Quotes

“I thought digital technology would eventually reverse urbanization, and so far that hasn't happened. But people always overestimate how much will change in the next three years, and they underestimate how much will change over the next 10 years.” Bill Gates

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
—Bill Vaughn

As growth becomes denser, highway costs rise while transit costs decline. - Anonymous

If car ownership is mandatory, [the place is] not urban. - Donald Baxter

A street is a spatial entity and not the residue between buildings. - Anonymous

...if someone charges that the New Urbanism is about hating cars, we can say no, that it is only when convenient walking and convenient driving conflict that we place the pedestrian above the driver; where they do not conflict, there is no dilemma. - Bruce Donnelly

For more interesting quotes please check out the following site
http://www.walkablestreets.com/quote5.htm

Urbanization Facts

Urbanization: Facts and Figures

Total Population Growth
· In 2000, world population reached 6.1 billion, and is growing at an annual rate of 1.2%, or 77 million people per year.

· In 1950, 68% of the world’s population was in developing countries, with 8% in least developed countries.

· By 2030, it is expected that 85% of the world’s population will be in developing countries, with 15% in LDCs.

· The other side of the coin is that the percentage of the world’s population that lives in developed countries is declining, from 32% in 1950 to an expected 15% in 2030.

· By 2050, the number of persons older than 60 years will more than triple, from 606 million today to nearly 2 billion. The number of persons over 80 years of age will increase even more, from 69 million in 2000 to 379 million in 2050, more than a five-fold increase.

Ubanization: Global Facts and Figures
· In 1800, only 2% of the world’s population was urbanised

· In 1950, only 30% of the world population was urban.

· In 2000, 47%. of the world population was urban

· More than half of the world’s population will be living in urban areas by 2008

· By 2030, it is expected that 60% of the world population will live in urban areas.

· Almost 180,000 people are added to the urban population each day

· It is estimated that there are almost a billion poor people in the world, of this over 750
million live in urban areas without adequate shelter and basic services.

Urbanization: Regional Comparisons
· The population in urban areas in less developed countries will grow from 1.9 billion in 2000 to 3.9 billion in 2030.

· But in developed countries, the urban population is expected to increase very slowly, from 0.9 billion in 2000 to 1 billion in 2030.

· The overall growth rate for the world for that period is 1 per cent, while the growth rate for urban areas is nearly double, or 1.8 percent. At that rate, the world’s urban population will double in 38 years.

· Growth will be even more rapid in the urban areas of less developed regions, averaging 2.3 per cent per year, with a doubling time of 30 years.

· The urbanisation process in developed countries has stabilised with about 75% of the population living in urban areas. By 2030, 84% of the population in developed countries will be living in urban areas.

· Latin America and the Caribbean were 50% urbanized by 1960 but are now in the region of 75%.

· Though Africa is predominantly rural, with only 37.3 % living in urban areas in 1999, with a growth rate of 4.87%, Africa is the continent with the fastest rate of urbanisation.

· In 1999, 36.2% of the Asian population was urbanised and the urban growth rate is in the region of 3.77%

· The urban population of developing countries is expected to reach 50% in 2020.

· By 2030, Asia and Africa will both have higher numbers of urban dwellers than any other major area of the world.

Urban Agglomerations, or More Mega Cities
· In 1950, there was only one city with a population of over 10 million inhabitants: New York City.

· By 2015, it is expected that there will be 23 cities with a population over 10 million.

· Of the 23 cities expected to reach 10 million plus by 2015, 19 of them will be in developing countries.

· In 2000 there were 22 cities with a population of between 5 and 10 million; there were 402 cities with a population of 1 to 5 million; and 433 cities in the .5 to 1 million category.

