Chapter 20 Review Questions Answer Key

Urban Development
  1. The term “urban crisis” reflects the contradictory effects of urban population growth; in this view, urban growth, fuelled by individual hopes for a better life, has social, economic, and ecological effects that weaken cities’ potential as places to live. Such views have been superseded in large measure by the recognition that contemporary crises are global in scale, though often exacerbated by and experienced in urban areas. Many of the current crises affect all, human and non-human alike. But in most cases, the poorest households, those that have the least choice and resources, are worst affected. The cases of shelter, risks, and disasters are illus­trative. Housing shortages are often linked to highly unequal land tenure patterns and to the difficulties states of the Global South face in establishing com­munal infrastructure such as housing, sanitation, and public transit. These forces combine to create a crisis, one aggravated by the structural adjustment programs imposed by international institutions in the 1990s and 2000s and by state-led urban entrepreneurialism (see below) in the past two dec­ades. Lack of sufficient adequate housing at prices and locations accessible to low-income households, cou­pled with lack of decent work, prompt many people to rely on informal housing and informal work. [pp. 359-60]
  1. A slum is housing that lacks one or more of durable housing in a safe location, sufficient living space, sufficient, accessible and affordable improved water, sanitation with a reasonably private toilet, secure tenure. The first reason that slums form is that population growth outstrips production of housing for low- and moderate-income families. The second reason is that the government and other urban actors cannot find the means to provide housing for the households mentioned in the first reason. This includes the inability to stimulate private developers, to generate private production of housing, or to plan settlements where informal construction would be accompanies by provision of services and better settlement planning. [p. 365]
  1. World Bank policies have reinforced many of the damaging trends in urban development. From the 1970s when the World Bank first included urban areas in its work, its policies have focused on limiting public intervention and instead promoting privatization of land and real estate, promoting free markets for housing, and decreasing assistance for residents. In the 1990s, the World Bank recognized the shortcomings of its approach and has since been shifting towards a local governance and urban planning approach, emphasizing citizen participation, including participatory budgeting. A change in terminology, sup­port for the active involvement of NGOs and civil society as major players in sustainable urban development, and the promotion of participatory democracy indicate a turning point in World Bank thinking. However, some question the value of this new discourse within the bank and its motivations; while the bank may employ the narrative discourse of citizen’s participation, inclu­siveness, equality, and resiliency capabilities, its main programs support the liberal economy and market. [p. 367]
  1. There are numerous spatial trends emergent from global forces, including a fracturing and splintering of cities mirrored around the world. This includes the coexistence of slums and homelessness alongside luxury condos and gated communities, the destruction of older, modest and working-class neighbourhood to facilitate strategic showcase urban projects, emphasis on forms economic growth that does not create jobs, and resistance to traditional and informal ways of using urban space. Numerous global forces affect the urban form of metropolitan areas. Four trends are apparent: a rise in new types of cities that play important coor­dinating roles in the global economy; new spatial ten­dencies of fragmentation, fracturing, and polarization within globalized cities; a parallel rise in inequality, poverty, and vulnerability; and an increase in new forms of governance that emphasize local strategies for economic growth in the spatial order—and thus a more entrepreneurial-state stance toward promotion or commodification of the city—over other develop­ment needs. [pp. 362-3]
  1. In Europe and North America, urban growth occurred during a period of industrialization and economic growth. Developing country environments are characterized by globalization, economic restructuring, neoliberalism and state transformation, and the impacts of structural adjustment policies. In developing countries, urbanization has been structured and accelerated around colonial relations. Exogenous factors, such as the policies promoted by major international institutions and the impacts of globalization, have also shaped urbanization in developing countries. [p. 358]
  1. Growing food in urban areas is a long-standing practice, from the hanging gardens of Babylon to the present. For many years, however, urban agriculture virtually disappeared from cities throughout the world; restrictions on food production by city managers who feared associated nuisances, the industrialization of food production, and the availability of refrigeration conspired to shift food systems away from local production. Yet, beginning in the 1970s, urban agriculture began to reappear. Small home gardens and urban farms emerged in major cities of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Community farming also blossomed in some cities of the developed world. To explain the re-emergence of urban agriculture, researchers point to the “economic worsening of the situation of the poor as a consequence of structural adjustment programs,” rapid urbanization, and a lack of inexpensive transport for agricultural products coming from rural areas. For urban households, urban agriculture is a strategy to enhance food security. Indeed, it is “one of the most important factors in improving childhood nutrition, by increasing both access to food and nutritional quality.” Moreover, it can contribute to local economies in terms of jobs and incomes, better management of waste, and improved quality of life. [p. 366]
