertheless, as someone once said,” a city is never a finished product,” it is in a situation of ongoing change. The new thesis of urban sustainability, at present, is on the tip of people’s tongues as a result of various problems caused by urbanisation, such as crowd, pollution and lack of space, especially in mega-cities. According to Grossman and Haughton (Marcotullio 2001), there are four points in urban sustainability: a) free market, b) re-design, c) self-reliant, and e) fair shares.
Taking Tokyo as an example, it is characterised by re-centralization and increased aging population together with the degressive number of children from 1970’s (Soehodho et al. 2005). Both of the advanced technology and spread of economy contributed to the development of the city after the war (Lo and Yeung Undated). During the process of evolution in cites, every city undoubtedly would suffer from multiplied problems, including Tokyo. Yet it has achieved some success in solving the issues of water, transport and land (housing), but there are still apparently unsettled problems. This essay attempts to analyse some of issues, evaluate the solutions of them and give some countermeasures. Firstly, it is to concern with water problems, that is, less fresh water and the leakage of pipes. The local government take the change upon the check way to try to diminish the waste of water. In addition, using reclaimed water and rainwater releases the scarcity of clean water and some examples of successful cities also will be given. In the second place, it is about the present description of transportation, analysing the causes, and checking the degree of solutions for meeting the demand of transport. Likewise, there are advices of the other states’ experience about this matter. The third will be referred to the issue of housing position that the main area of Tokyo is occupied by office buildings and local people have to trudge on the journey every day. From the information offered below, there is a connection between transportation and housing that affect each other.
Main Body:
1. Water
There is no doubt that the resource of water has been regarded as an indispensible element for human survival; in particular, is quite crucial for a country’s development (Uitto and Biswas 2000). “It is said that freshwater will be the first natural resource to run short” (Furumai 2008), which means a great menace for human in the near future. The sustained ability of Tokyo, which is one of the biggest and most developed cities, is dependent on the access of water service, that is, fresh water. From 1900 to 1995, the surge of people was accompanied by the growth of potable water system, whose coverage gradually became broad, including villages and towns around (Figure 2), and capability of water supply also ascended overwhelmingly (Figure 3) (Uitto and Biswas 2000).
Figure 2 The Growth of Tokyo’s water system[2]
Figure 3 Growth of Water Supply[3]
This needed the wide construction of water pipes, whose length is up to 22,000 km that such long pipes led to a huge waste of water with approximately 460,000 m3 each day without question, due to the problem of leakage (Kurosawa et al. 1998). However, the traditional way of finding out leakage is very difficult to carry out because of significant noise (Kurosawa et al. 1998). Depending on different sounds from underground to distinguish whether there is a leakage would be affected severely by the sound of traffic, especially to ascertain an exact position (Kurosawa et al. 1998). To solve this problem, a new type of detection is introduced, say, radiation, which use neutron backscattering to help trace the location of leakage without being affected by noise (Kurosawa et al. 1998). Even the deeper position also could be detected after testing the function of this method, but if the length is more than 1 m the difficulty will still exist (Kurosawa et al. 1998). The other way to settle it is to use stainless steel pipes instead of past lead pipes to be safer for a long time.
Besides, the rise of contaminated water, poor flow of rivers and the cut of groundwater evoke the awareness of recycling of water, which is more effective and economic way to meet the increased demand (Furumai 2008). It is worth mentioning that there were not more concerns about the surface water until the policies on restriction of groundwater were issued by the local government, as a result of fault sag (Figure 4) (Furumai 2008).
Figure 4 Fault Sag in Tokyo[4]
One of the prime resources for replenishment of water is form rainwater that can be used to flush the toilets (Furumai 2008). Some storage systems of water were adopted on a large scale that could conduce to release a part of pressure about lack of water at local (Furumai 2008). As for another countermeasure, retreating water is regarded as an environmental measure not only to bring wastage down, but also to save conveying fee of water cost-effectively, owing to the availability of it in urban area, like Tokyo, by the re-design of sewerage network (Furumai 2008).
However, the most important thing here is to build “Distributed Power and Water Systems” (UN-Habitat 2009, pp. 40-46), like what Malmo in Sweden and Toronto in Canada did, to reduce the effects on environment as well as pave the green pathway (UN-Habitat 2009). This phrase implies the revolution on the way of water supply from conventionally “large centralized power and water systems” to modern “small-scale and neighbourhood-based systems within cities” (UN-Habitat 2009, pp. 40-46). For instance, Chinese Three Gorges Dam built in recent years cost a great deal of money and even sacrificed the ecological equilibrium extremely and drastically. In spite of bringing about convenience and economic benefits to the country, the over-long distance of transportation of water inevitably gives rise to squander.
2. Transportation
In Tokyo, the infrastructure construction of transport system is built quite well, but with the escalated number of private cars, the issue of traffic congestion is more and more obvious (Mackett 1991). Although the building of Metro was on the table and fulfilled, it still could not catch up with the speed of tidal flow caused by the expansion of the urban area in Tokyo (Mackett 1991). Every day multitudinous streams of people from the suburban areas and other cities, like Kawasaki, Yokohama and Chiba, go to Tokyo for work and study (Nakamura 1995). Such a whole range is called the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (TMA) (Figure 5) (Nakamura 1995).
Figure 5 Tokyo Metropolitan Area[5]
Since late 19th century, Tokyo introduced railways from Europe and the U.S.A., but all was destroyed after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, in the meantime, new planned railways that could be touched by suburban districts were constructed (Nakamura 1995) to lessen the burden of roads to some extent.
Even if the expressways of fee charging were constructed to look forward to that people would choose it when long trips, the condition of congestion is worsen as before (Mackett 1991).
Moreover the roads in Tokyo are always busy, which is generated by the over-concentrated working places in main urban zone (Lo and Yeung undated). The commuters have to spend much time on taking long distance to come offices from various areas, which are far away from main Tokyo, completely being differ from the United States (Lo and Yeung undated).
Especially, in rush-hour time, the problems cause by congestion, like pollution, delays, and longer and longer trips attracted the government’s eyes that they cared about the matter of safety and environment, however, want to privatise the transport ((Mackett 1991). This is a conflict between each aspect of interest, citizens, the authorities and companies.
At the moment, some prevailing recipes have been taken by many countries, like car-free day, the encouragement of using public transport and car pool. But, obviously, these are from the perspective of the short run, only meeting the problems temporarily.
To solve the increasingly severe issue of transportation fundamentally, there are four suggestions to be presented: “structural change of cities, supply of transportation facilities, demand control of transportation and technical improvements” (Nakamura 1995, p. 6). From this point of view, the main crux is the re-design of Tokyo’s framework (Nakamura 1995).
On the other hand, a comparatively superior methodology is Intelligent Transport System (ITS), which has been employed by some Asian nations, such as Malaysia and Philippines (Mende 2005). It contains electronic road pricing, traffic management, integrated ticketing systems and traveller information (Mende 2005). It is worth mentioning that the more advanced system adopted by Hong Kong and Singapore is more intelligent, using a smart card, which could serve a integrated system of bus and rail fees operated by different firms (Mende 2005). Based on such a system, the government could collect data to analyze how the remedies of traffic jam can be done well.
3. Land (Housing)
It is known by everyone that the supply of land in Tokyo is hard to seize the speed of the climbing needs (Lo and Yeung undated). Almost every inch of land has been dug out for different purposes, especially for central business district, which is golden area (Lo and Yeung undated). The business buildings take up a dominant part and its ratio of use is an ongoing upwards trend with the development of the city all the time, at the price of giving public housing up (Noguchi and Poterba 1994). Basing on such a situation, high mansion was regarded as a solution taken by the authorities, but the most serious focus is housing, which is cared by everyone living in Tokyo (Lo and Yeung undated). The high price of housing is responsible for that local people have to buy the relatively small houses and apartments that are far away from their working places but still hard to afford (Tiwari and Hasegawa 2004). In allusion to this strait, the lower rate on loans of housing is offered to commons (Lo and Yeung undated).
There is a striking character that the distribution of housing is usually associated with the development of transport system. In general, the further distance to the centre of a city implies the cheaper housing price and a little more cost of commuting（Figure 6）(Noguchi and Poterba 1994). This is an indirect way to disperse population according to the various levels of income.
Figure 6 Different Housing Prices in response to Different Cost of Transportation[6]
It is crystal clear that the high price of housing contributes to the mess in transportation. People are enforced to live in suburban area, but also, in the meantime, to spend a lot more time and money on the way to offices. This is definitely ironic and ridiculous thing. [solution?]
Conclusion：
To sum up, in reality, Tokyo has taken some countermeasure to dedicate itself to solve the problems happened in the progress of urbanisation for the purpose of sustaining the development. Whereas the conflict between limited sources and the boundless demand of human has existed for a long time, it is not easy to be eradicated. The less and less water resource astricts the degree of the future development in Tokyo. Above all, the irreconcilable contradiction of housing and unsatisfied transport system leads to too long journeys, time waste and low efficiency for people. These factors are inclined to lead to the decreasing attractiveness for people, particularly technology workers, who may make a choice to inhabit the sites having a good environment. Nonetheless, it does not mean the remedies Tokyo adopted by the government are not active. On the contrary, to some extent, these policies remit and curb the tendency of deterioration, but in a long-run time, the more effective and feasible solutions are required to think about.
