CITB02H3 Lecture 3: Scholarly Conversations
Scholarly Conversations
• Lecture Objectives:
✓ What are contemporary trends in global urbanization? What challenges do these trends
pose?
✓ What factors contribute to the production of slums?
✓ How are slums represented in scholarly and popular discourse?
• What is Urbanization?
o Urbanization refers to the transition of a geographic area from rural to urban and the
condition of being urbanized.
o The level of urbanization of a geographic area refers to the ratio urban/rural and does not
necessarily correlate with the absolute size of cities in it.
• What is a City?
o "So far, no standardized international criteria exist for determining the boundaries of a city
and often multiple different boundary definitions are available for any given city" - UN Data
Booklet.
• What is a Slum?
o UN-HABITAT defines a slum household as a group of individuals living under the same roof
in an urban area who lack one or more of the following:
▪ (1) Durable housing of a permanent nature that protects against extreme climate
conditions; (2) sufficient living space which means not more than three people
sharing the same room; (3) easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an
affordable price; (4) access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public
toilet shared by a reasonable number of people; (5) security of tenure that prevents
forced evictions.
o According to the neoliberalism perspective, slums are the fault of the government.
• Global Urbanization Trends:
o 55% of the world's population is now urban;
o The Americas and Europe are the most urbanized regions;
o The global rural population will not grow significantly;
o Urban population grows at a faster rate than world's population at large;
o The world's population growth in the 21st century will be almost entirely urban;
▪ We are entering a new urban revolution, so to speak.
o Smaller urban settlements with less than 500,000 inhabitants will absorb much of the
world's population growth;
o The number of cities with more than 5 million inhabitants will increase;
o Most megacities (10 million or more inhabitants) and cities with more than 5 million
inhabitants are in Asia (China 6/10; India 3/4; Rest of Asia 7/11).
• Urbanization and Development:
o How does contemporary urbanization in the Global South differ from the experience of
industrialized countries in the 19th and 20th century?
▪ Refer to Davis reading.
o What are the resulting challenges for planning and policy?
▪ Urban informality - rapid growth in a city attached to the process of urbanization
leads to rapid increase in population that is unplanned for, there is work not captured
in the formal economy; this is due to liberalization of the economy, privatization.
▪ Difficult to recognize property rights in informal settings.
Document Summary
"so far, no standardized international criteria exist for determining the boundaries of a city and often multiple different boundary definitions are available for any given city" - un data. "the dynamics of third world urbanization both recapitulate and confound the precedents of nineteenth and early twentieth century europe and north america. China the greatest industrial revolution in history is the archimedian lever shifting a population the size of europe from rural villages to smog-chocked sky-climbing cities. [ ] but i(cid:374) (cid:373)ost of the de(cid:448)elopi(cid:374)g (cid:449)orld, city gro(cid:449)th lacks china"s powerful manufacturing-export engine as well as its vast inflow of foreign capital. : kingsley davis quote: "clearly, modern urbanization is best understood in terms of its connection with economic growth, and its implications are best perceived in its latest manifestations in advanced countries. Structural adjustment programs: the "main single cause of increases in poverty and inequality during the 1980s and 1990s was the retreat of the state" (qtd.