  1. Alongside these now-recognized phenomena, new problems are coming to light, particularly in terms of catastrophes, environmental crises, and global climate change. The earthquakes that hit Kathmandu in April 2015 killed more than 8000 people, and the 1984 gas leak from a Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India, killed several thousand people immediately and caused long-term health impacts for many more. The COVID-19 global pandemic highlights how routine social interactions, economic activity, and mobility can be transformed; one retreated from cities to one’s place of residence if at all possible. While the pandemic represents a hazard that can reach everyone, exposure and sensitivity are varied. For migrant workers left adrift in India’s cities, the estimated 150 million people lacking shelter worldwide, and the millions living in inadequate slum housing (overcrowded, poorly ventilated, and without sanitation services), avoidance of exposure was (and is) particularly difficult. For those with prior health conditions (often reflecting other socio-economic and spatial determinants of health) and the elderly, sensitivity to that exposure is high—and has led to tragically high mortality rates. In each case, these events reveal a link between socio-economic inequalities and environmental risk. Indeed, underlying social, economic, and political vulnerabilities increase the risk of disasters, exposure to them, and sensitivity to ill-effects. [p. 360]
  1. Flooding is an emerging urban challenge due to what researcher Tapan Dhar labels the triple threat: a hazard-prone location; loss of natural systems of water filtration and absorption; and weak planning and infrastructure management. Many cities are located along the water; with sea-level rise, glacial melting, and an increased severity and frequency of storms, urban flooding has increased. Dhaka, the ninth largest megacity with 20 million people, is illustrative. Floods occur annually, with particularly catastrophic events in 1998 and 2004. Tapan Dhar argues that the severity of flooding will likely increase for three intertwined reasons. First, the city’s location, climate, and topography make it prone to flooding. Dhaka’s monsoons bring 2000 mm of heavy rains between June and September; rainfall is expected to increase 16 per cent by 2050. Because it is located on a river delta with a flat, low-lying topography, monsoon rainwater and river spillover combine to exceed the absorption capacity of soil surfaces. Second, Dhaka, like other large cities, has lost many of the natural systems that absorb and slowly release water. Wetlands, green areas, and bodies of water have decreased in size. Agriculture upstream contributes to siltation of rivers and decreased capacity to channel water. Population growth plays a role too. An estimated 500,000 people move to Dhaka each year. Many are environmental refugees, displaced by land erosion along inland rivers or forced to flee coastal areas where cyclones, sea-level rise, and associated salt-water intrusion have rendered water unsafe to drink. Population growth pushes the city’s built-up area into flood-prone and wetland zones. Dhaka Metropolitan Area (DMA) lost nearly 77 per cent of its wetlands and 19 per cent of rivers and canals between 1978 and 2009 because of speculative property development and informal settlement. Third, poor infrastructural management and settlement patterns reinforce a heightening of risk and its distribution to the detriment of the poor. Road and building construction renders surfaces less permeable to water, compounding the loss of natural water retention areas. The Dhaka Structure Plan (2016–35) includes comprehensive and integrated planning for flood management, but it is yet to be implemented. Risks are particularly high for new immigrants and low-income households; 40 per cent of the population live in informal settlements that are constructed illegally in low-lying flood-prone areas lacking municipal water and sanitation services. [p. 360-1]
  1. Slums form for two basic reasons: (1) popula­tion growth outpaces the production of housing for low- and moderate-income households; and (2) governments—and other urban actors—do not provide shelter for those households, whether by stimulating private developers, undertaking state production of housing, or accompanying informal construction with better service provision. Historical legacies also contribute. Concentrated ownership of land often means limited land is made available for formal production of low-income housing; informal settlement concentrates on undesirable areas, such as those exposed to hazards. Lack of investment in services means limited sanitation and water systems. Government neglect or active destruction of infor­mal housing may also contribute to a lack of housing options. Davis (2006, 62) further blames “the current neoliberal economic orthodoxy” for exacerbating the housing shortage by shrinking government programs and privatizing housing markets. Finally, in recent years competition between cities to attract invest­ments have favoured speculation and high prices for better-located real estate, worsening the living condi­tions of lower-income households, which are pushed to the outskirts of the formal city. [pp. 364-5]
  1. The right to the city has been a rallying call for social movements, advocacy organizations, and local residents. Since the early 1990s, various initiatives have emerged to promote appropriation of the city and its neighbourhoods by residents. Practices associated with participatory democracy, such as the experience of participatory budgeting in Brazil and participa­tory planning experiences in several other cities in the world, are a small-scale answer to the urban crisis. The World Urban Social Forum and other networks seek­ing to create just, ecologically sustainable, inclusive, and democratic cities have begun to draw on the theo­retical concept of the right to the city developed by the sociologist Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre affirmed the right of those living in cities (regardless of their citizen­ship status, class, gender, ethnic, linguistic, religious, or other identity) to take part in “creating” the city. Thousands of local actors, including municipalities, as well as worldwide urban movements, aspire to see this right recognized along with other social and economic human rights. A network of institutions and NGOs has developed a World Charter for the Right to the City. [p. 368]
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