What extent can the problems of urbanization are met by a policy of sustainable development
Subtitle: What are the problems in the process of China’s urbanization? How to resolve these problems?
[Abstract] With the fast development of global economy, urbanisation is a worldwide trend now, especially in developing countries like China, India and Brazil. However, because of lack of experiences in urbanisation and rapid development in economy, China has a lot problem in the process of urbanisation such as education, traffic and pollution. All of them may be close to our daily life. This paper explains the reasons for these problems and gives my own suggestions for how to resolve these problems. And all the resolutions are base on sustainable development. In the end of paper, I expect China’s government and public can pay more attention on the urbanisation in the future.
Introduction
• Kenneth (2008) claims that urbanization can be defined in four views of demography, geography, sociology and economics. For demography, urbanization is the process of change from rural population into urban population. For geography, urbanization is the process of relative centralization of population in an area of the towns and cities. For sociology, urbanization is the process of rural lifestyle transformed into the city lifestyle. For economics, urbanization is the process of the change from traditional rural economy into the modern market economy. Sustainable development can also be defined in following four views (Shahid Yusuf and Anthony Saich, 2008): ecological sustainability, sociological sustainability, economical sustainability and technological sustainability. For ecological sustainability, sustainable development is the objectives of protecting and enhancing the capacity of production and updates in environment system. For sociological sustainability, sustainable development is the conception of improving the human life quality under the capacity of biological system. For economical sustainability, sustainable development is the conception of increasing profit without abusing nature resource. For technological sustainable, sustainable development is the conception of steering cleaner and more efficient technology and reducing the waste of energy and other natural resources. After the reform and market open in the year of 1995, China had gradually loosened original restriction of population migration, a large number of workers migrated from the western poor area to the eastern cities, which help the rapid development of urbanization in China. But because of the large quantity of population and the speed of development of economic and social insurance can not catch the step of urbanization, there are so many serious problems reveal in the process of urbanization. Firstly, pollution is extending in the cities that make the decrease of the quality of city life. Secondly, the lack of urban space leads to the high price and high pressure in the cities. Thirdly, the large increase of population makes traffic jam and high crime rate in China. So in this essay, I will focus on these problems which occur in urbanization process of China, then give my suggestions for how to resolve these problems base on the analysis of why these problems happen.
Education problem in process of urbanization
It is obvious that the development of education can not adapt to the process of urbanization in China. There are so many educational problems come with the urbanization. Firstly, the urbanization extends the paradox about the demands and the supply of education. Because of the urbanization brings a large number of labors from the rural area, their young children also come with their parents and gather in the cities. So the booms of the number of children who need education become the reason why leads to the lack of education resources like book, facilities and teachers. In addition, with the further development of urbanization, more and more surplus rural labor force will gradually migrate to urban, which may aggravate the competition in the cities. How a people can compete with others is relevant for their education level sometimes, people who get the better degree usually have the more competitiveness. So the demands of education increase a lot immediately. However, because of the original education resource is limited and it is difficult for local government to provide much more education resource for them in short time, so a lot of new citizens can not get well education in cities. Secondly, rural education problem also become more serious in the process of urbanization in China. There have so many young labors move to urban area to find more widen opportunities for work, whilst the rapid decrease of rural population. So there are fewer students to enter the rural schools. To avoid waste, government usually reduces investment on rural education. Teacher can not get enough reward as before, so more and more good rural teacher drop their teaching work that weaken the rural educational quality. The worse thing is rural education content also difficult to adapt to the need of urbanization and modernization. Some schools use old textbooks which were used in thirty years before to teach. Every aspect of life in a modern society of tremendous changes can not reflected in the courses, so these students formed the knowledge and ability structure which has been far away from social development of modern science and technology, production and the actual needs. Not only wastes a lot of learning resources, but also make lots of non-agricultural population in the labor market is smooth. Some of the local education content emphasizes the rural education, with the rural course to replace for academic urbanization education and spread a considerable range of knowledge of agricultural production. Result further widened the distance between the quality of rural education and quality of city education. This obviously is not fair for people and could cause rural countryside youth can reach fewer opportunities to accept higher levels education than urban youth.
Solutions for education problems
Face to these serious educational problems in the process of urbanization in China, Chinese government should use sustainable development knowledge and policy to promote the benign interaction in the urbanization process and education of the healthy development. Specifically, mainly in the following aspects:
(a) Increasing government investment in education and promoting diversification of educational investment pattern to release contradictions of the demands and needs of education. The educational investment of China’s government account for 3% of GDP for some years, which far below than India which are at the same level of development. For the average education investment, China also below than most developing countries With the rapid development of China’s economy, the ability of government investment is more and more strong, so we must try best to ensure "three growth" goal in order to adapt to the dramatically increase in the educational contradictions in the process of urbanization. What is more, when government increases their spending in education, they also actively encourage individuals, groups, and fund involvement to promote the healthy development of private education organisation and achieve the task of educational investment diversification.
(b) Give the policy to cut the relation between household registration system and education system. China's household registration system has played a positive role in the era of planned economy, but now already can not adapt to the socialist market economy and urbanization development needs, conversely it becomes the biggest obstacle of equal education right by migrant population. Therefore, for promoting the development of education in the process of urbanization, Government have to cancel household system and stop the Labour market segmentation break, then establish a unified labor market and allow the rural labor migration to town. After that, rural people can enjoy the treatment as same as citizens in urban public school.
(c) Increase government transfer payment for rural education. In the vast rural areas in China, people live with backward economy, productivity, but most of the school-age children distributed in rural areas, and actually, it is difficult for them to resolve their problems of rural basic education under these conditions in the countryside. Therefore, for the development of rural education, rise the government financial transfer has vital significance in improving teachers' treatment and stable.
Transportation problems in process of urbanization
The statistics (reference 1) show us there are more than 32,001,477 cars drive on England road, and more than two thirds cars drive on city’s road. So you can imagine how busy the road is. Particularly London, drivers may cost two or more hours a day on waiting in the traffic jams. So compare with the British transportation problems, China has much more serious problems on the road. First of all, the original transport infrastructure can not stand the rapid expansion of urban area. Take the Ning Bo city as my case study, which is located in the east of China and a port city in China. At present, Ning Bo’s urban area has transformed 100, 000 squares km and the urban population increased to 10 million, urban per capita travel times also increasing. Along with the expanding urban construction, urban area becomes the center of city. So floating population growing year by year and the expansion of the city production and life, it makes the city road unbearable heavy traffic pressure. Although in recent years the city road network construction more and faster than before, but there is still not reach the speed of growth rate of city traffic. At the same time, the urban road construction mainly distributed in the new area of city but less in old area, that is why the old city roads area of city can not meet the growing needs for increasing cars. Traffic jam in the old area is common phenomenon these years. Secondly, urban traffic construction is lack of scientific strategy plan. The road system is transformed the traditional theory of traffic planning under the guidance of scientific and reasonable construction, lack of planning. The road without a rational function of network and the roads are not fully used will lead to traffic jams. Thirdly, Traffic management science and technology is in place at a lower level. Because of the lack of sensor technology, electronic control information, network technology and modern technology, traffic management mostly relies on human management, Due to insufficient funds in daily management, police and less often attend in management gap time driving order is confusion.
Resolutions to transportation problems
Firstly, make a reasonable plan for urban road traffic development. Practice and experience tells us that development and management of urban roads must be based on the city economy, population and the present conditions of the actual construction of tourist city, so we have to focus on the grand goal of promoting urban status of urban traffic management committee and responsible for urban road traffic development planning. For instance, Ning Bo as a richest city in China, it should have more cars and buses on the roads than other cities, government can not use the average standard to evaluate Ning Bo’s transport. We must make the plans and strategy according to local economy situation like constructing more roads for more cars. Secondly, increase the awareness of public traffic safety education and enhance the consciousness of the urban traffic, every citizen plays an important role in the good management of city traffic. First is planned to use newspapers, TV, radio and other media to advertise the social realize about strengthen urban traffic management and keep traffic in orders. To achieving the objectives of promoting the standard management of urban traffic, we may clear the responsibility of management on the road. All the road management divided by traffic policeman and other relevant sector of government through the implementation of standardized management, so we have to strength cooperation between them and gives them clear responsibilities. Lastly, increase the investment of traffic management department. We may increase traffic intelligent management of modern equipment, such as "electronic police" to improve traffic management science and technology. Intelligent transportation is an inevitable trend in the development of intelligent transportation management, by using advanced information technology, computer technology and sensor technology, automatic control theory, the artificial intelligence effectively applied to the comprehensive transportation service, management and control, to establish the integrated management system, traffic transportation management day. With intelligent management of city traffic equipment mainly intersection and sections of the reasonable traffic and transportation organization, highly channelizing driveway and orientation, light guide lane "two phase control" as a "heterogeneous", greatly improve the city intersection and road capacity and safety.
