Urbanization: Dr.Abhinandan Bhardwaj explains how uncontrolled urbanization is affecting our climate

Urbanization

Urbanization & The environment

Dr. Abhinandan Bhardwaj PhD

Industrialization has been one of the major factors in the development of the countries, and has caused a population increase in cities, resulting in urban sprawl. Because industrialization and urbanization often advance uncontrolled or unorganized way, they can have destructive effects on the environment, particularly on basic ecosystems, wildlife habitat, and global biodiversity. Land use and land cover changes as a result. A significant amount of forest and agriculture land around the world has already been destroyed.

In 1800 only about 2 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas. That was small wonder: Until a century ago, urban areas were some of the unhealthiest places for people to live. The increased density of populations in urban areas led to the rapid spread of infectious diseases. Consequently, death rates in urban areas historically were higher than in rural areas. The only way urban areas maintained their existence until recently was by the continual in-migration of rural people.⁴

In only 200 years, the world's urban population has grown from 2 percent to nearly 50 percent of all people. The most striking examples of the urbanization of the world are the mega cities of 10 million or more people. In 1975 only four mega cities existed; in 2000 there were 18. And by 2015 the UN estimates that there will be 22.⁵ Much of the future growth, however, will not be in these huge agglomerations, but in the small to medium-size cities around the world.

environmental Effects of Urbanization

Urban populations interact with their environment. Urban people change their environment through their consumption of food, energy, water, and land. And in turn, the polluted urban environment affects the health and quality of life of the urban population.

People who live in urban areas have very different consumption patterns than residents in rural areas. For example, urban populations consume much more food, energy, and durable goods than rural populations. In China during the 1970s, the urban populations consumed more than twice as much pork as the rural populations who were raising the pigs. With economic development, the difference in consumption declined as the rural populations ate better diets. But even a decade later, urban populations had 60 percent more pork in their diets than rural populations. The increasing consumption of meat is a sign of growing affluence in Beijing; in India where many urban residents are vegetarians, greater prosperity is seen in higher consumption of milk.

Urban populations not only consume more food, but they also consume more durable goods. In the early 1990s, Chinese households in urban areas were two times more likely to have a TV, eight times more likely to have a washing machine, and 25 times more likely to have a refrigerator than rural households. This increased consumption is a function of urban labor markets, wages, and household structure.

Energy consumption for electricity, transportation, cooking, and heating is much higher in urban areas than in rural villages. For example, urban populations have many more cars than rural populations per capita. Almost all of the cars in the world in the 1930s were in the United States. Today we have a car for every two people in the United States. If that became the norm, in 2050 there would be 5.3 billion cars in the world, all using energy.