What is an Urbanization ?
Onix Octarina
15:41
1
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| 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.