Conclusion
In conclusion, my entire essay summarizes the main two problems which are faced by China in the process of urbanization. One is educational problems, which related to the sustainable development of talent even the development of China in future. The other is traffic jam on the road, which is relative to individual every day. Because we all the members on the road, traffic jam may restrict the development of urban economy. We must make the modernization of transport first before urbanization. If we can not realize how serious they are, we may lose more than we can benefit from urbanization in long term, which just is what we can learn from sustainable development. With the help of fast urbanization in China, I think Chinese may enjoy their lives, everyone have fair education rights and enjoy their weekend with family though the broad road in the future. However, with the deeper of urbanization, more and more problems may occur like marriage. We can not stop the step to do further research on sustainable development in the process of urbanization in China.
Reference
1. http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/page/dft_transstats_031690.pdf),
2. Fei Yan,2005, Education problems with urban migratory children in China, journal of sociology and social welfare, from the internet :http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CYZ/is_3_32/ai_n15397207/
3. Kenneth.A,2008,Chinese urban development, Guest Editor, University of California, from the internet: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~ksmall/chineseurban.pdf
4. Kojima,R,1995,urbanization in China http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Periodicals/De/pdf/95_02_01.pdf
5. Shahid Yusuf and Anthony Saich, 2008, Key challenges facing China derive from urbanization, on the internet : http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTEAECOPRO/0,,contentMDK:21699103~pagePK:64168445~piPK:64168309~theSitePK:3087705,00.html
6. Alex .P,2008.China’s innovation traffic lights, from the internet: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/how-china-is-innovating-faster-than-the-west.php
Friday, 13 August 2010
Freya - Final Essay
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
Abstract
Nowadays many mage-cities in the world are confronted with the conflicts between the sustainable development and urbanisation. Tokyo, one of the most noted and biggest cities, has some own attributes. Because Japan is an island country, the size and space are relatively small, compared with other countries, and thus leads to the high density of population, which causes a series of conflicts between the scarcity of resources and the ongoing climbing number of population, especially in Tokyo. This essay talks about three aspects of problems, i.e. water, transportation and housing, by explaining the reasons of how they were generated and evaluating the corresponding solutions.
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 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 free expressways were constructed to encourage people who live outside the main business area to choose them, so that traffic could be diverted from local paths, the condition of congestion remains 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 situation, the lower rate on loans of housing is offered to ordinary people (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 clear that the high price of housing contributes to the mess in transportation. People are forced 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.
The re-design of the style of a city, especially a mega-city, is a sustainable method for the future development (UN-Habitat 2009). Formerly, the government preferred to give the priority of blossom to Tokyo main area, on the ground that there was not enough prosperity there. However, when over-exploitation and unreasonable city structure induced more and more troubles in the city, even subsequently, the pure pursuit of interests deteriorated these troubles, the awareness of decentralisation is to surface that means no focus on one area but disperse and balanced development in many places. Thus people could have the chance to live near their working places, supermarkets along with leisure venues that the expense of housing will be cut down. This also benefits lessening the fiscal burden of the authorities that there will be fewer needs from citizens who require the low rate loans. Simultaneously, the inefficient transportation will be appeased, as a result of the downward trend in the average level of using transportation. As well, the less energy will be used, the less pollution will be produced, and the less time will be wasted on the road.
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.
——The Evaluation of Remedies of the Issues on Water, Transport and Land (Housing) in Tokyo
Abstract
Nowadays many mage-cities in the world are confronted with the conflicts between the sustainable development and urbanisation. Tokyo, one of the most noted and biggest cities, has some own attributes. Because Japan is an island country, the size and space are relatively small, compared with other countries, and thus leads to the high density of population, which causes a series of conflicts between the scarcity of resources and the ongoing climbing number of population, especially in Tokyo. This essay talks about three aspects of problems, i.e. water, transportation and housing, by explaining the reasons of how they were generated and evaluating the corresponding solutions.
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 refer 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 the 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 free expressways were constructed to encourage people who live outside the main business area to choose them, so that traffic could be diverted from local paths, the condition of congestion remains 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 situation, the lower rate on loans of housing is offered to ordinary people (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 clear that the high price of housing contributes to the mess in transportation. People are forced 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.
The re-design of the style of a city, especially a mega-city, is a sustainable method for the future development (UN-Habitat 2009). Formerly, the government preferred to give the priority of blossom to Tokyo main area, on the ground that there was not enough prosperity there. However, when over-exploitation and unreasonable city structure induced more and more troubles in the city, even subsequently, the pure pursuit of interests deteriorated these troubles, the awareness of decentralisation is to surface that means no focus on one area but disperse and balanced development in many places. Thus people could have the chance to live near their working places, supermarkets along with leisure venues that the expense of housing will be cut down. This also benefits lessening the fiscal burden of the authorities that there will be fewer needs from citizens who require the low rate loans. Simultaneously, the inefficient transportation will be appeased, as a result of the downward trend in the average level of using transportation. As well, the less energy will be used, the less pollution will be produced, and the less time will be wasted on the road.
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
[4] Source: Furumai 2008
[5] Source: Mende 2005
[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.
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, Publisher Routledge.
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.
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.
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, Publisher Routledge.
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.
NICK'S FULL ESSAY
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?
Abstract
For a long time, urbanization as a product of industrial revolution accelerated economic development. However, that is not perfect. In fact, urbanization also caused lots of problems, such as more serious pollution, a crowded population, the overuse of resources and so on. The sustainable measure could be an effective way to solve these problems. This essay uses Shanghai as a typical example to point out some problems of urbanization and manages to analyse the achievements and defects of some existing sustainable policies which focus on dealing with them, such as developing Pudong new area and transferring factories to suburbs. Actually, some of them are not sustainable so that it could maintain no damage in the future.
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 meant people can meet their own needs via the development in the present and meet the need for future generations (The report of WCED). Generally, sustainable development balance the objectives of 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. The Shanghai Statistics office reported there are more than 19 million people in 2010. 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.
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 are suffering in a narrow areas to live together.
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. 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. 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.
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. As 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]
Report of the the World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future. Chapter 2: Towards Sustainable Development. Available from: http://habitat.igc.org/open-gates/ocf-02.htm#I [accessedin 21.07.10]
Subtitle: What are the impacts of massive population growth by the policy of sustainable development in Shanghai?
Abstract
For a long time, urbanization as a product of industrial revolution accelerated economic development. However, that is not perfect. In fact, urbanization also caused lots of problems, such as more serious pollution, a crowded population, the overuse of resources and so on. The sustainable measure could be an effective way to solve these problems. This essay uses Shanghai as a typical example to point out some problems of urbanization and manages to analyse the achievements and defects of some existing sustainable policies which focus on dealing with them, such as developing Pudong new area and transferring factories to suburbs. Actually, some of them are not sustainable so that it could maintain no damage in the future.
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 meant people can meet their own needs via the development in the present and meet the need for future generations (The report of WCED). Generally, sustainable development balance the objectives of 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. The Shanghai Statistics office reported there are more than 19 million people in 2010. 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.
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 are suffering in a narrow areas to live together.
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. 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. 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.
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. As 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]
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http://www.shanghaihighlights.com/essential/ [accessed in 20.07.10]
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Sue's whole essay
Topic:
“To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development? ”
Sub-Title:
Can the “sustainable development policies ”solve the urban housing problems in Hong Kong?