[1] Source: Uitto and Biswas 2000
——The evaluation of remedies of the issues on water, transport and land (housing) in Tokyo
Introduction:
Nowadays that human being’s infinite wants and needs are being confronted with the threat of limited resources have became the focal point in the world; meanwhile, it has evoked the concerns of “sustainable development” in the future with the attention from all parties. Obviously, the explosion of the world population (Figure 1) is the chief cause that put a strain on the already stretched resource.
Figure 1 World Population Growth[1]The phrase of “sustainable development” means the strategies are taken to solve the scarcity of resources without harming the benefits of next generations in the long run time (OECD 2010). However, the process of urbanisation is posing a huge challenge for the path of anthropic future, mainly owing to almost 70% of total population living in urban areas (Camagni et al. 2001). The word, urbanisation, is defined that there is a rise of population with economic growth in urban areas (Collins 2001) and is deemed as an irreversible course. It is always connected with “urban sprawl” referring to “unplanned, uncontrolled expansion of urban areas into nearby non urban areas” (Sorensen 2000). Nevertheless, as someone once said,” a city is never a finished product,” it is in a situation of ongoing change. The new thesis of urban sustainability, at present, is on the tip of people’s tongues as a result of various problems caused by urbanisation, such as crowd, pollution and lack of space, especially in mega-cities. According to Grossman and Haughton (Marcotullio 2001), there are four points in urban sustainability: a) free market, b) re-design, c) self-reliant, and e) fair shares.
Taking Tokyo as an example, it is characterised by re-centralization and increased aging population together with the degressive number of children from 1970’s (Soehodho et al. 2005). Both of the advanced technology and spread of economy contributed to the development of the city after the war (Lo and Yeung Undated). During the process of evolution in cites, every city undoubtedly would suffer from multiplied problems, including Tokyo. Yet it has achieved some success in solving the issues of water, transport and land (housing), but there are still apparently unsettled problems. This essay attempts to analyse some of issues, evaluate the solutions of them and give some countermeasures. Firstly, it is to concern with water problems, that is, less fresh water and the leakage of pipes. The local government take the change upon the check way to try to diminish the waste of water. In addition, using reclaimed water and rainwater releases the scarcity of clean water and some examples of successful cities also will be given. In the second place, it is about the present description of transportation, analysing the causes, and checking the degree of solutions for meeting the demand of transport. Likewise, there are advices of the other states’ experience about this matter. The third will be referred to the issue of housing position that the main area of Tokyo is occupied by office buildings and local people have to trudge on the journey every day. From the information offered below, there is a connection between transportation and housing that affect each other.
Main Body:
1. Water
There is no doubt that the resource of water has been regarded as an indispensible element for human survival; in particular, is quite crucial for a country’s development (Uitto and Biswas 2000). “It is said that freshwater will be the first natural resource to run short” (Furumai 2008), which means a great menace for human in the near future. The sustained ability of Tokyo, which is one of the biggest and most developed cities, is dependent on the access of water service, that is, fresh water. From 1900 to 1995, the surge of people was accompanied by the growth of potable water system, whose coverage gradually became broad, including villages and towns around (Figure 2), and capability of water supply also ascended overwhelmingly (Figure 3) (Uitto and Biswas 2000).
Figure 2 The Growth of Tokyo’s water system[2]
Figure 3 Growth of Water Supply[3]This needed the wide construction of water pipes, whose length is up to 22,000 km that such long pipes led to a huge waste of water with approximately 460,000 m3 each day without question, due to the problem of leakage (Kurosawa et al. 1998). However, the traditional way of finding out leakage is very difficult to carry out because of significant noise (Kurosawa et al. 1998). Depending on different sounds from underground to distinguish whether there is a leakage would be affected severely by the sound of traffic, especially to ascertain an exact position (Kurosawa et al. 1998). To solve this problem, a new type of detection is introduced, say, radiation, which use neutron backscattering to help trace the location of leakage without being affected by noise (Kurosawa et al. 1998). Even the deeper position also could be detected after testing the function of this method, but if the length is more than 1 m the difficulty will still exist (Kurosawa et al. 1998). The other way to settle it is to use stainless steel pipes instead of past lead pipes to be safer for a long time.
Besides, the rise of contaminated water, poor flow of rivers and the cut of groundwater evoke the awareness of recycling of water, which is more effective and economic way to meet the increased demand (Furumai 2008). It is worth mentioning that there were not more concerns about the surface water until the policies on restriction of groundwater were issued by the local government, as a result of fault sag (Figure 4) (Furumai 2008).
Figure 4 Fault Sag in Tokyo[4]One of the prime resources for replenishment of water is form rainwater that can be used to flush the toilets (Furumai 2008). Some storage systems of water were adopted on a large scale that could conduce to release a part of pressure about lack of water at local (Furumai 2008). As for another countermeasure, retreating water is regarded as an environmental measure not only to bring wastage down, but also to save conveying fee of water cost-effectively, owing to the availability of it in urban area, like Tokyo, by the re-design of sewerage network (Furumai 2008).
However, the most important thing here is to build “Distributed Power and Water Systems” (UN-Habitat 2009, pp. 40-46), like what Malmo in Sweden and Toronto in Canada did, to reduce the effects on environment as well as pave the green pathway (UN-Habitat 2009). This phrase implies the revolution on the way of water supply from conventionally “large centralized power and water systems” to modern “small-scale and neighbourhood-based systems within cities” (UN-Habitat 2009, pp. 40-46). For instance, Chinese Three Gorges Dam built in recent years cost a great deal of money and even sacrificed the ecological equilibrium extremely and drastically. In spite of bringing about convenience and economic benefits to the country, the over-long distance of transportation of water inevitably gives rise to squander.
2. Transportation
In Tokyo, the infrastructure construction of transport system is built quite well, but with the escalated number of private cars, the issue of traffic congestion is more and more obvious (Mackett 1991). Although the building of Metro was on the table and fulfilled, it still could not catch up with the speed of tidal flow caused by the expansion of the urban area in Tokyo (Mackett 1991). Every day multitudinous streams of people from the suburban areas and other cities, like Kawasaki, Yokohama and Chiba, go to Tokyo for work and study (Nakamura 1995). Such a whole range is called the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (TMA) (Figure 5) (Nakamura 1995).
Figure 5 Tokyo Metropolitan Area[5]Since late 19th century, Tokyo introduced railways from Europe and the U.S.A., but all was destroyed after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, in the meantime, new planned railways that could be touched by suburban districts were constructed (Nakamura 1995) to lessen the burden of roads to some extent.
Even if the expressways of fee charging were constructed to look forward to that people would choose it when long trips, the condition of congestion is worsen as before (Mackett 1991).
Moreover the roads in Tokyo are always busy, which is generated by the over-concentrated working places in main urban zone (Lo and Yeung undated). The commuters have to spend much time on taking long distance to come offices from various areas, which are far away from main Tokyo, completely being differ from the United States (Lo and Yeung undated).
Especially, in rush-hour time, the problems cause by congestion, like pollution, delays, and longer and longer trips attracted the government’s eyes that they cared about the matter of safety and environment, however, want to privatise the transport ((Mackett 1991). This is a conflict between each aspect of interest, citizens, the authorities and companies.
At the moment, some prevailing recipes have been taken by many countries, like car-free day, the encouragement of using public transport and car pool. But, obviously, these are from the perspective of the short run, only meeting the problems temporarily.
To solve the increasingly severe issue of transportation fundamentally, there are four suggestions to be presented: “structural change of cities, supply of transportation facilities, demand control of transportation and technical improvements” (Nakamura 1995, p. 6). From this point of view, the main crux is the re-design of Tokyo’s framework (Nakamura 1995).
On the other hand, a comparatively superior methodology is Intelligent Transport System (ITS), which has been employed by some Asian nations, such as Malaysia and Philippines (Mende 2005). It contains electronic road pricing, traffic management, integrated ticketing systems and traveller information (Mende 2005). It is worth mentioning that the more advanced system adopted by Hong Kong and Singapore is more intelligent, using a smart card, which could serve a integrated system of bus and rail fees operated by different firms (Mende 2005). Based on such a system, the government could collect data to analyze how the remedies of traffic jam can be done well.
3. Land (Housing)
It is known by everyone that the supply of land in Tokyo is hard to seize the speed of the climbing needs (Lo and Yeung undated). Almost every inch of land has been dug out for different purposes, especially for central business district, which is golden area (Lo and Yeung undated). The business buildings take up a dominant part and its ratio of use is an ongoing upwards trend with the development of the city all the time, at the price of giving public housing up (Noguchi and Poterba 1994). Basing on such a situation, high mansion was regarded as a solution taken by the authorities, but the most serious focus is housing, which is cared by everyone living in Tokyo (Lo and Yeung undated). The high price of housing is responsible for that local people have to buy the relatively small houses and apartments that are far away from their working places but still hard to afford (Tiwari and Hasegawa 2004). In allusion to this strait, the lower rate on loans of housing is offered to commons (Lo and Yeung undated).
There is a striking character that the distribution of housing is usually associated with the development of transport system. In general, the further distance to the centre of a city implies the cheaper housing price and a little more cost of commuting（Figure 6）(Noguchi and Poterba 1994). This is an indirect way to disperse population according to the various levels of income.
Figure 6 Different Housing Prices in response to Different Cost of Transportation[6]It is crystal clear that the high price of housing contributes to the mess in transportation. People are enforced to live in suburban area, but also, in the meantime, to spend a lot more time and money on the way to offices. This is definitely ironic and ridiculous thing. [solution?]
