Transcript The Mega City - Nova Scotia Department of Education

The Mega City
Chapter 14
The Mega City
 Shift to living in urban centers was not
gradual process but sudden shift
 Over 50% of the world’s population
lives in urban centers
Why have urban centers grown?
 Improved Food Availability
 cities can only grown as big as their food
supply can handle
 Traditional methods of transportation and food
preservation did not allow food to be
transported long distances
 Improvements in technologies have allowed
food to be transported longer distances
therefore allowing cities to be larger
 Movement of Jobs
 Used to have jobs working on the land
 Increase in industries lead to less people
working land
 Industries tended to be built near cities and
drew workers there
 Elimination of Health Risks
 Early days people would get sick from living
close to one another in cities
 With increase technology cities became a
cleaner place to live, leading more people to
migrate there
 Mass Transit
 Before transit existed people had to live near
the places they work. This restricted the sizes
of cities
 Transit systems allowed cities to expand
allowing more people to live in them
MDC vs. LDC
 MDC’s have had a large urbanization rate




since the industrial revolution
Has risen from 50% in 1950 to 75% in
present day
LDC’s has a much smaller rate of
urbanization due to lack of technology
19% in 1950 to 40% in present day
LDC’s are catching up to MDC’s now due
to multinational corporations bringing in
technology and employment
Mega- Cities
 Cities with more than 8-10 million people
 Rare until quite recently, new additions are
coming from LDC’s
 Very powerful in world economics
Sources of Urban Growth
 2 sources: natural growth (births) and
migration
 LDC = ½ of growth comes from births
(high birth rates), ½ from rural to urban
migration for employment
 MDC = immigration levels (natives tend to
move out of the cities)
Why?
 Push factors = poverty and living
conditions in rural LDC’s, not many push
factors for rural MDC to move to urban
MDC
 Pull Factors = excitement of city life in
both MDC and LDC
City life in an LDC
 Population had grown rapidly and the
governments do not have the financial
capabilities to keep up with it
 Therefore half the people living in a city
are homeless or live in slums
 These areas do not have proper shelter,
water or sewage therefore life expectancy
is low
 People who cannot find regular
employment work in the informal economy
(begging, shining shoes, busking, etc.)
 Crime and prostitution are common
 People in these situations have three
options:
 Life on the streets
 Life in a slum
 Life in a shantytown
Life on the Streets
 Migrants arrive with no money and no job




prospects
Find a place on sidewalk to live
Best sites are near business districts
which will provide potential clients for the
services they want to provide for money
Usually have health problems
May loose their possessions b/c no where
to store them
Life in the Slums
 Provides better shelter than living on




streets
Pay a monthly rent for shelter therefore
the poorest people can not live here
Usually have business people renting
Located close to business district so they
can walk to work
Very crowded living conditions
Life in Shantytowns
 Find land that no one else is using and
begin building with whatever materials are
available (eg. concrete blocks, cloth,
cardboard)
 Do not own land and do not pay rent
 Usually develop in areas outside of cities
and on undesirable land
 Hard to make a living as they can not
travel into the city
 Near garbage dumps are prime locations
as residents can search through debris for
goods they can sell
 Lack adequate infrastructure (eg. schools,
electricity, roads)
City Life in MDC’s
 People think of excitement and nightlife
 Homes to power and money
 Good jobs available
 Surface images but not always the case
when you look deeper at a city
Urban Poverty
 Almost every cities in Canada and
America have homelessness and living in
slum like conditions
 Not always visible to visitors
 Have food banks so people rarely starve
but encounter other problems like ill
health, malnutrition and illiteracy
Urban Sprawl
 Many problems that cities face today are
due to their inability to deal with their own
growth
 Many citizens choose to move into the
suburbs with long commutes instead of
living in the middle of cities
 Spreading of people away from cities =
urban sprawl
Problems with Urban Sprawl
 Land use conflicts- disputes b/w farming
land vs land to live on
 Social conflicts- urban people may want to
improve the rural setting which increases
taxes, rural people may not want to pay
 Inefficient land use- insufficient land bylaws allow land to be used for purposes
such as shopping malls or condo
development
 Increased energy consumption and air
pollution – people who work in cities often
live in suburbs, their traveling causes
pollution
 Increased tax burden – people living in city
center has decreased therefore fewer
people paying taxes. People who move
out of city but work in downtown are still
using city services but not paying taxes for
it. City can have problems paying for
these services