Abstract
Hong Kong is a prosperous city but it has the serious problems of urbanlisation because it has limited resource of land to supply the high population with about 7 million leading to citizens suffering in overcrowded living condition especially the large family. The government has attached great importance to adopt the sustainable development policies such as (HOS) and (PRH) programmes to solve the housing problems. In this paper, the comparison of urban housing problems between Hong Kong and Shanghai are described and the information are collected from the academic articles and relative websites that can find out the positive sustainable polices and statistic to support. Both of the cities have suffered in the same situation but Hong Kong’s policies are more efficient than Shanghai. For this research purpose, I concentrated each situation with these two cities to compare its own sustainable policies.
Introduction
Urbanisation has become a trend in the developing countries. Urbanisation means massive population growth in urban cities due to more and people are moving from rural to urban areas .The majorities of citizens live in a narrow area rather than stay in a large region. The government and others provide more service and resource allowance such as water, electricity and transport to a large number of citizens. Education, business and technological advances are also more accessible in urban area result in economic growth. Thus, the opportunities are the main factors to attract people to move to cities because people can seek their jobs to improve their life quality and build a better future for their children. However, the characteristics of urban area can cause a lot of serious problems in the societies like high housing price, limited resource, pollution, high population, traffic congestion, crimes. In fact, the problems of urbanisation have been the barriers to bring negative effects for the economic growth. Therefore, these problems have led the government to implement the sustainable development to solve the problems such as waste management charge scheme, recycling scheme, renewable energy, urban living space. Sustainable development depends on how profitably balance on the objectives of society, economy and environment to maintain the needs of present for human and future generations to improve their lifestyle, protect ecosystems and the quality of environment. I will give the case of Hong Kong’s situation of housing problems focusing on overcrowded living condition and high housing price to evaluate the different policies of sustainable development in housing whether they are the effective solutions to meet the aim that can solve and improve the problems but maintain the economic growth simultaneously. I will also compare Hong kong’s housing problems and sustainable policies with Shanghai to judge which city's policy is more efficient. However, I believe there are many more problems than solutions between these two cities but Hong Kong’s housing polices are more efficient than Shanghai.
Main body
I will mainly focus on the case of Hong Kong but I will also compare the city in Shanghai finally because it has the same housing problem with Hong Kong and adopts the similar policies. Then I will base on each situation to analyse which city’s sustainable policies will be more efficient to solve the problems.
Methods
I will use the academic journals to find out the useful information to support this essay. Firstly, the beginning of main body will be given some background information about Hong Kong and I found the quantitative and qualitative data from the academic article which talk about how to detect the bubbles in Hong Kong’s residential housing market as describe by Chan, et al (2001), the official website by Hong Kong’s government that the statistic can prove the real situation of limited land but high population in Hong Kong.
Secondly, I found the relative evidence which is demonstrated the accidental incident in Shek Kei Mei by Mark (2007). This evidence can support the problems of overcrowded and reflect that the government realised how serious of housing problem and started to adopt the housing policy to solve the problems.
Thirdly, the article is described about the situation of high housing price in Hong Kong by Chan, et al (2001) and I found the evidence of Hong Kong housing price ranking from the news which is Hong Kong’s newspaper website.
Fourthly, the government has implemented the PRH and HOS programmes which are sustainable policies in housing development as this information is found from GovHK website (2009).
Finally, I found a study on provision of housing system in Shanghai is reported by Mostaf,et al, (1998) and Xing, Z. (2010) to support the comparison of problems and polices with Hong Kong .
The case of“Hong Kong”
The first problem of Overcrowded living condition
The population in Hong Kong has increased rapidly and it was indicated about 7 million (Hong Kong Statistic, 2009). It is obvious that shortage of housing units is a historical problem due to Hong Kong’s population growth and economic progress. Immigration is one of the main reasons. In particular, in times of war, violence or ecological disaster results in an influx of refugees who move from the damaged area to more flourishing areas. This phenomenon is especially true in “Hong Kong”. Since“the Second World War in 1956”, the large number of refugees immigrated to Hong Kong because the location next to China and comparatively prosperity. Thus, the mainlanders believed that Hong Kong can provide more stable life and prosperous economy for their future, but this circumstance led to overcrowded on households and deteriorated of housing environment.
Housing problems contains the housing quantity but it also relates the housing quality and maintenance such as a large number of people live in the squatters where have inadequate facilities and poor sanitation with lower standard of early development .These are the potential risks can lead to dangerous accident such as fire. Mark (2007) indicated the evidence of Shek Kei Mei fire in 1593 when Hong Kong was British colony. The mainlander built the squatter huts for their accommodation after they settled down in Hong Kong. The narrow area in the squatter village caused a serious fire leading homeless families. Mark (2007) also mentioned that it was impossible to allocate the funds for the exclusive refugees because it was a short term resolution with huge cost. Therefore, this incident was a very important factor to inspire the government to build the resettlement estates for them leading to a great impact to develop the sustainable housing policy in the present and the future.
The problems of High housing Price
Hong Kong has maintained a high housing price because of limited of supply land .Chan and Woo,(2001) indicated that the total area of land in Hong Kong is only about 1075 km2 but there is approximate 80 % of the region where is too hilly in housing development. Thus, only a little segment can be used for residential development. Land is the scarcest resource in Hong Kong. In fact, Hong Kong‘s housing price ranking which is the fourth out of the ten cities in the world with about US$ 1373each per square foot (Business Time newspaper, 2009).For instance, a narrow flat which is about 583 sq ft with a single bedroom that it sales about 483,333 pounds of Kennedy Town Building which is in Hong Kong Island (Kennedy Town Building, Hong Kong). Therefore, most of citizens can not afford to buy their own flat. It is common to find the Hong Kong Citizens who are living in a poor living condition such as a big family with 6 members but live in a small flat. Besides, the limited supply land restrictions in Hong Kong housing market. The conclusive land supply development and the new land available is controlled by its government directly . The government recognises high housing price is the problem leading to implement different sustainable polices such as PRH and HOS .
Housing Policies
Since the Shek Kei Mei fire, Hong Kong’s government started to look out to implement various sustainable policies in housing development. Hong Kong Special Administrative (HKSAR) has implemented the public housing programmes such as PRH and HOS.
PRH policy was not comprehensive housing policy at the beginning but the government still has played a very important role to provide low –cost public housing. “At the end of 1980s, Hong Kong had the second largest public housing sector in the capitalist world. ”(Peng and Wheaton 1994,p.268) . It means the government has adopted large investment to develop the public housing as the article reports that about half of the total housing stocks are used for developing PRH policy. A decline of housing size was one of the significant changes over the past thirty years in Hong Kong. This article reports that the number of people per occupied housing unit was 8.4.in 1965 but this number decreased to 4.3. in 1990. These statistics proved the public housing policy was efficient to improve the housing problems (Peng and Wheaton, 1994).
PRH
PRH means Public Rental Housing which is the government’s subsided housing policy that can assist the families who are low income or poor. Therefore, they can not afford the expensive rent at the private accommodation. The stock of public rental housing estates was about 733 300 in the beginning of 2009 by 29% of the population. This programme is committed to maintain the period of waiting PRH flats with about three years. Around 120,700 applications of the average time of waiting for the PRH were about 1.8 years at the end of June in 2009. It is set the rent range at the affordable level with about 18 to 280 pounds and the average rent is about 110 pounds each months. Additionally, the government has adopted the new mechanism since 2008 which provides a flexible framework that can reflect the affordability of tenants to base on their income to adjust the reasonable rent. This mechanism can contribute to the sustainability of the PRH programme
(GovHK website, 2009).
HOS
HOS means Housing Owner Scheme which was instituted in the 1970s. HOS flats are subsidised public housing estates which are sold at the lower price below over the market with the discount between 30%-40%. More than 458, 200 of the flats have sold to the groups who have only low and middle income since 1978. However, HKSAR accepted the government’s recommendation to stop selling the estates from the onwards in 2003 but decided to sell the residual flats about 16,700 in phases that can increasing the provision of the public housing for poor families and elderly people (GovHK website, 2009) .
