Often looking for a job or better prosperity, people move to cities. Despite recent advances in wellbeing and technology on society, the overpopulation of big cities (greater than 10 million people) it is expected to be one of the biggest future challenges of mankind. In 2007, for the first time, the population of urban areas exceeded that of rural ones and currently, about 55% of the total population live in cities. According to estimates of the United Nations, two out of three of the total population will live in growing conurbations in 2050.
This scenario depicts a not too distant future with differences between cities and rural regions and also with predicted expectations in global sustainability at different levels disregarding the development of countries: from an individual/social impact (i.e., economic policies, relocation and change in cities design, lifestyle) to a more wider repercussion (i.e. depletion of natural resources, environmental degradation, wars, unemployment, poverty).
To deal with that, different global reports have proposed some solutions, such as:
- promote economic development and job creation,
- involve local community in local government,
- reduce air pollution by upgrading energy use and alternative transport systems,
- create private-public partnerships to provide services such as waste disposal and housing,
- plant trees and incorporate the care of city green spaces as a key element in urban planning: sustainable urbanization,
- implement educational policies reflecting social change: tax exemptions for limited children, sex education.
Can you suggest any other scientific approach to alleviate this issue? I would like to emphasize the role of both science and technology.
Sustainable Settlement Planning and policy would be key to understand the challenges for urban areas. In future, majority of the settlements would have urban character given the advancement in technology, market outreach, income equality and facilities. The distinction between the rural and urban would give way to settlement level planning. Large cities are more prone to migration and influex of sudden population due to poor hinterland growth. More economic growth of hinterland and concentration on regional development would improve the situation in the million plus cities. The world urbanization would reverse to spill to hinterland where the economies would be having distributed effect on the rural settlements. The science and technology would help reduction in migration and movement of people, from hinterland to core and influence of settlements may out strip the size given the contribution to the regional or state economy. The smaller settlements with more manufacturing and service orientation would have larger scope, however the agglomeration would be natural to certain over grown cities. The countries must look to have regional urbanization or development strategies to take advantage of technology growth. The lifestyle changes in the countries would be due to technology and settlements would get more importance due to logistics and virtual presence in global markets.
What advantage such urban cities or rural hinterland can have due to technology progress must be understood as a part of policy design and framework. Whether the growth of highways or information system effects the regional growth of settlements. The attempt to disconnect the rural development through lack of focus on agriculture, transportation and facilities would keep the urbanization concentration in large cities. It would be wise to think on an approach to think about settlements rather than urbanization as key to economic growth.
Well, it is obvious that your research interest falls under the topics of ICT and smart city. The concept of smart city will help to address most of the issues you raised. The concept uses information and communications technology (ICT) to improve the services that support urban dwelling – security, healthcare, and transport for citizens; improved and more cost effective power supply for industries; remote working and e-commerce for businesses; and entertainment and communications for individuals.
Smart city technology can also help to reduce the environmental impact of urbanization. ICT can be used to monitor energy consumption and emissions across sectors, to improve accountability in the use of energy and carbon. It can offer new ways of operating, learning, living, working and travelling, and help apply smart and integrated approaches to the energy management of systems and processes.
With these tools, the ICT sector could reduce its own CO2 emissions significantly as well as gain financial benefits in the form of new business. ICT can create huge savings of approximately €600 billion through improved energy efficiency across all sectors1. For your information, the concept is already being put into action in several emerging markets, notably in China, India and the Middle East.
Agglomeration in cities are aggravating the problems of sane food production, safe health services and meaningful education for kids. We currently have the tools to provide decent education for rural kids and to pay proper prices for agricultural production, which are the main reasons rural folks seek to migrate.
But as long as we simply keep 'counting heads' in elections, the politicians have no incentive to put breaks in migration to cities, because it costs more to seek votes in rural areas. Unless we establish area-wise proportional representation in elections, giving more weight to rural voters, we won't see an end to over crowding in cities.
The issue of over-population of big cities needs to be properly understood and clear. When you talk of overpopulation of a city, it means the existing facilities and infrastructure in such city are over-stressed by not meeting up with the needs of the population of the city or its designed capacity. Therefore, science and technology can be used in monitoring the growth of population and directing the excess population to other areas where less concentration exist or provide for the anticipating population growth by way of design proposals.
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