Urban Growth as a Contradiction - Bilge Yılmaz

As one of the most apparent urban condition of modern world, intensive urban growth of the cities, effects our lives as urban actors in several hidden and visible ways. This essay will be analyzing this current urban condition in various aspects by exposing the roots, impacts and consequences of the condition on urban life. Also describing the ways it is reshaping architecture in cities, created different urban solutions in order to solve the problems consists within. Lastly, suggesting an alternative way of thinking in an analytic approach.

Main reason of the intensive urban growth in cities is the increasing urban population. As this increasement is not stable and has an accelerating feature over the years, this characteristic of the condition makes it even more problematizing and hard to cope for urban planners - actors. There are two evident factors which causes the situation as natural population growth and increasing migration to urban areas. Natural population growth is an inevitable result of the developing world. In modern world, as an expected result of the development of technology and health services, death rates are decreasing every year. At the same time, new-born deaths are decreasing because of the same development effect.

Extreme growth of urban areas essentially began with the process of Industrialization in origin, which comes within the Industrial Revolution took place around 18th and 19th centuries. Industrialization process inverted urban areas to a center of attraction and formed todays modern world’s fundamental characteristics. As a cause of this ongoing attraction, people tend to migrate to urban areas ever since.

“Migration is defined as the long-term relocation of an individual, household or group to a new location outside the community of origin (Bhatta, 2010).” In today’s world, domestic migration is largely from rural areas to urban areas. It can be explained with the demand of approaching to the elaborated modernity and technology in urban environment.

Also job opportunities, economic wealth, health services and education facilities which are concentrated mostly in urban areas comes within. Furthermore, the effect of international migration caused by academic reasons can’t be unseen. “Looking at the global distribution of urbanization level, it is easy to see an irreversible trend of world urbanization and remarkable growth in almost all continents during 1980–2011. Globally, the urbanization level has risen from 39% in 1980 to 52% in 2011.” 1 This intensive growth in cities as an urban condition have many distinctive, mostly problematic impacts in various ways on urban life. Increase in crime rates, impersonal relations between individuals, possible inconsistencies between different ethnicities, environmental pollution can be examined. “Besides, most apparent of them is the uncontrolled urban growth resulting in sprawl or extreme density. The rapid growth of cities strains their capacity to provide services such as energy, education, health care, transportation, sanitation, and physical security. Since governments have less revenue to spend on the basic upkeep of cities and the provision of services, cities become areas of massive sprawl or density and serious environmental problems.” (Bhatta, 2010).

Uncontrollable growth occurred by the intensive human flow and birth, resulting with the prosperity decrement of individuals in cities. Providing the basic services in a quality and requested way for rapidly increasing citizens being a hard issue for governments with certain

revenue. Tax rates are increasing as government needing more revenue to serve more individuals. Also as the cause of developing technology, decrement in need of labor force in manufacture and the abundance of potential proletarians leads societies to corporate with unemployment and low incomes. Most of the unemployed individuals which are migrated from agricultural environments can’t acquire what they hoped for in urban areas.

“Discussions of poverty often mistakenly focus on urban areas. While urban poverty is a unique challenge, rates of poverty have historically been higher in rural than urban areas.” 2 In today’s urban areas as extreme dense metropolitan cities, demand of more living place comes within the explosion in population. Also over urbanization and space consumption resulting in lack of blank lands is another issue. Living and property costs are increasing rapidly in order to decrement of living spaces. Over growth population in cities creates a fund need for government to serve which results in higher taxes. Also because of the lack of housing, property costs are increasing. These situations form a compulsion on urban actors to work and obtain an income to pay for their needs. But in result of intensive growth and developing technology, existing unemployment issue can’t provide their needs.

This is a common urban contradiction as the greatest problem of our modern world.

The city’s reaction to over growing population shows itself in urban planning and architecture as the most distinct way. “In many instances, urban growth is uncontrolled and uncoordinated resulting in sprawl” (Bhatta, 2010). Conversely, over growth can cause concentration in the center and intensify the city rather than expanding it. “Most cities have attempted to encourage higher density residential development on the urban area, in the inner city and around transportation nodes.” (Roberts 2016). Concerns about affordable housing and lack of blank land, which is followed by the lack of enough living areas brings pressure upon governments. This created a tendency which land development evaluates to a denser and congested structure.

The simplest definition of density is the amount of people divided by the land they occupy. There are different resolutions made on coping with the extreme density in urban area. Dominant building texture and frequencies are changed during the over growth process. There is an evaluation from single, large, nucleus family houses and high poverty indicator large spaces to a vertical and dense architectural understanding. Spaces in urban area become constricted, also living areas become closer and denser through the city nodes.

Corporate housing financed and built by government become the renewed living space for mostly proletarian class individuals.

Is density always terrible? If we ask the question, we can encounter with both different sides which are right in their own ways. “These changes have brought about a shift in attitude and support for medium density inner city living. For some people, high density living in inner urban areas associated with mixed development offers economic, and social advantages by lowering transaction costs, and create greater opportunities for face-to-face social interaction, engagement and knowledge exchange. Some argue denser living environments generate higher levels of productivity.” (Carlino 2007). “Higher density city environments can also be more efficient, with greater public transport use and shorter journeys.” (Glaeser 2011). Some people believed that density is a must for human instinct to

socialize and gathering together. But If we look from the other perspective, Hong Kong as one of the densest city’s in the world can be a good example. “Probably the densest urban environment humans have ever created was Kowloon Walled City, a block on the Hong Kong mainland which was demolished in the 1990s.” It was probably the densest neighborhood in history, with more than 1,000,000 people per sq km.”3 On the other hand, living in such an uncomfortable and congested way can be criticized as a human rights infraction.

In conclusion, despite there are different causes and effects about the current urban condition, the negative sides of extreme urban growth and density is much more efficient and highlighted. There is not a possibility that we can prevent the current growth because it is predictable and natural. Urban planners and architects should assimilate an analytical approach while designing the urban areas. There should be developed tactical resolutions in the good of individuals which will maintain the city mechanism. Also focusing on improving the existent, and creating a regular city order as much as possible. Alternative city designing tactics should be applied like creating sustainable urban areas, including vegetation, increasing recreation areas, solving the light and noise problem, designing compact but comfortable environments.

Bibliography:

1- Montoya, Alejandro. (2014) The Global Pattern of Urbanization and Economic Growth.

[Plos] Available at: (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4123908/) 2- The Conversation. (2017) The Divide Between Rural and Urban America, in 6 Charts. [US News] Available at: (https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-03-20/6charts-that-illustrate-the-divide-between-rural-and-urban-america) 3- Murphy, Doughlas. (2017) Where is the world's densest city? [Guardian] Available at: (https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/may/11/where-world-most-densely-populatedcity)