Conclusion：
To sum up, in reality, Tokyo has taken some countermeasure to dedicate itself to solve the problems happened in the progress of urbanisation for the purpose of sustaining the development. Whereas the conflict between limited sources and the boundless demand of human has existed for a long time, it is not easy to be eradicated. The less and less water resource astricts the degree of the future development in Tokyo. Above all, the irreconcilable contradiction of housing and unsatisfied transport system leads to too long journeys, time waste and low efficiency for people. These factors are inclined to lead to the decreasing attractiveness for people, particularly technology workers, who may make a choice to inhabit the sites having a good environment. Nonetheless, it does not mean the remedies Tokyo adopted by the government are not active. On the contrary, to some extent, these policies remit and curb the tendency of deterioration, but in a long-run time, the more effective and feasible solutions are required to think about.
[1] Source: Uitto and Biswas 2000
[6] Source: Noguchi and Poterba 1994
Bibliography:
Camagni, R., Cappello, R. and Nijkamp, P. (2001) “Managing Sustainable Urban Environments.” In: Paddison, R. (ed.) Handbook Urban Studies, pp. 124-140. London, SAGE Publications Ltd.
Collins, J. (2001) Urbanisation [online] Enviro Facts. Available from: http://www.bcb.uwc.ac.za/envfacts/facts/urbanisation.htm [accessed 10 July 2010]
Furumai, H. (2008) “Rainwater and Reclaimed Wastewater for Sustainable Urban Water Use.” In: Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, Vol. 33 (5), pp. 340-346. Elsevier Ltd.
Kurosawa, T. et al. (1998) “Simulation Study of A Hydrostat Design for Detecting Underground Leakage of Water Supply Using Neutron Backscattering.” In: Applied Radiation and Isotops, Vol. 49 (12), pp. 1729-1735. Elsevier Science Ld.
Lo, F. and Yeung, Y. (undated) Emerging World Cities in Pacific Asia. Tokyo – New York – Paris, United Nations University Press.
Mackett, R. L. (1991) “A Model-Based Analysis of Transport and Land-Use Policies for Tokyo.” In: Transport Reviews, Vol. 11 (1), pp. 1-18. London, Routledge.
Marcotullio, P. J. (2001) “Asian Urban Sustainability in the era of Globalization.” In: Habitat International, Vol. 25 (4), pp. 577-598. Elsevier.
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Nakamura, H. (1995) “Transportation Problems in Tokyo.” In: Japan Railway & Transport Review, March. Japan, EJRCF.
Noguchi, Y. and Poterba, J. M. (1994) Housing Markets in the United States and Japan. U. S. A., the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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Tiwari, P. and Hasegawa, H. (2004) “Demand for Housing in Tokyo: A Discrete Choice Analysis.” In: Regional Studies, Vol. 38 (1), pp. 27-42. Tokyo, Carfax Publishing.
Uitto, J. I. and Biswas, A. K. (2000) Water for Urban Areas: Challenges and Perspectivs, pp. 1-24. Japan, United Nation University Press.
UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) (2009) Planning Sustainable Cities: Policy Directions: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009. UK, Earthscan.
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Furumai, H. (2008) “Rainwater and Reclaimed Wastewater for Sustainable Urban Water Use.” In: Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, Vol. 33 (5), pp. 340-346. Elsevier Ltd.
Kurosawa, T. et al. (1998) “Simulation Study of A Hydrostat Design for Detecting Underground Leakage of Water Supply Using Neutron Backscattering.” In: Applied Radiation and Isotops, Vol. 49 (12), pp. 1729-1735. Elsevier Science Ld.
Lo, F. and Yeung, Y. (undated) Emerging World Cities in Pacific Asia. Tokyo – New York – Paris, United Nations University Press.
Mackett, R. L. (1991) “A Model-Based Analysis of Transport and Land-Use Policies for Tokyo.” In: Transport Reviews, Vol. 11 (1), pp. 1-18. London, Routledge.
Marcotullio, P. J. (2001) “Asian Urban Sustainability in the era of Globalization.” In: Habitat International, Vol. 25 (4), pp. 577-598. Elsevier.
Mende, M. R. (2005) Urban Environmental Management Challenges in Asia. Japan, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES).
Nakamura, H. (1995) “Transportation Problems in Tokyo.” In: Japan Railway & Transport Review, March. Japan, EJRCF.
Noguchi, Y. and Poterba, J. M. (1994) Housing Markets in the United States and Japan. U. S. A., the National Bureau of Economic Research.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2010) Sustainable Development. [online] OECD. Available from: http://www.oecd.org/topic/0,3373,en_2649_37425_1_1_1_1_37425,00.html [accessed 10 July 2010]
Sorensen, A. (2000) “Land Readjustment and Metropolitan Growth: An Examination of Suburban Land Development and Urban Sprawl in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.” In: Progress in Planning, Vol. 53 (4), pp. 217-330. Elsevier.
Soehodho, S. et al. (2005) “Transportation Issues and Future Condition in Tokyo, Jakarta, Manila and Hiroshima.” In: Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 5, pp. 2391-2404. Bankok, Easts.
Tiwari, P. and Hasegawa, H. (2004) “Demand for Housing in Tokyo: A Discrete Choice Analysis.” In: Regional Studies, Vol. 38 (1), pp. 27-42. Tokyo, Carfax Publishing.
Uitto, J. I. and Biswas, A. K. (2000) Water for Urban Areas: Challenges and Perspectivs, pp. 1-24. Japan, United Nation University Press.
UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) (2009) Planning Sustainable Cities: Policy Directions: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009. UK, Earthscan.
Eddie's first draft
Topic: To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met by policies of sustainable development?
Subtitle: How does Ho Chi Minh City solve its urban problem?
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 and size 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 imply 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 in charge of 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 carrying 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, lacks of financial resources made these poor families be 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
To sum up, Ho Chi Minh City’s water supply was a big problem for people, because people lacked of environmental consciousness. The amounts of inhabitants were used to throw wastes to rivers and canals and many factories discharged the waste water into waterways. It could be seen that it was difficult to have clean water supply because of the abovementioned problems.
The municipal government tried to cope with this problem. The solution could be divided into two aspects: water usage and the emission of waste water. With regard to water usage, there were raining seasons and the tides constraints, so Ho Chi Minh City usually faced floods and was difficult to manage water and storage. In terms of the emission of waste water, topographical and social challenges make it difficult to solve it. In fact, the government had established more infrastructures and adopted any measures to solve this. However, the policy should be considered in overall concepts, otherwise it will have new forms of floods.
On the other hand, precarious settlement was another problem in Ho Chi Minh City. More and more people lived in the urban area, but there were still many of them lived in bad condition. These poor families used inferior quality materials to build the house by themselves and their residences were almost near canals and rivers. Yet, their houses lacked of infrastructures and technical services, so they were easily to be sick. In order to improve the living standard of poor families, the government had implemented community development projects which were effective. Even though the projects had a few drawbacks, people had improved their standard of living apparently.
However, this sustainable policy still had some challenges. In fact, the government had adopted the ‘bottom-up’ approach to solve the settlement problems, but the poor family could not bear the financial expenditures. In addition, the government and people had different opinions which resulted in arguments. They might reject cooperation with the government. Actually, the government of Ho Chi Minh City had adopted measures to solve the urban problem but it must solve the fundamental problem which was uneven wealth distribution. Then, the abovementioned problems would be solved easier than before in Ho Chi Minh City.
Reference
Pugh, C. (1996), ‘Sustainability the Environment and Urbanization’, P23, Earthscan Publications Limited ,Available from: http://www.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=959YxxBRMpgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA23&dq=sustainable+development%3B+city%3B+urbanisation&ots=Ruqa4cf3gw&sig=MEZAakUO75Rq0Ra0rNrNsovrFEs#v=onepage&q&f=false [accessed 19. 07.10]
Van Pelt, M. Kuyvenhoven, A. and Nijkamp, P. (1995) ‘Defining and measuring sustainability’, Institutional Journal of Pollution 5 (2/3), p.p.204-223
Cohen, B. (2006) ‘Urbanization in developing countries: Current trends, future projections, and key challenges for sustainability’, Technology in Society 28 (2006) 63-80
Mega, V. (1996a) ‘Our city, our future: Towards sustainable development in European cities’, Environment and Urbanization, 8 (1), p.p. 133-154
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, Available from:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9H-3SWV6G7-4&_user=9093226&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F1997&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1404696333&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000010638&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=9093226&md5=fb8a1c3ca866e27f9c5e6cfc486c655e [Accessed19. 07.10 ]
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, Available from:
http://eau.sagepub.com/content/14/2/211.abstract [Accessed19.07.10]
Drakakis-Smith, D. and Dixon, C. (1997) ‘Sustainable Urbanisation in Vietnam’, Elsevier Science Ltd, Volume28, No.1, Pages21-38, 1997, Available from:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V68-3SWVHV6-2&_user=9093226&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F1997&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1404715727&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000010638&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=9093226&md5=e8b50212ddf9883badb6daad21932dd8 [Accessed19.07.10]
Subtitle: How does Ho Chi Minh City solve its urban problem?
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 and size 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 imply 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 in charge of 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 carrying 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, lacks of financial resources made these poor families be 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
To sum up, Ho Chi Minh City’s water supply was a big problem for people, because people lacked of environmental consciousness. The amounts of inhabitants were used to throw wastes to rivers and canals and many factories discharged the waste water into waterways. It could be seen that it was difficult to have clean water supply because of the abovementioned problems.