The case of Shanghai__________________________________________
Comparing the same existing urban housing problems with Hong Kong
In fact, Shanghai has the same urban housing problems as Hong Kong even in the past or present. The survey reported that about 1.8 million families lived in overcrowded area in 1985. Nearly 216,000 families had living area below 4 square meters only for each family, more than about 15,200 of those families had only 2 square meters ( Mostaf,et al, 1998). Nowadays, Shanghai is also one of the prosperous cities. It is reported that the amount of Shanghai’s population about 19.21 million at the end of 2009 (People’s Daily Online, 2010). Thus, the overcrowded phenomenon has not improved because the population is increasing every year.
Shanghai housing price has increased in recently year. The average housing price rose to RMB20, 733 per square in 2006 which means people need to pay more than RMB 2million ( before taxes) to buy a 100 square meter apartment (Xing , 2010) .
According the above data that can reflect Shanghai is also facing the problems of lack of provision of the housing and high housing price. Therefore, these problems have caused the citizens living in the narrow flats especially the large families but they can not afford to buy their own housing.
Housing Settlement project
“Shanghai Municipality” had started to adopt the “Housing Settlement project” in 1987 to solve the urban housing problem. The policy has resettled over 470,000 families living in the narrow space under 2.5 square meters. “Shanghai Municipality” spent 1.8 million Yuan on this programme, developing about 1,8 square meters to increase the supply of living area for the families. Therefore, the new residential areas were developed Shi Guang, Guo He, Kang Jian. This project is a sustainable development and it has been the process of Shanghai’s housing system reform (Mostaf, et al, 1998).
Conclusion
Hong Kong and Shanghai are suffering the same situation of urban housing problems. Both of cities have implemented the similar sustainable polices to maintain society stability that can assist the low income people to afford too buy their own flat or pay affordable rent. In fact, implementing these policies can increase government’s income to facilitate the economic progress. Developing the estates by the PRH and HOS programmes that can improve the environment friendly. For instance, the government redeveloped the old region or industry areas to be a new public housing estate to plant more trees and different facilities such as schools and hospitals. As Hong Kong’s PSH and HOS programmes and Shanghai’ Housing Settlement project are the sustainable policies because depending on how profitably balance on their society, economy and environment to sustain the needs for people and our generations to provide a better lifestyle and maintain the economic growth simultaneously. However, Hong Kong’ has favorable factors such as flexible market, a laissez-faire economy and it has implemented the olicies for long period leading to more comprehensive polices than Shanghai. Although both city’s housing polices are planned to solve the problems such as lack of residential area and high housing price, I believe that it is hard to solve these kind of problems in long term. This is because the population growth in Hong Kong and Shanghai has increased even in the future. It is difficult to control the population growth but distribute the area under the limited land supply. For instance, the PRH policy in Hong Kong, its government provide lower rent for lower or no income people to offer stable residence. Even adopting the adjusted police as changing the shorter waiting time for PRH flats but the long period of waiting still are a problem. Additionally, a large part of civilian in shanghai belongs to working- class which means they can not afford even under the home ownership policy. Therefore, it can not really assist the people who desire the real help. It is obvious that urbanization can cause economy progress but many urban problems at the same time. Thus, the government has adopted the sustainable development that is definitely important and continues to keep our society stability in the future.
References:
Business Times Newspaper( 2009) from Hong Kong, available from,
http://gb.hkbt.com.hk/a-20091007/hk_4.htm (accessed 19 July 2010)
Chan, H. L., Lee, S. K. and Woo, K. Y. (2001), Detecting rational bubbles in the residential housing markets of Hong Kong, the journal of Economic Modelling 18, pp.61-73
Chiu, R. L. H.,(2002), Social Equity in housing in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region : A Social Sustainability Perspective, the journal of Sustainable Development ,10, pp.155-162
GovHK website(2009), Hong Kong the facts: Housing, available at: http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/housing.pdf
Hong Kong Statistic (2009), Census and Statistics Department, available at: http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hong_kong_statistics/statistics_by_subject/index.jsp (accessed 18 July 2010)
Kenned Town Building, Hong Kong, Frank, available from:
http://search.knightfrank.com/hk00052987s (accessed 20 July 2010)
Mark, C. K. (2007), The problem of people : British colonials, Cold War Power, and the Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong, 1949-62 ,the journal of Modern Asian Studies 42,6,pp. 1145-1181
Mostafa, A., Wong, F. K. W., and Hui, E. C. M.,(1998) , A study on Housing provision System towards Hosuing Affordability in Shanghai, available from:
http://www.iut.nu/China_Shanghai_hous%20affordabiity.pdf (accessed 22 July 2010)
Peng, R. and Wheaton, W. C., (1994), Effects of Restrictive Land Supply on Housing in Hong Kong : An Econometric Analysis, the journal of housing research, vol.5,issue 2,pp.263-293
Report
People’s Daily Online,( 2010), Shanghai’s permanent population approaches 20 mln, available from:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/90872/6897139.html (accessed in 2 aug 2010)
Xing, Z. (2010) China's housing market makes moving abroad cheaper than buying at home, available from:
http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/life/would-you-give-your-passport-buy-apartment-773526 (accessed in 2 aug 2010)
“To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development? ”
Sub-Title:
Can the “sustainable development policies ”solve the urban housing problems in Hong Kong?
Abstract
Hong Kong is a prosperous city but it has the serious problems of urbanlisation because it has limited resource of land to supply the high population with about 7 million leading to citizens suffering in overcrowded living condition especially the large family. The government has attached great importance to adopt the sustainable development policies such as (HOS) and (PRH) programmes to solve the housing problems. In this paper, the comparison of urban housing problems between Hong Kong and Shanghai are described and the information are collected from the academic articles and relative websites that can find out the positive sustainable polices and statistic to support. Both of the cities have suffered in the same situation but Hong Kong’s policies are more efficient than Shanghai. For this research purpose, I concentrated each situation with these two cities to compare its own sustainable policies.
Introduction
Urbanisation has become a trend in the developing countries. Urbanisation means massive population growth in urban cities due to more and people are moving from rural to urban areas .The majorities of citizens live in a narrow area rather than stay in a large region. The government and others provide more service and resource allowance such as water, electricity and transport to a large number of citizens. Education, business and technological advances are also more accessible in urban area result in economic growth. Thus, the opportunities are the main factors to attract people to move to cities because people can seek their jobs to improve their life quality and build a better future for their children. However, the characteristics of urban area can cause a lot of serious problems in the societies like high housing price, limited resource, pollution, high population, traffic congestion, crimes. In fact, the problems of urbanisation have been the barriers to bring negative effects for the economic growth. Therefore, these problems have led the government to implement the sustainable development to solve the problems such as waste management charge scheme, recycling scheme, renewable energy, urban living space. Sustainable development depends on how profitably balance on the objectives of society, economy and environment to maintain the needs of present for human and future generations to improve their lifestyle, protect ecosystems and the quality of environment. I will give the case of Hong Kong’s situation of housing problems focusing on overcrowded living condition and high housing price to evaluate the different policies of sustainable development in housing whether they are the effective solutions to meet the aim that can solve and improve the problems but maintain the economic growth simultaneously. I will also compare Hong kong’s housing problems and sustainable policies with Shanghai to judge which city's policy is more efficient. However, I believe there are many more problems than solutions between these two cities but Hong Kong’s housing polices are more efficient than Shanghai.
Main body
I will mainly focus on the case of Hong Kong but I will also compare the city in Shanghai finally because it has the same housing problem with Hong Kong and adopts the similar policies. Then I will base on each situation to analyse which city’s sustainable policies will be more efficient to solve the problems.
Methods
I will use the academic journals to find out the useful information to support this essay. Firstly, the beginning of main body will be given some background information about Hong Kong and I found the quantitative and qualitative data from the academic article which talk about how to detect the bubbles in Hong Kong’s residential housing market as describe by Chan, et al (2001), the official website by Hong Kong’s government that the statistic can prove the real situation of limited land but high population in Hong Kong.
Secondly, I found the relative evidence which is demonstrated the accidental incident in Shek Kei Mei by Mark (2007). This evidence can support the problems of overcrowded and reflect that the government realised how serious of housing problem and started to adopt the housing policy to solve the problems.
Thirdly, the article is described about the situation of high housing price in Hong Kong by Chan, et al (2001) and I found the evidence of Hong Kong housing price ranking from the news which is Hong Kong’s newspaper website.
Fourthly, the government has implemented the PRH and HOS programmes which are sustainable policies in housing development as this information is found from GovHK website (2009).