This information found at http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/3160_99185_backgrounder5.doc

I also came across another really great site that has fact sheets and data tables. It is really interesting to see the changes and growth that has ocurred over the past years. I suggest you take a look. There is alot of good information on the site. The site is listed below:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WUP2005/2005wup.htm

some cartoons on urbanization

For more please feel free to look at the following link

http://www.indianink.org/winning_cartoons.pdf

Chapter 15

Major Problems of Urbanization

• Overcrowding
  


• Inferior, inadequate and sometimes dangerous housing




• Low income/wages




• Poor educational environment




• Social disorganization




• Poverty



• Poor public services



• Inadequate transportation



• Rise in crime rates



• Political corruption



• Loss of land



• Increased air, water and land pollution
• please refer to the following link for more information regarding the effects of water quality
• http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/urbanrun.html



• Growth of slums



• Sprawl
  

Consequences of sprawl in the United States
Increases traffic
Pollutes air and water.
Worsens the damage from floods.
Destroys agricultural land, parks, and open space.
Costs cities and counties millions of dollars for new water and sewer lines, new schools, and increased police and fire protection.
Creates crowded schools in the suburbs and empty, crumbling schools in center cities.

Chapter 14

Urban Culture as defined by wikipedia

Urban culture is the culture of cities. Cities all over the world, past and present, have behaviors and cultural elements that separate them from otherwise comparable rural areas.
In the US and UK, "urban" is often used as a euphemism to describe hip hop culture or subsets of black culture; being these defined groups as a type of urban tribe. Hence names for cultural artifacts like urban music could be seen as a new term for "Race music". It can also refer to the greater availability of cultural resources (such as art, theatre, events, etc) as compared to suburban or rural areas.

Music

Dance

Grafitti

Theatre

In NYC, I know that many local people go to many of the parks in the city. My favorite park to go to when I visit is Washinton Square Park, there is always some sort of entertainment to enjoy. The site below will give you some historic information about this amazing gathering place.

http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=6537

Chapter 13

How Neighborhoods Change?
I believe neighborhoods change greatly by those living in them and the help of organizations, the government and policies.

I found alot of interesting websites regarding the upgrading of slums and other programs out there for bettering the housing for people here in the United States. I would like to share a few of them with you.

Below is the link to an article for Community Driven Development
http://www.worldbank.org/urban/upgrading/docs/CDD/cdd-urban-upgrading.pdf

The Urban Institute has alot of great and interesting information and I highly encourage everyone to navigate through it with the link provided below.
http://www.urban.org/housing/index.cfm

I found a program called NeighborWorks in which poor and deteriorating communities are revitalized. I had never heard of it before, but found it to be pretty beneficial to those living in poor communities.
http://www.nw.org/network/training/programs/nr.asp

Chapter 12

Why has residential segregation presisted?

• physical distance restrictive - money and time
• maximization of conflict between social groups
• maximization of the political voice and influence resulting from spatial clustering
• greater degree of social control - possible with homogeneous residential groupings
• territorality

The Foundations of Residential Segregation in the US

1. Social status - an attribute of "gentrified" neighborhoods
2. Household type - adult communities/single room occupancies
3. Ethnicity - African American/Chinese/Jewish/Mexican/Puerto Rican/etc.
4. Lifestyle - familists/careerists/consumerists

Residential Ecology

1. Human Ecology
2. Factorial Ecology

Human Ecology

• Each as an ecological unit - a particular mix of people that had come to dominate a particular niche in the urban fabric
• adopted a view of the city as a social organism with a social interation governed by a struggle for existence
• social interaction seen as an expression of symbiosis

Factorial Ecology

• socioeconomic status, family status and ethnicity should be regarded as representing the main dimensions of social space
• physical space should not be thought of as independent of social space

Changes to the Foundation of Residential Segregation

• economic rearrangements in the 1980s due to occupational polarization, baby boom generation and ethnicity
• new class fractions, household types and new lifestyles
• increase materialism
• social isolation of vulnerable and disadvantaged (elderly, immigrants, single parent families, etc)

The New Mosaic - "Lifestyle" Communities

• New York City
• Los Angeles
• Washington DC
• Dallas
• Chicago
• Cleveland