The municipal government tried to cope with this problem. The solution could be divided into two aspects: water usage and the emission of waste water. With regard to water usage, there were raining seasons and the tides constraints, so Ho Chi Minh City usually faced floods and was difficult to manage water and storage. In terms of the emission of waste water, topographical and social challenges make it difficult to solve it. In fact, the government had established more infrastructures and adopted any measures to solve this. However, the policy should be considered in overall concepts, otherwise it will have new forms of floods.
On the other hand, precarious settlement was another problem in Ho Chi Minh City. More and more people lived in the urban area, but there were still many of them lived in bad condition. These poor families used inferior quality materials to build the house by themselves and their residences were almost near canals and rivers. Yet, their houses lacked of infrastructures and technical services, so they were easily to be sick. In order to improve the living standard of poor families, the government had implemented community development projects which were effective. Even though the projects had a few drawbacks, people had improved their standard of living apparently.
However, this sustainable policy still had some challenges. In fact, the government had adopted the ‘bottom-up’ approach to solve the settlement problems, but the poor family could not bear the financial expenditures. In addition, the government and people had different opinions which resulted in arguments. They might reject cooperation with the government. Actually, the government of Ho Chi Minh City had adopted measures to solve the urban problem but it must solve the fundamental problem which was uneven wealth distribution. Then, the abovementioned problems would be solved easier than before in Ho Chi Minh City.
Reference
Pugh, C. (1996), ‘Sustainability the Environment and Urbanization’, P23, Earthscan Publications Limited ,Available from: http://www.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=959YxxBRMpgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA23&dq=sustainable+development%3B+city%3B+urbanisation&ots=Ruqa4cf3gw&sig=MEZAakUO75Rq0Ra0rNrNsovrFEs#v=onepage&q&f=false [accessed 19. 07.10]
Van Pelt, M. Kuyvenhoven, A. and Nijkamp, P. (1995) ‘Defining and measuring sustainability’, Institutional Journal of Pollution 5 (2/3), p.p.204-223
Cohen, B. (2006) ‘Urbanization in developing countries: Current trends, future projections, and key challenges for sustainability’, Technology in Society 28 (2006) 63-80
Mega, V. (1996a) ‘Our city, our future: Towards sustainable development in European cities’, Environment and Urbanization, 8 (1), p.p. 133-154
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, Available from:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9H-3SWV6G7-4&_user=9093226&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F1997&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1404696333&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000010638&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=9093226&md5=fb8a1c3ca866e27f9c5e6cfc486c655e [Accessed19. 07.10 ]
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, Available from:
http://eau.sagepub.com/content/14/2/211.abstract [Accessed19.07.10]
Drakakis-Smith, D. and Dixon, C. (1997) ‘Sustainable Urbanisation in Vietnam’, Elsevier Science Ltd, Volume28, No.1, Pages21-38, 1997, Available from:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V68-3SWVHV6-2&_user=9093226&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F1997&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1404715727&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000010638&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=9093226&md5=e8b50212ddf9883badb6daad21932dd8 [Accessed19.07.10]
Iris -----frist draft
Topic: To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development?
Sub topic: Evaluate approaches for protect urban forest systems for city development in china
Introduction:
As far as we know, urbanization has been taking place rapidly in developing countries over the last five decades. An important feature of urbanization in the developing countries is the fact that the rate of growth of large cities has been greater than that of small cities. (Mathur , 1982).
Therefore, we can describe urbanization as the rapid growth of the city, in term of physical expansion of the urban area with high increase of the population. The high population is the significant feature of urbanization, which was the outcome of high levels of rural-to-urban migration in combination with the high rates of natural increase of population. As well, more and more new cities were appeared in china like Shenzhen, Haikou. As we know, city play a vital role in National economic growth, especially in developing counties because of the main business activities were happened in cities. Due to the well established business network, cities create most of the national output by performing crucial service and production functions.
Thus, at the beginning, urbanization is making huge contributions to city development. However, rapid urbanization in developing countries also bring negative consequences: high intense population with inadequate accessing to housing , pollutions, always overcrowded transportation, low employment , slums and squatter settlements , basic urban services like education, medical insurance , primary healthy care , water supply and so on.. These drawbacks now are the obstacles for economic development. As well, more and more people who live in the city suffer from depression due to the high stress and pressure. In order to eliminate the negatives of urbanization and make the city continue development in a right direction which is not scarify environment as price for economic development.
From this point of view, Sustain development could be a feasibility method. According to Brundtland report, Sustain development which means “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland, 1987,p43). Thus, cities can be design and managed in a way that resource use and pollution are reduced, devote to the harmonious development between man and natural.
In this essay, I will take China’s city as case, first, compare with the European urbanization, show the main difference of china’s urbanization which is the high intense between man and land, then give a solution to eliminate the drawbacks of urbani,zation which we called urban forest system to reduce the contradictions of man and natural, and refer to the successful cases in Japan, Canada, and European cities evaluate the feasibility in China. Then estimate the potential challenges of using this solution as well. Finally, the essay is drawn together and related to a wide context in a brief conclusion.
Main body:
Short introduction of china’s urbanization and the main symbols:
When talk about China’s city, the first idea come into our mind is crowed, particularly in eastern part cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen. Due to the natural environment, China’s population distribution is extremely unbalance, which show as in the western part of china, population is sparse , however, 90% of Chinese people live in the eastern or middle part of china, and most of the city own high-density population. Furthermore, in the past 30 years, China’s reformation and opening policy was mainly operated in eastern cities. Therefore, with the fact that deepening of reform and opening up and globalization course being , the urbanization happened in China’s eastern cities with a high pace.
By contrast to European’s urbanization, demography factor could not be neglect when the urbanization happen in the third world, particularly China is the most people country in the world. Furthermore, due to the traditionally high birth rate, although the One-Child policy make some sense in China, the population growth still at a high level. Thus, combine the high population and rapid face of urbanization, the problems which urbanization producing are becoming more complicated in terms of social, economic, and physical problems. Such as: the increasing incident of urban poverty, inadequate access to shelter and urban basic services. For example, large scale numbers of people migrate from rural to urban, make the crowed city more intense. Therefore, city’s development beyond the city’s limit, especially in limit resource like water supply, transportation, land.
One of the significant contradict was population boom-up with land limit. From one hand, housing which in city is inadequate, therefore, the price of housing is really high, a lot of people can not afford it, this produce some social problem like the gap between wealthy people and poor people. For the other hand, more and more high building were established , the public space such as park , sports centre , and greenbelts were becoming less. Due to the small space, large work load, crowded transport, most urban inhabitant under high stress and pressure, they feel depression. In additional, high density city, lots cars, the output of Carbon-dioxide is extraordinary high. Definitely, the air quality is low. Thus, from sustain development point, to decrease the conflict between the human and urban environment , to improve the urban residents quality of life, urban forest system could be a good method in balance the human and environment contradict. [why?]
Urban forest system:
Introduce the urban forest system:
The concept of “urban forest” was first appeared and development in North American in the 1960s, then spread into European, but it was experience long time till it was acceptance. It could be defined as “the arts, science and technology of managing trees and forest resources in and around urban community ecosystems for the physiological, sociological, economic and aesthetic benefits trees provide society”(Miller, 1997). Urban forest which focus on the role of trees as an essential part of urban infrastructure with aim of improve urban environment that included the populations of trees in urban area, tree-plant and maintenance, and forest conservation. In order to improve the natural resources using and urban environment managing level. Nowadays, more and more cities decision makers use this method to against the urban environmental problems
Benefits:
As we know, urban forest as a solution to resolve the problems in city, therefore, the function of the system supply should frequency relate to human activities. Thus, what kind of problems does this system could contribute to the solution of, from this point of view, the essay will analysis the benefits of the urban forest system offered in terms of natural environment and social values.
Natural environment values:
Firstly: as we clear know, air pollution in city cause by the transportation and human activities Due to the vegetation’s respiration , the trees absorb huge Carbon dioxide , and release Oxygen, the processing of gas exchange reduce air pollution in some distant. As well, special kinds of tree could absorb some harmful gas, then we could select to plan. Thus, improve air quality in city, this is good for human healthy. Furthermore, the decision maker could analysis the geography position of the city, thus they could according to the specialist choose different kinds of tree for special purpose. For example, in the Southeast coastal part of china, due to the strong Typhoon hit the cities every year, it is better to choose special kind of tree to establish the windbreak and sand-fixing forest, improve the erosion control level, reduce the natural disaster.
Secondly: Urban forest system has played an essential role on micro-climate regulation in city. The term what we called “the urban heat island effect” is because of the huge heat was absorbing by the surface, and human activities also consume large energy. In studies of US cities, some of these differences have been quantified, and expressed as changes compared with surrounding country-side: air temperature is 0.7 degree higher measured as the annual mean , solar radiation is reduced by up to 20%, and wind speed is lowered by 10-30%.(Haughton and Hunter, 1994). The urban forest system would help the difference in urban area. For instance, trees could be use for shading house in summer and reduce wind in winter, for the other hand, also good choice for decorate the city. According to the study, a single tree can transpire 450 liter of water per day, which consume 1000MJ of heat energy to drive the evaporation process.(Hough,1989 ).
Therefore, vegetation play a role in reducing summer weather, from this point of view, it could also decrease the volume of heating by air-condition consuming. Furthermore, decrease the Chemical substance which called Freon that could harm ozonosphere [?]. Therefore, operate urban forest system could create chain reaction which in long term protect our environment.