Finally, I found a study on provision of housing system in Shanghai is reported by Mostaf,et al, (1998) and Xing, Z. (2010) to support the comparison of problems and polices with Hong Kong .
The case of“Hong Kong”
The first problem of Overcrowded living condition
The population in Hong Kong has increased rapidly and it was indicated about 7 million (Hong Kong Statistic, 2009). It is obvious that shortage of housing units is a historical problem due to Hong Kong’s population growth and economic progress. Immigration is one of the main reasons. In particular, in times of war, violence or ecological disaster results in an influx of refugees who move from the damaged area to more flourishing areas. This phenomenon is especially true in “Hong Kong”. Since“the Second World War in 1956”, the large number of refugees immigrated to Hong Kong because the location next to China and comparatively prosperity. Thus, the mainlanders believed that Hong Kong can provide more stable life and prosperous economy for their future, but this circumstance led to overcrowded on households and deteriorated of housing environment.
Housing problems contains the housing quantity but it also relates the housing quality and maintenance such as a large number of people live in the squatters where have inadequate facilities and poor sanitation with lower standard of early development .These are the potential risks can lead to dangerous accident such as fire. Mark (2007) indicated the evidence of Shek Kei Mei fire in 1593 when Hong Kong was British colony. The mainlander built the squatter huts for their accommodation after they settled down in Hong Kong. The narrow area in the squatter village caused a serious fire leading homeless families. Mark (2007) also mentioned that it was impossible to allocate the funds for the exclusive refugees because it was a short term resolution with huge cost. Therefore, this incident was a very important factor to inspire the government to build the resettlement estates for them leading to a great impact to develop the sustainable housing policy in the present and the future.
The problems of High housing Price
Hong Kong has maintained a high housing price because of limited of supply land .Chan and Woo,(2001) indicated that the total area of land in Hong Kong is only about 1075 km2 but there is approximate 80 % of the region where is too hilly in housing development. Thus, only a little segment can be used for residential development. Land is the scarcest resource in Hong Kong. In fact, Hong Kong‘s housing price ranking which is the fourth out of the ten cities in the world with about US$ 1373each per square foot (Business Time newspaper, 2009).For instance, a narrow flat which is about 583 sq ft with a single bedroom that it sales about 483,333 pounds of Kennedy Town Building which is in Hong Kong Island (Kennedy Town Building, Hong Kong). Therefore, most of citizens can not afford to buy their own flat. It is common to find the Hong Kong Citizens who are living in a poor living condition such as a big family with 6 members but live in a small flat. Besides, the limited supply land restrictions in Hong Kong housing market. The conclusive land supply development and the new land available is controlled by its government directly . The government recognises high housing price is the problem leading to implement different sustainable polices such as PRH and HOS .
Housing Policies
Since the Shek Kei Mei fire, Hong Kong’s government started to look out to implement various sustainable policies in housing development. Hong Kong Special Administrative (HKSAR) has implemented the public housing programmes such as PRH and HOS.
PRH policy was not comprehensive housing policy at the beginning but the government still has played a very important role to provide low –cost public housing. “At the end of 1980s, Hong Kong had the second largest public housing sector in the capitalist world. ”(Peng and Wheaton 1994,p.268) . It means the government has adopted large investment to develop the public housing as the article reports that about half of the total housing stocks are used for developing PRH policy. A decline of housing size was one of the significant changes over the past thirty years in Hong Kong. This article reports that the number of people per occupied housing unit was 8.4.in 1965 but this number decreased to 4.3. in 1990. These statistics proved the public housing policy was efficient to improve the housing problems (Peng and Wheaton, 1994).
PRH
PRH means Public Rental Housing which is the government’s subsided housing policy that can assist the families who are low income or poor. Therefore, they can not afford the expensive rent at the private accommodation. The stock of public rental housing estates was about 733 300 in the beginning of 2009 by 29% of the population. This programme is committed to maintain the period of waiting PRH flats with about three years. Around 120,700 applications of the average time of waiting for the PRH were about 1.8 years at the end of June in 2009. It is set the rent range at the affordable level with about 18 to 280 pounds and the average rent is about 110 pounds each months. Additionally, the government has adopted the new mechanism since 2008 which provides a flexible framework that can reflect the affordability of tenants to base on their income to adjust the reasonable rent. This mechanism can contribute to the sustainability of the PRH programme
(GovHK website, 2009).
HOS
HOS means Housing Owner Scheme which was instituted in the 1970s. HOS flats are subsidised public housing estates which are sold at the lower price below over the market with the discount between 30%-40%. More than 458, 200 of the flats have sold to the groups who have only low and middle income since 1978. However, HKSAR accepted the government’s recommendation to stop selling the estates from the onwards in 2003 but decided to sell the residual flats about 16,700 in phases that can increasing the provision of the public housing for poor families and elderly people (GovHK website, 2009) .
The case of Shanghai__________________________________________
Comparing the same existing urban housing problems with Hong Kong
In fact, Shanghai has the same urban housing problems as Hong Kong even in the past or present. The survey reported that about 1.8 million families lived in overcrowded area in 1985. Nearly 216,000 families had living area below 4 square meters only for each family, more than about 15,200 of those families had only 2 square meters ( Mostaf,et al, 1998). Nowadays, Shanghai is also one of the prosperous cities. It is reported that the amount of Shanghai’s population about 19.21 million at the end of 2009 (People’s Daily Online, 2010). Thus, the overcrowded phenomenon has not improved because the population is increasing every year.
Shanghai housing price has increased in recently year. The average housing price rose to RMB20, 733 per square in 2006 which means people need to pay more than RMB 2million ( before taxes) to buy a 100 square meter apartment (Xing , 2010) .
According the above data that can reflect Shanghai is also facing the problems of lack of provision of the housing and high housing price. Therefore, these problems have caused the citizens living in the narrow flats especially the large families but they can not afford to buy their own housing.
Housing Settlement project
“Shanghai Municipality” had started to adopt the “Housing Settlement project” in 1987 to solve the urban housing problem. The policy has resettled over 470,000 families living in the narrow space under 2.5 square meters. “Shanghai Municipality” spent 1.8 million Yuan on this programme, developing about 1,8 square meters to increase the supply of living area for the families. Therefore, the new residential areas were developed Shi Guang, Guo He, Kang Jian. This project is a sustainable development and it has been the process of Shanghai’s housing system reform (Mostaf, et al, 1998).
Conclusion
Hong Kong and Shanghai are suffering the same situation of urban housing problems. Both of cities have implemented the similar sustainable polices to maintain society stability that can assist the low income people to afford too buy their own flat or pay affordable rent. In fact, implementing these policies can increase government’s income to facilitate the economic progress. Developing the estates by the PRH and HOS programmes that can improve the environment friendly. For instance, the government redeveloped the old region or industry areas to be a new public housing estate to plant more trees and different facilities such as schools and hospitals. As Hong Kong’s PSH and HOS programmes and Shanghai’ Housing Settlement project are the sustainable policies because depending on how profitably balance on their society, economy and environment to sustain the needs for people and our generations to provide a better lifestyle and maintain the economic growth simultaneously. However, Hong Kong’ has favorable factors such as flexible market, a laissez-faire economy and it has implemented the olicies for long period leading to more comprehensive polices than Shanghai. Although both city’s housing polices are planned to solve the problems such as lack of residential area and high housing price, I believe that it is hard to solve these kind of problems in long term. This is because the population growth in Hong Kong and Shanghai has increased even in the future. It is difficult to control the population growth but distribute the area under the limited land supply. For instance, the PRH policy in Hong Kong, its government provide lower rent for lower or no income people to offer stable residence. Even adopting the adjusted police as changing the shorter waiting time for PRH flats but the long period of waiting still are a problem. Additionally, a large part of civilian in shanghai belongs to working- class which means they can not afford even under the home ownership policy. Therefore, it can not really assist the people who desire the real help. It is obvious that urbanization can cause economy progress but many urban problems at the same time. Thus, the government has adopted the sustainable development that is definitely important and continues to keep our society stability in the future.
