What is an Urbanization ?

Dhaka

A. What is an Urbanization ?

Urbanization is the increasing number of people that migrate from rural to urban areas. It predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas, be it horizontal or vertical.

Urbanization is closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can describe a specific condition at a set time, i.e. the proportion of total population or area in cities or towns, or the term can describe the increase of this proportion over time. So the term urbanization can represent the level of urban development relative to overall population, or it can represent the rate at which the urban proportion is increasing.

Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, where by predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. Village culture is characterized by common bloodlines, intimate relationships, and communal behavior whereas urban culture is characterized by distant bloodlines, unfamiliar relations, and competitive behavior. This unprecedented movement of people is forecast to continue and intensify in the next few decades, mushrooming cities to sizes incomprehensible only a century ago. Indeed, today, in Asia the urban agglomerations of Dhaka, Karachi, Jakarta, Mumbai, Delhi, Manila, Seoul and Beijing are each already home to over 20 million people, while the Pearl River Delta, Shanghai-Suzhou and Tokyo are forecast to approach or exceed 40 million people each within the coming decade. Outside Asia,  Mexico City, Sao Paulo, New York City, Lagos and Cairo are fast approaching being, or are already, home to over 20 million people.

Urbanization occurs as individual, commercial, social and governmental efforts reduce time and expense in commuting and transportation and improve opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation.

Living in cities permits the advantages of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition. Cities are known to be places where money, services, wealth and opportunities are centralized.

Businesses, which provide jobs and exchange capital are more concentrated in urban areas. In rural areas, often on small family farms or collective farms in villages, it has traditionally been difficult to access manufactured goods, though overall quality of life is very subjective, and may certainly surpass that of the city. Driven by the rapid growth of urban population in developing countries, the world had become more urban than rural by 2007. This trend is expected to continue in the years ahead. While the urbanization of the world’s population has been accompanied by an “urbanization of global poverty” (Ravallion et al., 2007), poverty continues to be overwhelmingly concentrated in rural areas. According to the World Development Indicators, almost two third of the poor globally are still rural. Thus understanding the implications of urban growth for rural poverty in developing countries is crucial for any global poverty reduction strategy. 

B. Contra Statements

    To decrease the urbanization level, the movement of people from rural to urban isn’t the problem. There are no used to strictly control it because they are move to urban for reasons. What we should control is the reasons that makes they’re move not their movement. The reasons that we should control are:

1.      Poverty

As we know, poverty is a  real major concern of development in Indonesia. Furthermore after the economic crisis in 1997. According to Komite Penanggulangan Kemiskinan, 2004, Past and recent data on poverty shows that rural areas as the place where the poorest people are. In 2000, out of 38.7 million people identified as poor, 26.4 million live in rural areas. With population density in Java that is several times of other islands in Indonesia, we can assume the majority of poor people in Java live in rural areas. And official data support this assumption that 13 out of over 21 million poor in Java live in rural areas. So that’s why they have to move to urban areas as the pattern of urbanization.  If the ratio number of poverty could be handled then the movement of people from rural to urban could be decreased. One of many ways to control the poverty by reduces the use of chemical fertilizer. Using chemical fertilizer will descend the land function. It will affect the product from the land too which pointed to poverty. That’s why the rural villagers should be told about that so they can forestall the poverty.

2.      Natural Disaster

In some developing countries such as Ethiopia, there are many complex problems like famine (in the 1980s), drought, and flooding. As in Bangladesh, were people are becoming climate change refugees and having to move to Dhaka.  As in Darfur at the moment, there is a civil war. This situation caused people to migrate to an area with higher survival ratio.

      The natural disasters are sometimes too big for villagers to handle. For examples is drought. Drought brings a dead end to natural resource which is supply villagers life. It causes the lack of food and water. The heat of the weather drains villagers strength which is reduces the quality of activities. In cases it makes people in rural area unusable. This situation left no choices than to migrate to another area with better survival ratio like urban.

       To decrease the urbanization level, the government should consider natural disaster factor. There are many ways to anticipate the natural disaster. That’s why the government should socializations the way to anticipate and forestall the natural disaster. If the villagers know how to survive from natural disaster, it will reduce the urbanization number.

3.      Vocation

In a New York Times article concerning the acute migration away from farming in Thailand, life as a farmer was described as "hot and exhausting." Everyone says the farmer works the hardest but gets the least amount of money. People migrated from rural areas (due to the mechanisation in farming) to urban areas where there was employment in the new factories, so they can get some employment in urban areas.

Urbanization is related to the available of job demand. It is related to quantity of job, quantity of salary and quality of job. To reduce the urbanization the quality jobs should be available in rural area. That’s why the rural should be developed but still in rural base.

4.      Infrastructure

In urban areas, there is a chance of a better access to education and services, a higher standard of living, to get better access to medical care.  So to decrease the urbanization level the infrastructure in rural area should be developed.

First is the education aspect. To raise education aspect in rural, could be done by rise the quantity of vocational education in high school. This will really help fostering the education participant’s talent which is characterized by practical. Besides that, the fostering of this aspect could create businessman soul which will help in creating the job demand in rural.

Second is accessibility aspect. There are many rural with bad accessibility whereas it’s really important. The accessibility has the function to transport. Transport in this case includes economy activity like services and goods distribution. Through the development of street, bridge and telecommunication, the potential of rural area will be optimized.  The existence of access itself also creates traction for government and privates to become miter and fostering special quality of that rural.

Third is the empowerment of rural potential like agribusiness and tourism. The potential of agribusiness in rural could be done by fostering and marketing which is more selling. If success, the job demand will be available on its own. It goes the same way for tourism.

C. Rural Development to Downsize Urbanization Level

In the developing country, regional planning would deal mostly with rural areas than to urban areas since resource frontier and transitional regions are pre-dominating the area than would other classifications. Therefore, regional planning is identical with rural development. One social objective that  must be met is the poverty alleviation of rural populace. To alleviate poverty, the rural area should be developed. But the development should still maintain the rural itself (development with rural based). That’s why, to reduce the number of urbanization, we have to start from the rural.

  REFERENCE

Anonim. Urbanization. dalam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization. diakses pada Rabu, 22 Oktober 2014.

______. Urbanisation. dalam www.coolgeography.co.uk. diakses pada Rabu, 22 Oktober 2014.

Kusumawardani, Anggi. 2010. Upaya Penanganan Urbanisasi. dalam http://news.okezone.com/read/2010/10/02/367/378424/upaya-penanganan-urbanisasi. diakses Jumat, 24 Oktober 2014.

Salim, Wilmar. 2005. Urban Development and Rural Poverty in Java: A Challenge for Decentralized Local Governments.Departemen Teknik Planologi, ITB. Volume 16, No. 2.