Thirdly: noise pollution do harm peoples’ healthy, if people under the huge noise environment, it could result in some diseases of ears, furthermore, could arouse some nervous system disease.
Technology innovation provide some methods to reduce the noise, like noise insulation glass, however, this could just effect indoors. Through planning trees along the streets, could affectively decrease the noise, reduce the dust as well.
Social values:
A crowed city is full of stressful to his citizens, inhabitant’s depression come from the highly speed of life style which included high work pressure, less space for rest, less time for communication. More and more urban citizens are in sub-health status, this unhealthy style life affect their work devotion. According to the studies, “Vegetation is essential to achieving the quality of life that creates a great city and that makes it possible for people to live a reasonable life within an urban environment.”(Botkin and Beveridge,1997). Therefore, if the natural environment of the city is amazing, it would improve inhabitant’s belonging to the city, and improve the satisfied with the life. Park is a good place for rest, you can playing games, communicating with people, hearing the birds singing and water’s sound, your heart would be relax in the beautiful place. Visiting green plants could release the stress of life, and renew your mood, getting new energy for life.
Green spaces also contribution to human’s psychologically. For example, the study on recovery of patients in a hospital showed that patients with rooms facing a park had 10% faster recovery and needed 50% less strong pain-relieving medication compared to patients in rooms facing a building wall.( Ulrich,1984)
Furthermore, establish urban forest system, play an important role for children cognizing the natural ecosystem, cultivating the concept of protect environment from young, and also good for cultivate children’s character.
Refer to other countries and feasibility in China:
Urban forest system was successful operation in North America. For example, Toronto’s urban forest system was well-established. Many trees planted in resident yards and lining the public streets, beautify the public spaces. As we know, Singapore was famous of its “Garden city”, even through it is small-size country, but the city planer use all of the resource, from road to park, through well-design, improve the forest coverage rate. The beautiful city with high reputation of environment attract massive people for travelling the country, furthermore, absorb huge foreign investment , bring lots job opportunities to the country. Definitely, the residents got lots benefits because of the amazing environment.[support?]
Japan is also a small-size country with high density population, but, even through in Tokyo, you can find big park for rest. The country’s forest coverage was 70% in 2009. Therefore, we can learn from the successful case, learn the modern concept in the field like “roof greening”, and the advantage management experience as well. Devote making efforts on city development, particularly in new cities.
Potential challenge:
The challenges of performing urban forest system could be in terms of natural environment physical and social environment. First of all, operate the urban forest system which include tree plan and maintain, protection, and take charge of the city’s tree resources. Planting trees it relate to the physical environment of the city such as: the soil quality, air condition included the light and the moisture of the air, and water supply. As we know, there are some factories along the edge of the city, some chemical waste air would harm the trees as well. Furthermore, if choose the tree that could absorb the harmful waste air, probable the odor of the tree would be not good, then the people don’t like it. As well, when you walking on the street, probable the bird’s solid waste dumps on your shoulder, and park could be dangerous in dark night
Secondly, to establish park or lake would use land ,this would be puzzle for the decision maker. In additional, how to reduce the cost on establish and maintain the urban forest system , improve the manage level of city planning also challenge the city managers.
[too brief]
Conclusion:
As we know, urbanization is inevitable trend in the world, and it would continue at a pace in developing countries. Thus, we should not neglect the drawbacks that urbanization producing. In this essay, I have suggested that the notion of sustainable development was a good method to figure out some of the problems. From the point of improve quality of life of residents who live in urban area, reduce the extremely increase of population contradiction with limit landscape source, through urban planning, improve the utilization ratio of urban natural resource, enhance the feel of happy of the dwellers who live in city, then achieve the goal that harmonious development between man and natural.
It is obviously that urban forest system services contribute to the quality of urban life such as: air quality was improved in some extent, noise pollution was reduced, microclimate regulation, and recreational and culture values. As cities grow at a rapid way in the next sever decades, the valued of urban forest system was understood and spread use in city design. From long term run , the urban forest system play an important role in city development due to it coordinate the tense relationship between human and urban environment.
However, plant trees, establish park, cultivated land to make more greenbelt, wetlands, and lakes. All of these need land source, it is hard to achieve in some cities which land-resource is extremely limited. Furthermore, the effects were just to reduce the problems, could not eliminate in a short time. Hopefully, the awareness could be improved by decision maker in term of the important role of urban forest play in city development, then enhance the land use rate, make rational decision on land-use planning.
References:
1.Sandra , N. & Maria ,D.(2010) Estimating the economic benefits of the landscape function of ornamental trees in a sub-Mediterranean area. International Journal of Urban Forestry &Urban Greening Vol 9 (2) PP71-81 [online].
Available from: http://www.elsevier.de/ufug
[accessed 27June 2010]
2. Wendy,M. &Paul,E, Mar,s. Robert,B(2010)The housing-forest interface:Testing structural approaches for protecting suburban natural systems following development. International Journal of Urban Forestry &Urban Greening Vol 9 (2) pp149-159 [online].
Available from: http://www.elsevier.de/ufug
[accessed 27June 2010 ]
3. Alex Y ,LO & C.Y Jim (2010) Willingness of residents to pay and motives for conservation of urban green spaces in the compact city of Hong Kong International Journal of Urban Forestry &Urban Greening Vol 9 (2)pp113-120
Available from: http://www.elsevier.de/ufug
[accessed 27June 2010 ]
Sub topic: Evaluate approaches for protect urban forest systems for city development in china
Introduction:
As far as we know, urbanization has been taking place rapidly in developing countries over the last five decades. An important feature of urbanization in the developing countries is the fact that the rate of growth of large cities has been greater than that of small cities. (Mathur , 1982).
Therefore, we can describe urbanization as the rapid growth of the city, in term of physical expansion of the urban area with high increase of the population. The high population is the significant feature of urbanization, which was the outcome of high levels of rural-to-urban migration in combination with the high rates of natural increase of population. As well, more and more new cities were appeared in china like Shenzhen, Haikou. As we know, city play a vital role in National economic growth, especially in developing counties because of the main business activities were happened in cities. Due to the well established business network, cities create most of the national output by performing crucial service and production functions.
Thus, at the beginning, urbanization is making huge contributions to city development. However, rapid urbanization in developing countries also bring negative consequences: high intense population with inadequate accessing to housing , pollutions, always overcrowded transportation, low employment , slums and squatter settlements , basic urban services like education, medical insurance , primary healthy care , water supply and so on.. These drawbacks now are the obstacles for economic development. As well, more and more people who live in the city suffer from depression due to the high stress and pressure. In order to eliminate the negatives of urbanization and make the city continue development in a right direction which is not scarify environment as price for economic development.
From this point of view, Sustain development could be a feasibility method. According to Brundtland report, Sustain development which means “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland, 1987,p43). Thus, cities can be design and managed in a way that resource use and pollution are reduced, devote to the harmonious development between man and natural.
In this essay, I will take China’s city as case, first, compare with the European urbanization, show the main difference of china’s urbanization which is the high intense between man and land, then give a solution to eliminate the drawbacks of urbani,zation which we called urban forest system to reduce the contradictions of man and natural, and refer to the successful cases in Japan, Canada, and European cities evaluate the feasibility in China. Then estimate the potential challenges of using this solution as well. Finally, the essay is drawn together and related to a wide context in a brief conclusion.
Main body:
Short introduction of china’s urbanization and the main symbols:
When talk about China’s city, the first idea come into our mind is crowed, particularly in eastern part cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen. Due to the natural environment, China’s population distribution is extremely unbalance, which show as in the western part of china, population is sparse , however, 90% of Chinese people live in the eastern or middle part of china, and most of the city own high-density population. Furthermore, in the past 30 years, China’s reformation and opening policy was mainly operated in eastern cities. Therefore, with the fact that deepening of reform and opening up and globalization course being , the urbanization happened in China’s eastern cities with a high pace.
By contrast to European’s urbanization, demography factor could not be neglect when the urbanization happen in the third world, particularly China is the most people country in the world. Furthermore, due to the traditionally high birth rate, although the One-Child policy make some sense in China, the population growth still at a high level. Thus, combine the high population and rapid face of urbanization, the problems which urbanization producing are becoming more complicated in terms of social, economic, and physical problems. Such as: the increasing incident of urban poverty, inadequate access to shelter and urban basic services. For example, large scale numbers of people migrate from rural to urban, make the crowed city more intense. Therefore, city’s development beyond the city’s limit, especially in limit resource like water supply, transportation, land.
One of the significant contradict was population boom-up with land limit. From one hand, housing which in city is inadequate, therefore, the price of housing is really high, a lot of people can not afford it, this produce some social problem like the gap between wealthy people and poor people. For the other hand, more and more high building were established , the public space such as park , sports centre , and greenbelts were becoming less. Due to the small space, large work load, crowded transport, most urban inhabitant under high stress and pressure, they feel depression. In additional, high density city, lots cars, the output of Carbon-dioxide is extraordinary high. Definitely, the air quality is low. Thus, from sustain development point, to decrease the conflict between the human and urban environment , to improve the urban residents quality of life, urban forest system could be a good method in balance the human and environment contradict. [why?]