References:
Business Times Newspaper( 2009) from Hong Kong, available from,
http://gb.hkbt.com.hk/a-20091007/hk_4.htm (accessed 19 July 2010)
Chan, H. L., Lee, S. K. and Woo, K. Y. (2001), Detecting rational bubbles in the residential housing markets of Hong Kong, the journal of Economic Modelling 18, pp.61-73
Chiu, R. L. H.,(2002), Social Equity in housing in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region : A Social Sustainability Perspective, the journal of Sustainable Development ,10, pp.155-162
GovHK website(2009), Hong Kong the facts: Housing, available at: http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/housing.pdf
Hong Kong Statistic (2009), Census and Statistics Department, available at: http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hong_kong_statistics/statistics_by_subject/index.jsp (accessed 18 July 2010)
Kenned Town Building, Hong Kong, Frank, available from:
http://search.knightfrank.com/hk00052987s (accessed 20 July 2010)
Mark, C. K. (2007), The problem of people : British colonials, Cold War Power, and the Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong, 1949-62 ,the journal of Modern Asian Studies 42,6,pp. 1145-1181
Mostafa, A., Wong, F. K. W., and Hui, E. C. M.,(1998) , A study on Housing provision System towards Hosuing Affordability in Shanghai, available from:
http://www.iut.nu/China_Shanghai_hous%20affordabiity.pdf (accessed 22 July 2010)
Peng, R. and Wheaton, W. C., (1994), Effects of Restrictive Land Supply on Housing in Hong Kong : An Econometric Analysis, the journal of housing research, vol.5,issue 2,pp.263-293
Report
People’s Daily Online,( 2010), Shanghai’s permanent population approaches 20 mln, available from:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/90872/6897139.html (accessed in 2 aug 2010)
Xing, Z. (2010) China's housing market makes moving abroad cheaper than buying at home, available from:
http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/life/would-you-give-your-passport-buy-apartment-773526 (accessed in 2 aug 2010)
Iris----Whole essay
Topic: To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development?
Sub topic: Evaluate approaches of protect urban forest system for city development in china
Abstract
Urbanization is inevitable trend in the world but with many problems. The core idea of sustain development is the balance between human development and environment protect, therefore, this could be a feasible way to solve the problems. This paper introduce the urban forest system focus on the values of the policy on city development, take Chinese cities as example try to evaluate the feasibility in china, analysis the potential challenge as well. Toronto and Singapore are the examples to show the huge contribution of the urban forest system to the city. Finally, this paper attempts to give conclusion that even operate the system could face challenges in china, it is still a feasible way to figure out the problems which urbanization brings, and it is valuable in long term.
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 born in china, like Shenzhen and Haikou. As we know, cities play a vital role in national economic growth, especially in developing counties, because main business activities incur in cities. Due to the well established business network, cities create most of the national output by performing crucial services 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: highly intense population with inadequate accessing to basic urban services like education, medical insurance , primary healthy care , water supply, housing and so on, pollution, frequently overcrowded transportation, low employment , slums and squatter settlements . 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 sacrificing environment for the purpose of economic development.
From this point of view, sustainable development could be a feasible method. According to Brundtland report, sustainable development 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 designed and managed in a way that resource use and pollution are reduced, leading to the harmonious development between man and natural.
In this essay, I will take China’s city as an example. Firstly, give a short introduction of china's urbanization, and compare it with the European's urbanization. Next, give a solution to eliminate the drawbacks of urbanization which we called urban forest system to reduce the contradictions between man and natural, and refer to the successful cases of cities in Japan, Canada, and Europe. Finally, evaluate the feasibility in China, and estimate the potential challenges of using this solution as well.
Main body
Short introduction of China’s urbanization and the main symbols:
When we talk about China’s cities, the first impression come to our minds is crowdedness, particularly in the eastern cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Due to the natural environment, China’s population distribution is extremely unbalanced. In more detail, in the western part of china, population density is low while 90% of Chinese people live in the eastern or middle part of china, and most of the cities own high-density population. Furthermore, in the past 30 years, China’s reformation and opening policy was mainly implemented in the eastern cities. Therefore, with the deepening of reform and opening in China and the impact of globalization, the urbanization incurs in China’s eastern cities with a high pace.
By contrast to European’s urbanization, demography factor could not be neglected when the urbanization happens in the third world, particularly in China which is the largest country in the world in term of population. Furthermore, due to the traditionally high birth rate, although the one-child policy contributes significantly in the decrease of the population growth in China, the population growth still maintains at a high level. Thus, combining the high population and the rapid face of urbanization, the impact resulting from urbanization are becoming more complicated in terms of social, economic, and physical problems, such as the increasing incident of urban poverty, and inadequate access to shelter and urban basic services. For example, large scale numbers of people migrate from rural to urban, which makes the crowed city more intense. Therefore, city’s development goes beyond the city’s limit, especially in limit resource like water supply, transportation and land.
One of the significant contradictions was population boom-up with land limit. On one hand, housing in cities is inadequate. Therefore, the price of housing is really high, and a lot of people can not afford it. This leads to some social problems like the big gap between wealthy people and poor people. On the other hand, more and more high buildings were established while the public facility such as park, sports centre, and greenbelts were becoming less and less. Due to the small space, large work load, crowded transport, most urban inhabitant is under high stress and pressure. In addition, in high density cities, the output of carbon-dioxide is extraordinary high due to the number of cars owned. Consequently, the air quality is low. Thus, from the sustainable development point, to reduce the conflict between the human and urban environment and to improve the urban residents’ quality of life, urban forest system could be a good method to balance the human and environment contradiction.
Urban forest system
Introduction of the urban forest system
The concept of “urban forest” was first created and developed in North American in the 1960s, then was spread into Europe, but it was long time till it was accepted. 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 focuses 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 resolve the urban environmental problems
Benefits
As we know, urban forest is used as a solution to resolve the problems in cities, therefore, the function of the system supply should frequency relate to human activities. The essay will analyze the benefits of the urban forest system offered in terms of natural environment and social values.
Natural environment values:
Firstly, air pollution in cities is causes 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 reduces air pollution in some distant. As well, special kinds of tree could absorb some harmful gas, thus we could select to plant them. On one hand, by improving air quality in cities, human health is improved. Furthermore, the decision maker could analyze the geography position of the city, and plant different kinds of trees for special purposes. For example, in the southeast coastal part of China, due to the fact that 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 in micro-climate regulation in cities. The term is called “the urban heat island effect” because the huge heat was absorbed by the surface, and human activities also consume large energy. In the studies of U.S. 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 reduce the difference in urban area. For instance, trees could be used for shading house in summer and reduce wind in winter. In addition, they are also a good choice for decoration in the city. According to the study, a single tree can transpire 450 litre of water per day, which consumes 1000MJ of heat energy to drive the evaporation process (Hough, 1989).Therefore, vegetation plays a role in reducing summer weather. From this point of view, it could also decrease the volume of heating by air-condition consuming. Furthermore, it could decrease the chemical substance which called Freon that could harm ozonosphere. Therefore, urban forest system could create chain reaction which in the long term protects our environment.
Thirdly, noise pollution does harm to peoples’ health. If people live in the huge noise environment, they could suffer from some diseases in ears, and in worse situations some nervous system disease. Technology innovation provides some methods to reduce the noise, like noise insulation glass. However, this is limited to indoors. Through planting trees along the streets, noise as well as dust could be reduced effectively.
Social values
A crowed city is full of stress to its citizens. Inhabitants’ depression comes from the high pace of life style, more specifically, working pressure, less space for rest, and less time for communication. More and more urban citizens are in sub-health status. This unhealthy life style affects negatively 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 a city is amazing, it would improve an inhabitant’s connection to the city, and improve the satisfaction with his life. For example, Park is a good place for rest, where people can play games, communicate with other people, hear birds singing and water’s sound and get relaxed in the beautiful place. Visiting green plants could release the stress of life, and renew mood, getting new energy for life.
Green space also contributes to human’s psychological well-being. 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, urban forest system plays an important role for children cognizing the natural ecosystem, cultivating the concept of protect environment from young, and also good for cultivating children’s character.
Compare 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 for its “Garden city”. Even though it is small-size country, the city planners use all of the resource, from road to park, to improve the forest coverage rate. Definitely, the residents got lots benefits because of the amazing environment. For example, the beautiful city with high reputation of environment attracts massive people to visit the country which stimulate local tourism. As well, the beautiful city own huge potential in absorbing large foreign investment that could supply lots job opportunities to the country.
