Patterns of Urban Growth and Development Essay

The growth and development of urban has consistently grown globally. This is as a result of human factor and environmental influence. Growth and development is the change to a better state compared to former state. Urbanization has increased mostly in poor countries compared to developed countries. In both poor and rich countries, there are different factors that contribute to either to growth or dominate the growth of the urban areas. Urbanization is there fore, the spreading of a city and its suburbs over the rural areas at the fringe of an urban area. Patterns of urban growth and development Industrialization is one of the factors that have contributed to urbanization. This changes the nature of economic production of any country. In both rich and poor countries, each potion of land id devoted to a certain use i. e. commercial, industrial and residential areas are separated. The sensing of growth is by allocating land to different uses. In other words large tracts of land are devoted a single use and are separated from one another by none used fields, roads or rail lines, or other barriers. This results to separation from where people go to work and where they do their shopping. Urbanization in rich countries consumes much more land compared to poor countries, on the other hand urbanization in poor countries seem to consume more land due to construction of single family homes compared to apartments build in developed countries. In rich countries more land is required to build parking because of the increasing number of automobiles compared to poor countries. The impact of low density development in poor countries where many communities are less developed or urbanized land is increasing at a faster rate than the population. The critics that arise in urban development in rich countries are health and environmental issues. Urban growth has been associated with some negative environmental and public health matters. The primary cause of these negative outcomes is that urbanization leads to people having to depend on the automobile because it will be a greater distance to travel and people will not be able to walk or ride their bicycles to their destinations. Vehicle ownership has become widespread in the rich countries, health officers recommend health benefits of suburbs due to soot and industrial fumes in the city center. However, air in modern suburbs is not necessarily cleaner than air in urban neighborhoods. In fact, the most polluted air is on crowded highways, where people in suburbs tend to spend more time. On average, suburban residents generate pollution and carbon emissions than the urban counterparts because of the higher number of driving. Urbanization in rich countries is partly responsible for the decline in socialization. Close neighborhoods can contribute to casual social interactions among neighbors, while low-density urbanization creates barriers to interaction. Urbanization tends to replace public spaces such as parks with private spaces such as fenced-in backyards. Residents of urbanized neighborhoods rarely walk for transportation, which reduces opportunities for face-to-face contact with neighbors. There is also a much concern over the housing in growth pattern in both rich and poor countries. In rich countries housing are quite expensive due to demand compared to poor countries, the housing has become a scarce commodity in most developed countries, the housing affordability compared to earning is much high. In poor countries cheaper housing is available due to reduced number of urbanization and demand Suburbs are blamed in rich countries for what they see as homogeneity of society and culture, leading to urbanization of suburb developments of people with similar race and background. (Stein, 1993). Conclusion Growth pattern in both the poor and the rich countries face similar challenges in most cases. Environmental hazards are more prone to developed countries compared to poor countries due to industrialization. Housing is come scarce in rich countries than in poor countries for more people work in urban areas where industrialization is more prone than in poor countries where most people lives in rural areas. References Stein, J. (1993). Growth Management: The planning challenge of the 1990’s. Sage Publications.