Urban forest system:
Introduce the urban forest system:
The concept of “urban forest” was first appeared and development in North American in the 1960s, then spread into European, but it was experience long time till it was acceptance. It could be defined as “the arts, science and technology of managing trees and forest resources in and around urban community ecosystems for the physiological, sociological, economic and aesthetic benefits trees provide society”(Miller, 1997). Urban forest which focus on the role of trees as an essential part of urban infrastructure with aim of improve urban environment that included the populations of trees in urban area, tree-plant and maintenance, and forest conservation. In order to improve the natural resources using and urban environment managing level. Nowadays, more and more cities decision makers use this method to against the urban environmental problems
Benefits:
As we know, urban forest as a solution to resolve the problems in city, therefore, the function of the system supply should frequency relate to human activities. Thus, what kind of problems does this system could contribute to the solution of, from this point of view, the essay will analysis the benefits of the urban forest system offered in terms of natural environment and social values.
Natural environment values:
Firstly: as we clear know, air pollution in city cause by the transportation and human activities Due to the vegetation’s respiration , the trees absorb huge Carbon dioxide , and release Oxygen, the processing of gas exchange reduce air pollution in some distant. As well, special kinds of tree could absorb some harmful gas, then we could select to plan. Thus, improve air quality in city, this is good for human healthy. Furthermore, the decision maker could analysis the geography position of the city, thus they could according to the specialist choose different kinds of tree for special purpose. For example, in the Southeast coastal part of china, due to the strong Typhoon hit the cities every year, it is better to choose special kind of tree to establish the windbreak and sand-fixing forest, improve the erosion control level, reduce the natural disaster.
Secondly: Urban forest system has played an essential role on micro-climate regulation in city. The term what we called “the urban heat island effect” is because of the huge heat was absorbing by the surface, and human activities also consume large energy. In studies of US cities, some of these differences have been quantified, and expressed as changes compared with surrounding country-side: air temperature is 0.7 degree higher measured as the annual mean , solar radiation is reduced by up to 20%, and wind speed is lowered by 10-30%.(Haughton and Hunter, 1994). The urban forest system would help the difference in urban area. For instance, trees could be use for shading house in summer and reduce wind in winter, for the other hand, also good choice for decorate the city. According to the study, a single tree can transpire 450 liter of water per day, which consume 1000MJ of heat energy to drive the evaporation process.(Hough,1989 ).
Therefore, vegetation play a role in reducing summer weather, from this point of view, it could also decrease the volume of heating by air-condition consuming. Furthermore, decrease the Chemical substance which called Freon that could harm ozonosphere [?]. Therefore, operate urban forest system could create chain reaction which in long term protect our environment.
Thirdly: noise pollution do harm peoples’ healthy, if people under the huge noise environment, it could result in some diseases of ears, furthermore, could arouse some nervous system disease.
Technology innovation provide some methods to reduce the noise, like noise insulation glass, however, this could just effect indoors. Through planning trees along the streets, could affectively decrease the noise, reduce the dust as well.
Social values:
A crowed city is full of stressful to his citizens, inhabitant’s depression come from the highly speed of life style which included high work pressure, less space for rest, less time for communication. More and more urban citizens are in sub-health status, this unhealthy style life affect their work devotion. According to the studies, “Vegetation is essential to achieving the quality of life that creates a great city and that makes it possible for people to live a reasonable life within an urban environment.”(Botkin and Beveridge,1997). Therefore, if the natural environment of the city is amazing, it would improve inhabitant’s belonging to the city, and improve the satisfied with the life. Park is a good place for rest, you can playing games, communicating with people, hearing the birds singing and water’s sound, your heart would be relax in the beautiful place. Visiting green plants could release the stress of life, and renew your mood, getting new energy for life.
Green spaces also contribution to human’s psychologically. For example, the study on recovery of patients in a hospital showed that patients with rooms facing a park had 10% faster recovery and needed 50% less strong pain-relieving medication compared to patients in rooms facing a building wall.( Ulrich,1984)
Furthermore, establish urban forest system, play an important role for children cognizing the natural ecosystem, cultivating the concept of protect environment from young, and also good for cultivate children’s character.
Refer to other countries and feasibility in China:
Urban forest system was successful operation in North America. For example, Toronto’s urban forest system was well-established. Many trees planted in resident yards and lining the public streets, beautify the public spaces. As we know, Singapore was famous of its “Garden city”, even through it is small-size country, but the city planer use all of the resource, from road to park, through well-design, improve the forest coverage rate. The beautiful city with high reputation of environment attract massive people for travelling the country, furthermore, absorb huge foreign investment , bring lots job opportunities to the country. Definitely, the residents got lots benefits because of the amazing environment.[support?]
Japan is also a small-size country with high density population, but, even through in Tokyo, you can find big park for rest. The country’s forest coverage was 70% in 2009. Therefore, we can learn from the successful case, learn the modern concept in the field like “roof greening”, and the advantage management experience as well. Devote making efforts on city development, particularly in new cities.
Potential challenge:
The challenges of performing urban forest system could be in terms of natural environment physical and social environment. First of all, operate the urban forest system which include tree plan and maintain, protection, and take charge of the city’s tree resources. Planting trees it relate to the physical environment of the city such as: the soil quality, air condition included the light and the moisture of the air, and water supply. As we know, there are some factories along the edge of the city, some chemical waste air would harm the trees as well. Furthermore, if choose the tree that could absorb the harmful waste air, probable the odor of the tree would be not good, then the people don’t like it. As well, when you walking on the street, probable the bird’s solid waste dumps on your shoulder, and park could be dangerous in dark night
Secondly, to establish park or lake would use land ,this would be puzzle for the decision maker. In additional, how to reduce the cost on establish and maintain the urban forest system , improve the manage level of city planning also challenge the city managers.
[too brief]
Conclusion:
As we know, urbanization is inevitable trend in the world, and it would continue at a pace in developing countries. Thus, we should not neglect the drawbacks that urbanization producing. In this essay, I have suggested that the notion of sustainable development was a good method to figure out some of the problems. From the point of improve quality of life of residents who live in urban area, reduce the extremely increase of population contradiction with limit landscape source, through urban planning, improve the utilization ratio of urban natural resource, enhance the feel of happy of the dwellers who live in city, then achieve the goal that harmonious development between man and natural.
It is obviously that urban forest system services contribute to the quality of urban life such as: air quality was improved in some extent, noise pollution was reduced, microclimate regulation, and recreational and culture values. As cities grow at a rapid way in the next sever decades, the valued of urban forest system was understood and spread use in city design. From long term run , the urban forest system play an important role in city development due to it coordinate the tense relationship between human and urban environment.
However, plant trees, establish park, cultivated land to make more greenbelt, wetlands, and lakes. All of these need land source, it is hard to achieve in some cities which land-resource is extremely limited. Furthermore, the effects were just to reduce the problems, could not eliminate in a short time. Hopefully, the awareness could be improved by decision maker in term of the important role of urban forest play in city development, then enhance the land use rate, make rational decision on land-use planning.
References:
1.Sandra , N. & Maria ,D.(2010) Estimating the economic benefits of the landscape function of ornamental trees in a sub-Mediterranean area. International Journal of Urban Forestry &Urban Greening Vol 9 (2) PP71-81 [online].
Available from: http://www.elsevier.de/ufug
[accessed 27June 2010]
2. Wendy,M. &Paul,E, Mar,s. Robert,B(2010)The housing-forest interface:Testing structural approaches for protecting suburban natural systems following development. International Journal of Urban Forestry &Urban Greening Vol 9 (2) pp149-159 [online].
Available from: http://www.elsevier.de/ufug
[accessed 27June 2010 ]
3. Alex Y ,LO & C.Y Jim (2010) Willingness of residents to pay and motives for conservation of urban green spaces in the compact city of Hong Kong International Journal of Urban Forestry &Urban Greening Vol 9 (2)pp113-120
Available from: http://www.elsevier.de/ufug
[accessed 27June 2010 ]
annie-first draft
topic: To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met a policy of sustainable development?
Sybtitile: What is the impact of massive migration and population growth by the policy of sustainable development in Beijing?
Introduction
Urbanization will lead to an increasing number of population living in urban areas. and it defined as "the shift from a rural to an urban society, and involves an increase in the number of people in urban areas druing a particular year."[ref?] It brought many problems and was challenged by many developing countries. According statistics show that more than half of population of the world people (6.6 billion people) lived in urban areas (Gyabaah,K.). In China, in the past two decades, there is significant of economic growth in human history by a process of urbanization.[word soup] The population migrated from rural to urban in a massive scale with economic develop opportunities. The central Government has proposed satellite city plan as a city expansion in Beijing. As well, there are more than 3 million inhabitants being attracted to live in Beijing as a economic and cultural center by 2020 (Applyyard, 2007; P3). Beijing is impressing with rapid changes, such as new skyscrapers construction, greenbelts and new transportation construction. In the meanwhile, there are some negative impacts on environment with massive population growth. Such as traffic congestion, pollution and highly housing price...Hence, we have to consider the urban expanding whether match the needs of population growth with limited resources. However, Government awares that they can maintain development with the process of urbanization, and they will make sure to achieve sustainable development. It defined as " development which meets the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of the future"(Hussen, 2004;P269). Moreover, the China Government has planed the "smart growth" policies, it aims to use resources more efficiency. Especially, before Olympic, some policies carried on very efficient, such as underground routes expended, low carbon technology development and statellite plans..For this essay, I will decribe the problems of population growth and massive migration. Futhermore, I will discuss how to achieve the sustainable development with some policies, find the solution of the problems. Finally, I will give some recommendation and conclude my opinions.