Japan is also a small-size country with high density population, but, even in Tokyo, you can find big parks for people to rest. The country’s forest coverage was 70% in 2009. Therefore, we can learn from the successful cases, learn the modern concept in the field like “roof greening”, and the advanced management experience as well. Devote making efforts on city development, particularly in new cities.
For example, the technology of “roof greening” was used in some cities like BeiJing and GuangZhou, as the following pictures show:
http://www.jgdj.dl.gov.cn/news/news/article/show.asp?id=9724
In addition, big park was established in some cities, as the picture shows:
www.wenmin.com. (MInjiang Park , FuZhou, Southeast coastal city)
Therefore, the urban forest system was operated in some cities, and the system could be spread into more urban area.
Potential challenge
The challenges of performing urban forest system could be in terms of natural environment and social environment. First of all, operating the urban forest system includes tree planting, and maintenance, protection, and controlling of the city’s tree resources. Planting trees relates 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.
Furthermore, if choose the tree that could absorb the harmful waste air, probable the odour of the trees would be not good, then the people don’t like it. As well, when people walk in the street, it is probable that the bird’s solid waste dumps on your shoulders, and park could be dangerous in dark nights.
The significant challenge of operating urban forest system could be in terms on the land limitation and inadequate financial support .For example, to establish park or lake would need large tract which is limited resource particularly in cities. Also the high cost could not be neglect.
Therefore, how to reduce the cost on establishing and maintaining the urban forest system and improving the management level of city planning, all of these, could be potential challenges to the city managers.
Conclusion
Urbanization is an inevitable trend in the world, and it would continue at a pace in developing countries. Thus, we should not neglect the drawbacks that urbanization produces. This essay suggested that the notion of sustainable development was a good method to solve some of the problems.
From the point of improving the quality of life of residents who live in urban area, reduce the extreme increase of population contradiction with limit landscape resource, 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 obvious that urban forest system services contribute to the quality of urban life. For example, air quality is improved in some extent, noise pollution is reduced, recreational and culture values were created. As cities grow at a rapid way in the next decade, the value of urban forest system would be more understood and widely used in city design. In the long term, the urban forest system plays an important role in city development due to its function in coordinating 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 but not eliminate the problems 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.
To sum up, although operating the urban forest system in china is with challenge, it is still worth to do it, because it is a feasible way to solve the problems in some extent and the huge contributions to the city.
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 ]
4 . Robert B.Potter & Sally Loyd-evans (1998) The city in the developing world, Chapter 1 &Chapter 2. pp3-55
5. G.shabbir Cheema (eds)(1993) Urban management policies and innovations in developing countries, pp49-156
6.John L Taylor David G. Williams (eds)(1982) Urban planning practice in developing countries PP75-100
7.Avijit Gupta(1988)Ecology and development in the third world,pp57-59
8.M J Breheny (eds) ,(1992)Sustainable Development and Urban Form,pp79-138
9.Rob Potter (1992) Urbanisation in the third world PP11-13
10.Per bolound ,Sven Hunhammar(1999) Analysis Ecosystem services in urban areas
Ecological Economics Vol29(2) pp293-301
Available from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science
[accessed 27July 2010 ]
11. Cecil C Konijnendijk (2003) A decade of urban forestry in Europe
Forest Policy and Economics Vol 5 pp 173-186
Available from: www.elsevier/com/locate/forpol
[accessed 27July 2010 ]
12.Shigeo lida &Tohru Nakashizuka(1995)
Forest Fragmentation and its effect on species Japan
Forest Ecology and Management Vol73(1-3)pp197-210
Available from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science
[accessed 27July 2010 ]
13. http://www.jgdj.dl.gov.cn/news/news/article/show.asp?id=9724
14. www.wenmin.com
Sub topic: Evaluate approaches of protect urban forest system for city development in china
Abstract
Urbanization is inevitable trend in the world but with many problems. The core idea of sustain development is the balance between human development and environment protect, therefore, this could be a feasible way to solve the problems. This paper introduce the urban forest system focus on the values of the policy on city development, take Chinese cities as example try to evaluate the feasibility in china, analysis the potential challenge as well. Toronto and Singapore are the examples to show the huge contribution of the urban forest system to the city. Finally, this paper attempts to give conclusion that even operate the system could face challenges in china, it is still a feasible way to figure out the problems which urbanization brings, and it is valuable in long term.
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 born in china, like Shenzhen and Haikou. As we know, cities play a vital role in national economic growth, especially in developing counties, because main business activities incur in cities. Due to the well established business network, cities create most of the national output by performing crucial services 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: highly intense population with inadequate accessing to basic urban services like education, medical insurance , primary healthy care , water supply, housing and so on, pollution, frequently overcrowded transportation, low employment , slums and squatter settlements . 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 sacrificing environment for the purpose of economic development.
From this point of view, sustainable development could be a feasible method. According to Brundtland report, sustainable development 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 designed and managed in a way that resource use and pollution are reduced, leading to the harmonious development between man and natural.
In this essay, I will take China’s city as an example. Firstly, give a short introduction of china's urbanization, and compare it with the European's urbanization. Next, give a solution to eliminate the drawbacks of urbanization which we called urban forest system to reduce the contradictions between man and natural, and refer to the successful cases of cities in Japan, Canada, and Europe. Finally, evaluate the feasibility in China, and estimate the potential challenges of using this solution as well.
Main body
Short introduction of China’s urbanization and the main symbols:
When we talk about China’s cities, the first impression come to our minds is crowdedness, particularly in the eastern cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Due to the natural environment, China’s population distribution is extremely unbalanced. In more detail, in the western part of china, population density is low while 90% of Chinese people live in the eastern or middle part of china, and most of the cities own high-density population. Furthermore, in the past 30 years, China’s reformation and opening policy was mainly implemented in the eastern cities. Therefore, with the deepening of reform and opening in China and the impact of globalization, the urbanization incurs in China’s eastern cities with a high pace.
By contrast to European’s urbanization, demography factor could not be neglected when the urbanization happens in the third world, particularly in China which is the largest country in the world in term of population. Furthermore, due to the traditionally high birth rate, although the one-child policy contributes significantly in the decrease of the population growth in China, the population growth still maintains at a high level. Thus, combining the high population and the rapid face of urbanization, the impact resulting from urbanization are becoming more complicated in terms of social, economic, and physical problems, such as the increasing incident of urban poverty, and inadequate access to shelter and urban basic services. For example, large scale numbers of people migrate from rural to urban, which makes the crowed city more intense. Therefore, city’s development goes beyond the city’s limit, especially in limit resource like water supply, transportation and land.
One of the significant contradictions was population boom-up with land limit. On one hand, housing in cities is inadequate. Therefore, the price of housing is really high, and a lot of people can not afford it. This leads to some social problems like the big gap between wealthy people and poor people. On the other hand, more and more high buildings were established while the public facility such as park, sports centre, and greenbelts were becoming less and less. Due to the small space, large work load, crowded transport, most urban inhabitant is under high stress and pressure. In addition, in high density cities, the output of carbon-dioxide is extraordinary high due to the number of cars owned. Consequently, the air quality is low. Thus, from the sustainable development point, to reduce the conflict between the human and urban environment and to improve the urban residents’ quality of life, urban forest system could be a good method to balance the human and environment contradiction.
Urban forest system
Introduction of the urban forest system
The concept of “urban forest” was first created and developed in North American in the 1960s, then was spread into Europe, but it was long time till it was accepted. 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 focuses 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 resolve the urban environmental problems
Benefits
As we know, urban forest is used as a solution to resolve the problems in cities, therefore, the function of the system supply should frequency relate to human activities. The essay will analyze the benefits of the urban forest system offered in terms of natural environment and social values.