Main body
Traffic congestion
Today, more and more people can afford the private cars as people's incomes increased. China become a car dependent country quickly, especially in some modern busy cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Though the percentage of private car owners is much lower than western countries, traffic congestion issue has become a very serious problem in major cities such as Beijing. There are a large number of privately owned cars in Beijing, especially the massive populations have growing fast. Currently, ther are approximately 3 owners of private cars for every 100households in China; by comparison, there are approximately 2 cars for each household in the US. In addition, there are 14 million additional vehicles in China's roads in 2003, almost 13,000 new cars every day. In the United States, at least some spaces are used for personal vehicles, such as carriages and autos with urban areas developed. In Beijing, the most of main roads don't have enough spaces for personal vehicles like bicycle, autos...According the surveys, Government has increased use of signs and extended many thoroughfares to guid traffic, but the average speed of vehicles fell from 28 miles (45 kilomeeters per hour) to 7 miles per hour (12 kilometers per hour) on the main roads, and the lowest speed is less than 4 miles per hour (7 kilometers per hour) from 1994 to 2003. Moreover, the automobiles have increased 10 percent but the roads only were extended by 2 percent. In Beijing, the housing price is vey high, especially near the center of the city. Residents have to move to the suburbs and bought private cars as main transport (Applyyard,2007).
The traffic congestion becomes a social issue and urgent problem which people have to face it. Due to the roads always overcrowding, people have to spend several hours on the roads every day. Meanwhile, traffic congestion also brings some serious problems, such as traffic addidents and air pollution. The main causes of air pollution from massive vehichels on the roads. And the large of transportation sector produced greenhouse gas emission and carbon dioxide. However, Beijing has been taking various ways to solve the traffic congestion problems like developing subway and rail transportation and traffic control policies. Firstly, develop a better subway plan. Beijing is building many new roads and widening some ones, but this city still has to open more bus lanes. By 2020, bus lanes will have been open on 75%. In addition, the Beijing Government has constructed of the new subway lines like lines 4,5 and 10 (Yan,2002). Indeed, the subway construction is very expensive, therefore every inch of the subways should be used efficiency. Compare with London subway, it is near in any of two stations and very conventient for people. But there are long distances in two stations in Beijing (Shi,2004). Secondly,Beijing Government has proposed 14 satellite cities to be developed from 1991 to 2010. These satellite cities have attracted almost 3 million inhabitants, this plan can solve the traffic congestion problem with massive population (Applyyard,2007).
Air pollution
High extension of urbanization causes pollution like air pollution. In Beijing, the main causes of air pollution from many polluting industries and new vehicles on the roads. These main reasons have exacerbated poor air quality (Streets, 2006). Moreover, the process of urbanization has increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon dioxide from the large of transportation sector pollution. The pollution from many vehicles with growth populatins in city. For example, Beijing produces much carbon dioxide combined with Los Angeles and Tokyo total together. Between 1998 and 1999, the ozone concentration has exceeded health standard of public in Beijing (Applyyard, 2007). In addition, Beijing unicipal Government began to try to improve air quality from 1998, and the Government has deal with this kind of problems focusing on vehicle emissions, industrial pollution and construction sector. And the air quality has improved (Streets, 2006).
The Beijing Government is committed to implement a number of policies to improve air quality and reduces air pollution. Such as increasing environmental areas and protection, introducing and developing new technololgy (Streets, 2006). Moreover, in order to reduce carbob dioxide emissions, China Government develops low carbon technology like wind power. For example, Goldwind company successfully purchases the licenses with advanced technology under the support of Chinese policies. In 2008, Goldwind did the wind power plant project for the Beijing Olympics and this created the symbol of "green Olympics' for China. In additon, company help cut carbon dioxide emissions by 100,000 tons and save 50,000 tons of coal every year (Lewis,2007). People should be awareness of the importance of environment, Government also should educate public about protection enviromental issues. However, it will take a couple of years to achieve the significant changes for air quality.
High housing price issue
In recent years, it has been increase in housing demand for urban residents in China. Especially, it has also increased rapidly urban housing prices in Beijing, since the housing is a necessary demand for people. According to China's special household registration system, it separated the urban population growth annual for two parts: one from the natural growth of the existing urban population; another from the urban migration. This means that Chinese urbanization and urban population expansion would cause a high demand and high price for housing. According the survey, the private rate of urban housing had increased already to 80% in most of cities, and almost 100% to Beijing in 2001 (Chen, 2010). According to the National Bureau of statistics of China, housing transaction has increased almost 14 times from 1998 to 2007, as well the soaring housing price has led to many concerns in society, especially for that low-income households. Due to the sluggish increase of income in many low income families, the much higher housing prices far away to income's level of many urban households. It still exists some problem with development of affordable housing program by Government. China Government gains greatly benefits from high housing price, with high tax revenue, high asset investment. Nowadays, economic growth replies on the asset investment by Government heavily. In 2008, there is 2% of GDP growth from the real estate industry. Hence, once the housing market collapse, the whole China's economy will face to immeasurable risk.
Housing is a big problem to citizens, especially that young people who don't have enough money can afford the house. Today, many people cannot afford it with a very high price. Moreover, more and more immigrants were coming to cities like Beijing, lead to the value of lands increased very fast. For my opinion, the Government should pay more attention and take steps to control the increasing price. The Government should make some new policies measures to control the price of house price. However, the Beijing Government is determined to control property bubble. In 2010, the State Council has introduced administrative 12 tough measures and decided to curb soaring urban housing prices. Such as it not allow all families from buying more than one home. This policy can restricted middle class families bought more house. The central bank has begun to tighten the monetary policy. At the same time, Beijing made plans to increase the supply of property development and of sponsored low-cost housing (Bottelier, 2010). The Government made these new policies to restrict market demand, and pulling down the property prices efficiently. Market price declined sharply (5%-10%) in some cities, the price also declined in 5% in Beijing (Bottelier, 2010;P4). Compare with other country, Singapore build the high density way to solve the housing shortage's problems, then people can afford those kinds of flats. For my opinion, during the process of urbanization, the city can build more satellite towns to scatter massive popultion and solve the problem of housing shortage.
Conclusion
At present, the process of urbanization with the growth populaton and massive migration moved into cities. It caused many environment and social problems. As a result, we should develop urbanization in a sustainable way in order to make a better future. And the policies are successful in Beijing by susbtainable development for the process of urbanization. Beijing has ambitious plans and actions improved the overall environmental conditions. These will require a signigicant effort and financial investment by Government. More and more people will increase environmental awarenes.
However, the Government should continue to invest in public transit. And the resources should be diverted to public transportation. For example, the subways and light rail are popular forms of public transportation. Moreover, central Government should maintain high density and redevelop urban areas. Such as continue to develop the satellites plans and land use pattern more efficiency. On the other side, the policies of limited car registration that can help reduce congestion and pollution (Applyyard, 2007). For my opinion, I hope that the policies and visions which made by Government will help Beijing develop fast. Futhermore, the Chinese cities will grow smart and improve the lives of urban with economic growth and environment protection.
Reference:
Applyyard,B. Zheng,Y. Watson,R. Bruce,L. Sohmer,R. Li,X. Qian,J. (2007), Solution for China's rapid urbanization, Natural resources defense council
www.china.nrdc.org/files/china-nrdc-org/smartcities.pdf
Gyabaah,K. Urbanization processes-environmental and health effects in Africa.PERN steering committee member and principal. www.populationenvironmentresearch.org/Nsiah-Gyaabah-contribution.pdf
Hussen,A.(2004), Principles of environment economics, Simultaneously published in USA,P269.
Yan,Z.(2002), Traffic congestion in Beijing: What to do?
www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Mar/28866.htm
Shi,L. (2004), Beijing traffic strategies outlines,
www.btmbeijing.com/contents/en/business/2004-12/focus/traffid
Lewis (2007) Technology acquisition and innovation in the developing world: wind turbine development in China and India. Springer,vol.42,pp.208-232
Streets,D., Fu,J. Jang,C., (2006), Air quallity during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games,
www.anl.gov/media-center/2007/Beijing-report-final.pdf
Green Beijing
www.unep.org/sport-env/beijingreport07/chapter5.pdf
The formation of housing price expectation in China: A general research proposal
www.eres2010.org/contents/papers/id23.pdf
Bottelier,P. (2010), Beijing's new challenge: China's post-crisit housing bubble
www.carnegieendowment.org/files/chinabubble.pdf
Chen,J., Guo,F., Wu,Y. (2010), One decade of urban housing reform in China: urban housing price dynamics and the role of migration and urbanization, 1995-2005
Sybtitile: What is the impact of massive migration and population growth by the policy of sustainable development in Beijing?
Introduction
Urbanization will lead to an increasing number of population living in urban areas. and it defined as "the shift from a rural to an urban society, and involves an increase in the number of people in urban areas druing a particular year."[ref?] It brought many problems and was challenged by many developing countries. According statistics show that more than half of population of the world people (6.6 billion people) lived in urban areas (Gyabaah,K.). In China, in the past two decades, there is significant of economic growth in human history by a process of urbanization.[word soup] The population migrated from rural to urban in a massive scale with economic develop opportunities. The central Government has proposed satellite city plan as a city expansion in Beijing. As well, there are more than 3 million inhabitants being attracted to live in Beijing as a economic and cultural center by 2020 (Applyyard, 2007; P3). Beijing is impressing with rapid changes, such as new skyscrapers construction, greenbelts and new transportation construction. In the meanwhile, there are some negative impacts on environment with massive population growth. Such as traffic congestion, pollution and highly housing price...Hence, we have to consider the urban expanding whether match the needs of population growth with limited resources. However, Government awares that they can maintain development with the process of urbanization, and they will make sure to achieve sustainable development. It defined as " development which meets the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of the future"(Hussen, 2004;P269). Moreover, the China Government has planed the "smart growth" policies, it aims to use resources more efficiency. Especially, before Olympic, some policies carried on very efficient, such as underground routes expended, low carbon technology development and statellite plans..For this essay, I will decribe the problems of population growth and massive migration. Futhermore, I will discuss how to achieve the sustainable development with some policies, find the solution of the problems. Finally, I will give some recommendation and conclude my opinions.
Main body
Traffic congestion
Today, more and more people can afford the private cars as people's incomes increased. China become a car dependent country quickly, especially in some modern busy cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Though the percentage of private car owners is much lower than western countries, traffic congestion issue has become a very serious problem in major cities such as Beijing. There are a large number of privately owned cars in Beijing, especially the massive populations have growing fast. Currently, ther are approximately 3 owners of private cars for every 100households in China; by comparison, there are approximately 2 cars for each household in the US. In addition, there are 14 million additional vehicles in China's roads in 2003, almost 13,000 new cars every day. In the United States, at least some spaces are used for personal vehicles, such as carriages and autos with urban areas developed. In Beijing, the most of main roads don't have enough spaces for personal vehicles like bicycle, autos...According the surveys, Government has increased use of signs and extended many thoroughfares to guid traffic, but the average speed of vehicles fell from 28 miles (45 kilomeeters per hour) to 7 miles per hour (12 kilometers per hour) on the main roads, and the lowest speed is less than 4 miles per hour (7 kilometers per hour) from 1994 to 2003. Moreover, the automobiles have increased 10 percent but the roads only were extended by 2 percent. In Beijing, the housing price is vey high, especially near the center of the city. Residents have to move to the suburbs and bought private cars as main transport (Applyyard,2007).
The traffic congestion becomes a social issue and urgent problem which people have to face it. Due to the roads always overcrowding, people have to spend several hours on the roads every day. Meanwhile, traffic congestion also brings some serious problems, such as traffic addidents and air pollution. The main causes of air pollution from massive vehichels on the roads. And the large of transportation sector produced greenhouse gas emission and carbon dioxide. However, Beijing has been taking various ways to solve the traffic congestion problems like developing subway and rail transportation and traffic control policies. Firstly, develop a better subway plan. Beijing is building many new roads and widening some ones, but this city still has to open more bus lanes. By 2020, bus lanes will have been open on 75%. In addition, the Beijing Government has constructed of the new subway lines like lines 4,5 and 10 (Yan,2002). Indeed, the subway construction is very expensive, therefore every inch of the subways should be used efficiency. Compare with London subway, it is near in any of two stations and very conventient for people. But there are long distances in two stations in Beijing (Shi,2004). Secondly,Beijing Government has proposed 14 satellite cities to be developed from 1991 to 2010. These satellite cities have attracted almost 3 million inhabitants, this plan can solve the traffic congestion problem with massive population (Applyyard,2007).
Air pollution
High extension of urbanization causes pollution like air pollution. In Beijing, the main causes of air pollution from many polluting industries and new vehicles on the roads. These main reasons have exacerbated poor air quality (Streets, 2006). Moreover, the process of urbanization has increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon dioxide from the large of transportation sector pollution. The pollution from many vehicles with growth populatins in city. For example, Beijing produces much carbon dioxide combined with Los Angeles and Tokyo total together. Between 1998 and 1999, the ozone concentration has exceeded health standard of public in Beijing (Applyyard, 2007). In addition, Beijing unicipal Government began to try to improve air quality from 1998, and the Government has deal with this kind of problems focusing on vehicle emissions, industrial pollution and construction sector. And the air quality has improved (Streets, 2006).
The Beijing Government is committed to implement a number of policies to improve air quality and reduces air pollution. Such as increasing environmental areas and protection, introducing and developing new technololgy (Streets, 2006). Moreover, in order to reduce carbob dioxide emissions, China Government develops low carbon technology like wind power. For example, Goldwind company successfully purchases the licenses with advanced technology under the support of Chinese policies. In 2008, Goldwind did the wind power plant project for the Beijing Olympics and this created the symbol of "green Olympics' for China. In additon, company help cut carbon dioxide emissions by 100,000 tons and save 50,000 tons of coal every year (Lewis,2007). People should be awareness of the importance of environment, Government also should educate public about protection enviromental issues. However, it will take a couple of years to achieve the significant changes for air quality.
High housing price issue
In recent years, it has been increase in housing demand for urban residents in China. Especially, it has also increased rapidly urban housing prices in Beijing, since the housing is a necessary demand for people. According to China's special household registration system, it separated the urban population growth annual for two parts: one from the natural growth of the existing urban population; another from the urban migration. This means that Chinese urbanization and urban population expansion would cause a high demand and high price for housing. According the survey, the private rate of urban housing had increased already to 80% in most of cities, and almost 100% to Beijing in 2001 (Chen, 2010). According to the National Bureau of statistics of China, housing transaction has increased almost 14 times from 1998 to 2007, as well the soaring housing price has led to many concerns in society, especially for that low-income households. Due to the sluggish increase of income in many low income families, the much higher housing prices far away to income's level of many urban households. It still exists some problem with development of affordable housing program by Government. China Government gains greatly benefits from high housing price, with high tax revenue, high asset investment. Nowadays, economic growth replies on the asset investment by Government heavily. In 2008, there is 2% of GDP growth from the real estate industry. Hence, once the housing market collapse, the whole China's economy will face to immeasurable risk.
Housing is a big problem to citizens, especially that young people who don't have enough money can afford the house. Today, many people cannot afford it with a very high price. Moreover, more and more immigrants were coming to cities like Beijing, lead to the value of lands increased very fast. For my opinion, the Government should pay more attention and take steps to control the increasing price. The Government should make some new policies measures to control the price of house price. However, the Beijing Government is determined to control property bubble. In 2010, the State Council has introduced administrative 12 tough measures and decided to curb soaring urban housing prices. Such as it not allow all families from buying more than one home. This policy can restricted middle class families bought more house. The central bank has begun to tighten the monetary policy. At the same time, Beijing made plans to increase the supply of property development and of sponsored low-cost housing (Bottelier, 2010). The Government made these new policies to restrict market demand, and pulling down the property prices efficiently. Market price declined sharply (5%-10%) in some cities, the price also declined in 5% in Beijing (Bottelier, 2010;P4). Compare with other country, Singapore build the high density way to solve the housing shortage's problems, then people can afford those kinds of flats. For my opinion, during the process of urbanization, the city can build more satellite towns to scatter massive popultion and solve the problem of housing shortage.
Conclusion
At present, the process of urbanization with the growth populaton and massive migration moved into cities. It caused many environment and social problems. As a result, we should develop urbanization in a sustainable way in order to make a better future. And the policies are successful in Beijing by susbtainable development for the process of urbanization. Beijing has ambitious plans and actions improved the overall environmental conditions. These will require a signigicant effort and financial investment by Government. More and more people will increase environmental awarenes.
However, the Government should continue to invest in public transit. And the resources should be diverted to public transportation. For example, the subways and light rail are popular forms of public transportation. Moreover, central Government should maintain high density and redevelop urban areas. Such as continue to develop the satellites plans and land use pattern more efficiency. On the other side, the policies of limited car registration that can help reduce congestion and pollution (Applyyard, 2007). For my opinion, I hope that the policies and visions which made by Government will help Beijing develop fast. Futhermore, the Chinese cities will grow smart and improve the lives of urban with economic growth and environment protection.
Reference:
Applyyard,B. Zheng,Y. Watson,R. Bruce,L. Sohmer,R. Li,X. Qian,J. (2007), Solution for China's rapid urbanization, Natural resources defense council
www.china.nrdc.org/files/china-nrdc-org/smartcities.pdf
Gyabaah,K. Urbanization processes-environmental and health effects in Africa.PERN steering committee member and principal. www.populationenvironmentresearch.org/Nsiah-Gyaabah-contribution.pdf
Hussen,A.(2004), Principles of environment economics, Simultaneously published in USA,P269.
Yan,Z.(2002), Traffic congestion in Beijing: What to do?
www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Mar/28866.htm
Shi,L. (2004), Beijing traffic strategies outlines,
www.btmbeijing.com/contents/en/business/2004-12/focus/traffid
Lewis (2007) Technology acquisition and innovation in the developing world: wind turbine development in China and India. Springer,vol.42,pp.208-232
Streets,D., Fu,J. Jang,C., (2006), Air quallity during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games,
www.anl.gov/media-center/2007/Beijing-report-final.pdf
Green Beijing
www.unep.org/sport-env/beijingreport07/chapter5.pdf
The formation of housing price expectation in China: A general research proposal
www.eres2010.org/contents/papers/id23.pdf
Bottelier,P. (2010), Beijing's new challenge: China's post-crisit housing bubble
www.carnegieendowment.org/files/chinabubble.pdf
Chen,J., Guo,F., Wu,Y. (2010), One decade of urban housing reform in China: urban housing price dynamics and the role of migration and urbanization, 1995-2005
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