Natural environment values:
Firstly, air pollution in cities is causes 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 reduces air pollution in some distant. As well, special kinds of tree could absorb some harmful gas, thus we could select to plant them. On one hand, by improving air quality in cities, human health is improved. Furthermore, the decision maker could analyze the geography position of the city, and plant different kinds of trees for special purposes. For example, in the southeast coastal part of China, due to the fact that 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 in micro-climate regulation in cities. The term is called “the urban heat island effect” because the huge heat was absorbed by the surface, and human activities also consume large energy. In the studies of U.S. 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 reduce the difference in urban area. For instance, trees could be used for shading house in summer and reduce wind in winter. In addition, they are also a good choice for decoration in the city. According to the study, a single tree can transpire 450 litre of water per day, which consumes 1000MJ of heat energy to drive the evaporation process (Hough, 1989).Therefore, vegetation plays a role in reducing summer weather. From this point of view, it could also decrease the volume of heating by air-condition consuming. Furthermore, it could decrease the chemical substance which called Freon that could harm ozonosphere. Therefore, urban forest system could create chain reaction which in the long term protects our environment.
Thirdly, noise pollution does harm to peoples’ health. If people live in the huge noise environment, they could suffer from some diseases in ears, and in worse situations some nervous system disease. Technology innovation provides some methods to reduce the noise, like noise insulation glass. However, this is limited to indoors. Through planting trees along the streets, noise as well as dust could be reduced effectively.
Social values
A crowed city is full of stress to its citizens. Inhabitants’ depression comes from the high pace of life style, more specifically, working pressure, less space for rest, and less time for communication. More and more urban citizens are in sub-health status. This unhealthy life style affects negatively 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 a city is amazing, it would improve an inhabitant’s connection to the city, and improve the satisfaction with his life. For example, Park is a good place for rest, where people can play games, communicate with other people, hear birds singing and water’s sound and get relaxed in the beautiful place. Visiting green plants could release the stress of life, and renew mood, getting new energy for life.
Green space also contributes to human’s psychological well-being. 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, urban forest system plays an important role for children cognizing the natural ecosystem, cultivating the concept of protect environment from young, and also good for cultivating children’s character.
Compare 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 for its “Garden city”. Even though it is small-size country, the city planners use all of the resource, from road to park, to improve the forest coverage rate. Definitely, the residents got lots benefits because of the amazing environment. For example, the beautiful city with high reputation of environment attracts massive people to visit the country which stimulate local tourism. As well, the beautiful city own huge potential in absorbing large foreign investment that could supply lots job opportunities to the country.
Japan is also a small-size country with high density population, but, even in Tokyo, you can find big parks for people to rest. The country’s forest coverage was 70% in 2009. Therefore, we can learn from the successful cases, learn the modern concept in the field like “roof greening”, and the advanced management experience as well. Devote making efforts on city development, particularly in new cities.
For example, the technology of “roof greening” was used in some cities like BeiJing and GuangZhou, as the following pictures show:
http://www.jgdj.dl.gov.cn/news/news/article/show.asp?id=9724
In addition, big park was established in some cities, as the picture shows:
www.wenmin.com. (MInjiang Park , FuZhou, Southeast coastal city)
Therefore, the urban forest system was operated in some cities, and the system could be spread into more urban area.
Potential challenge
The challenges of performing urban forest system could be in terms of natural environment and social environment. First of all, operating the urban forest system includes tree planting, and maintenance, protection, and controlling of the city’s tree resources. Planting trees relates 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.
Furthermore, if choose the tree that could absorb the harmful waste air, probable the odour of the trees would be not good, then the people don’t like it. As well, when people walk in the street, it is probable that the bird’s solid waste dumps on your shoulders, and park could be dangerous in dark nights.
The significant challenge of operating urban forest system could be in terms on the land limitation and inadequate financial support .For example, to establish park or lake would need large tract which is limited resource particularly in cities. Also the high cost could not be neglect.
Therefore, how to reduce the cost on establishing and maintaining the urban forest system and improving the management level of city planning, all of these, could be potential challenges to the city managers.
Conclusion
Urbanization is an inevitable trend in the world, and it would continue at a pace in developing countries. Thus, we should not neglect the drawbacks that urbanization produces. This essay suggested that the notion of sustainable development was a good method to solve some of the problems.
From the point of improving the quality of life of residents who live in urban area, reduce the extreme increase of population contradiction with limit landscape resource, 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 obvious that urban forest system services contribute to the quality of urban life. For example, air quality is improved in some extent, noise pollution is reduced, recreational and culture values were created. As cities grow at a rapid way in the next decade, the value of urban forest system would be more understood and widely used in city design. In the long term, the urban forest system plays an important role in city development due to its function in coordinating 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 but not eliminate the problems 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.
To sum up, although operating the urban forest system in china is with challenge, it is still worth to do it, because it is a feasible way to solve the problems in some extent and the huge contributions to the city.
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 ]
4 . Robert B.Potter & Sally Loyd-evans (1998) The city in the developing world, Chapter 1 &Chapter 2. pp3-55
5. G.shabbir Cheema (eds)(1993) Urban management policies and innovations in developing countries, pp49-156
6.John L Taylor David G. Williams (eds)(1982) Urban planning practice in developing countries PP75-100
7.Avijit Gupta(1988)Ecology and development in the third world,pp57-59
8.M J Breheny (eds) ,(1992)Sustainable Development and Urban Form,pp79-138
9.Rob Potter (1992) Urbanisation in the third world PP11-13
10.Per bolound ,Sven Hunhammar(1999) Analysis Ecosystem services in urban areas
Ecological Economics Vol29(2) pp293-301
Available from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science
[accessed 27July 2010 ]
11. Cecil C Konijnendijk (2003) A decade of urban forestry in Europe
Forest Policy and Economics Vol 5 pp 173-186
Available from: www.elsevier/com/locate/forpol
[accessed 27July 2010 ]
12.Shigeo lida &Tohru Nakashizuka(1995)
Forest Fragmentation and its effect on species Japan
Forest Ecology and Management Vol73(1-3)pp197-210
Available from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science
[accessed 27July 2010 ]
13. http://www.jgdj.dl.gov.cn/news/news/article/show.asp?id=9724
14. www.wenmin.com
Shantanu Whole Essay
Title: Is Microcredit really a way forward as a sustainable development in rural Bangladesh?
Abstract:
Development that will be permanent and will sustain for long time period is called sustainable development. Now a day there is latest trend in the developing countries, which is urbanization. Urbanization means developing the urban areas of the country and migration of the people from the rural areas. But it is not a sustainable development because there are a lot problem comes with urbanization. In Bangladesh as there is a huge number of population is poor and living below the poverty line, bringing them above the poverty line will be a sustainable development. That is why “microcredit” a loan system has been introduced in Bangladesh, which means small amount of loans for the poor people without any collateral. It has got a very well recognition worldwide that one of the microcredit organizations “ Grameen Bank” has got Nobel Peace Prize. But in the reality these organizations are bringing a lot of new problem for the society in the name of microcredit and helping poor people. In this paper these real pictures has been discussed with proper evidence.
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:
Ackerly, Brooke A. (1995) ‘Testing the tools of development: credit programmes, loan involvement, and women’s empowerment’, IDS Bulletin 26(3):56–68.
Bornstein, David (1996) The Price of a Dream, New York: Simon & Schuster.
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
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
Todd, H., 1996. Women at the Center. Westview Press, Boulder
Abstract:
Development that will be permanent and will sustain for long time period is called sustainable development. Now a day there is latest trend in the developing countries, which is urbanization. Urbanization means developing the urban areas of the country and migration of the people from the rural areas. But it is not a sustainable development because there are a lot problem comes with urbanization. In Bangladesh as there is a huge number of population is poor and living below the poverty line, bringing them above the poverty line will be a sustainable development. That is why “microcredit” a loan system has been introduced in Bangladesh, which means small amount of loans for the poor people without any collateral. It has got a very well recognition worldwide that one of the microcredit organizations “ Grameen Bank” has got Nobel Peace Prize. But in the reality these organizations are bringing a lot of new problem for the society in the name of microcredit and helping poor people. In this paper these real pictures has been discussed with proper evidence.
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:
Ackerly, Brooke A. (1995) ‘Testing the tools of development: credit programmes, loan involvement, and women’s empowerment’, IDS Bulletin 26(3):56–68.
Bornstein, David (1996) The Price of a Dream, New York: Simon & Schuster.
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
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
Todd, H., 1996. Women at the Center. Westview Press, Boulder
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